[This is for nerds who like technical details. I’m not mocking anyone, I love technical stuff. I own and enjoy a 3d printer! Also it’s for the CPAP people who care about such details and want something other than an ad from a company. These are bits of “empirical evidence” about CPAP camping.]
On my last campout (a simple overnight with nothing interesting except crashing off my tailgate), I tried a new CPAP “setup”.
Here’s my baseline: On earlier campouts, the enormous battery pack has only had enough juice for 2 or 3 nights. I’d also inadvertently run humid air through a hose in a cold tent and created an awful situation called “rainout”.
This time I had it figured out!
I have a cigarette lighter power supply cord for the CPAP. I plugged that in to my battery pack. Now the DC battery was directly supplying the DC draw. Skipping the AC inverter makes things more efficient.
I also bought a cheap ($25?) “side cover”. It “replaces” the water chamber in my CPAP. (This is not a travel CPAP, it’s one meant for a house. It has a chamber where you add distilled water. The water is heated to manage the hose air’s humidity for your comfort.) The “side cover” eliminates that. It also tells the CPAP the chamber is absent. The CPAP responds by turning off the reservoir heater. Eliminating the heater removes a lot of the battery draw.
I set the heated hose to “off”. That also cut my CPAP’s power use dramatically.
One last “ace in the hole” was a “hose cover”. It’s a simple fabric insulating tube that covers the hose. I bought it from Amazon. It’s cheap and works great! The night got chill but the hose was insulated and thus had no condensation. Unpleasant “rainout” was avoided.
As for sleep, I conked out immediately. Part of that was being exhausted from “near injury”, the rest was my comfy Teton XXL cot and mattress.
The CPAP worked well. It ran it all night (and charged a phone) and still had 91% on the battery at dawn! Turning off the humidity chamber, turning off the heated hose, insulating the hose, and running DC to DC power made a HUGE difference in the CPAP’s draw. I went from 2-3 days per charge to something like 9-10 days. Big difference!
With the minor tweaks I may try a much smaller (motorcycle saddlebag sized!) battery, or maybe I just won’t spend the money yet. I’ll try a motorcycle campout with extension cord eventually. That might work well enough for the short term.
One caveat, humidity and heating systems aren’t pointless. I disabled them but I suspect they really do matter. Travel CPAPs have various humidity solutions and it’s not the same as my non-travel CPAP with NO humidity solution. In the morning, I could feel the difference. It was mild but I felt it.
I think my approach is safe for a few days while camping (especially in a humid climate) but I recommend you don’t push it too far. I’m sure sleep doctors have opinions more informed than mine. Lungs matter, pay attention to them! Don’t let some rando on the internet talk you into stupid shit!
Anyway, it was a good time (aside from the tailgate attack). The smoke and weather has once again turned against me but I’ll probably be out there again when the cool clear air comes back.
A.C.