corybrown50 said:
I saw CPAP earlier and wanted to share this warning....I burnt up a CPAP power supply on a trip to China doing this....had to go a week without it...let's just say I wasn't the best of company that week. There are CPAP that can run on 12v, please do so. I run mine directly off battery and it works great. Converters/ inverters are too inconsistent with power and can burn out electronic power supplies when used for extended periods of time.
Also on the subject of CPAPs.....
One of my brothers has two ResMed CPAPs (an older one and its replacement) and he was planning to join me for ten days on my Florida trip so we had to figure out what to do. I was happy to find the
'ResMed Battery Guide: Using Stand-Alone, Deep Cycle Batteries'. It seems to do a pretty good job of laying out the alternatives and provides model-specific details and warnings.
I had looked for DC-to-DC adapters and they were in the 90-dollar range. But then the note in this paragraph (on page 2) caught my eye...
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"1. Do you have a pure sine wave DC-to-AC inverter with a continuous power rating of 300 watts and a peak/surge rating of 500 watts?
YES – Go to step 2.
NO – Contact your battery or electrical supplies provider for assistance in obtaining the appropriate type of inverter.
NOTE: The following ResMed devices without humidifiers can operate using a 150 watt modified sine wave inverter: VPAP III, AutoSet CS2, VPAP Adapt series. S9 series with H5i humidifiers can also operate from this inverter type. "
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That at least opened the door to running a CPAP on a smaller, cheaper inverter (but it wasn't clear enough to go ahead). The older of the two CPAPs wasn't on the charts so I kept looking and found an older version of the Battery Guide. That one provided this chart:
GIven that info, we opted to plug the older CPAP's AC plug into the little 150W modified sine-wave inverter I keep in my electronics bag. That worked fine for the ten days we needed it. I suppose an argument could be made the inverter might cause problems over the longer run but we were comfortable with trying it given the manufacturer's documentation.
I guess my other point is there are many variables to consider-- like exactly what model the CPAP is, how it's used, what the settings are, etc. And the User Manual may not have the needed info... it may be in a separate 'battery guide' type of manual.
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