The Living in Your Car Podcast
The Living in Your Car Podcast
Powering Your CPAP Machine in a Vehicle for Road Trips / CarLife / SUVLife / VanLife
Ever wonder how you can get a good night's sleep while living off-grid with a CPAP machine? Join me, Elizabeth Off-Grid, for an enlightening journey into the world of powering CPAP machines in vehicles. We dive into the nuts and bolts of ensuring your crucial medical device never runs out of juice while on the go, discussing the three essential components - the draw, storage, and generation. Listen in as we explore the cost-effective value of investing in a new CPAP, such as the travel-friendly ResMed AirMini with its innovative humidification system.
But that's not all. We also delve into the power of a 12-volt plug and why it might just become your best companion for CPAP travel. Learn about the merit of investing in a dedicated battery and the diverse ways to generate power while living in your car. From speedy charging power stations to alternative charging options, we cover it all. And hey, don't forget to subscribe and join the conversation. Let’s hit the road together, ensuring a restful sleep, no matter where you are.
Join us on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/@elizabethoffgrid
Hi, this is Elizabeth Off-Grid, and you are listening to the Living in your Car podcast, where we talk about all aspects of living in a car, suv, pickup or minivan, whether you're a full-time nomad, temporarily staying in a vehicle until you get life figured out or just going on a road trip, join us for all kinds of topics that apply to you. Today, we're going to talk about CPAP. So living in a car with a CPAP means you have to power the CPAP, which is really the biggest issue with having a CPAP, and this is true if you're in a car or a van or an RV. It actually is a bit of an issue because CPAPs use a lot of electricity. Why is that? Well, they have the two things that require a lot of electricity. One is they have a fan and that all CPAPs are going to have a fan, because they're literally blowing air inside your nose or your mouth or both. The second reason is because of heat. Anything that generates heat is going to be one of the most high power uses of anything that you have besides an air conditioner, which in some ways, you can generate. It's taking away heat. So it's kind of the same thing in a lot of ways Now, a lot of times when someone has a CPAP for sleep apnea, they approach this from the perspective of here's the CPAP I have, what do I need to power that?
Speaker 1:And I'm not saying that that may be what you need to do, okay, but I think it's more important to kind of start from the beginning, as opposed to just looking at what you have, because it may make more sense to do it in a different way. So what am I talking about? Anytime you have any electrical thing, there are three components. There is the electrical thing. That is the draw. How much power does it need? A lot of times, people are just thinking about how many watts does it need? So they want to get an inverter that runs it, but it's actually more than that. How much power does it require over time? This is another reason a CPAP is a big deal, because you don't use a CPAP for 30 seconds. This isn't a microwave. This isn't something you use for a couple of minutes to blow dry your hair. This is something that you're going to have on for six, seven, eight, nine hours. That is a lot of power. Second aspect is how much storage do you need? So this is going to be the electrical system that you have, whether it is a specific power bank kind of thing, whether it is something made for a CPAP, whether it is a battery like the one I have. It is going to both be plugs for you to plug your CPAP in and it is also also going to be storage.
Speaker 1:The third aspect is generation. How are you going to generate power? So we're talking about solar, a generator, your car, which is actually a generator if it's gas or electric. We're talking about plugging in the battery and charging it at home or charging it in a library or wherever else. The idea is you have to generate power. So you're using power, you're storing it and you're generating. And the reason I think it's important to start with all these three things is because the more power you need, then the more expensive these other things are. So when you're thinking about whether or not you should use your current CPAP or get a new one and just buy one out of pocket, you may actually save money buying one out of pocket, even though they're super, super expensive, because the battery you'd have to buy, the power generation you have to do, would be so expensive. You end up saving money and you probably are going to have much fewer difficulties.
Speaker 1:So what did I do in my specific case? Okay, so I used to have a CPAP that actually my CPAP has never been covered by my insurance, anyway, that's the whole thing. But I live in the United States, where you can have a medical device that you need to breathe and it's not covered by insurance. So mine wasn't covered by insurance. But I had one that was under that big, huge giant recall that probably most CPAP people know about and it wasn't getting replaced. It took them two years eventually to replace it and I was like, look, I am not going to just wait for them to replace it, I'm going to buy a new one. And the reason that's a really important is because I actually did this a while ago.
Speaker 1:I had tried to go camping with my old CPAP. No-transcript was that while I could have a battery that would keep it running all night, I couldn't do that and actually use the humidification. Because that's the thing with the CPAP Is, your CPAP has the blower and that requires a fair amount of electricity, but the humidification is heating up a little heat plate that heats up water to create the humidity. This is the thing that requires so much power and the battery I had would only last like half the night if I had the humidification on. So I would have to charge the medication, which would really irritate my nose and my sinuses and I would have all kinds of problems, which wasn't very helpful. And also it could that battery that I had, which I don't even have with me because I don't use it anymore. It's my backup battery that's in my storage. That battery just barely ran it for one night without humidification.
Speaker 1:So, knowing that, knowing that I was going to be doing more, since I traveling, potentially live in a vehicle when I shopped for a new CPAP, I was looking for something specifically that was not going to require a lot of power and how it was going to do that was by having an alternative form of humidification. So what did I get? And I'm actually going to get my CPAP out right now. It's a little bad. I got that resmed the little air mini. This little air mini is meant for travel and it's meant for people to be able to bring it on a plane, to be able to stick it in your bag and have it in a hotel, etc. But it has an alternative form of humidification where it has this little disc that you stick in at your place each month and it like uses your own breath to create humidity, which is kind of sounds disgusting, but that's what it does.
Speaker 1:Now I'm going to be honest with you. This took time to get used to. Okay, this took not as long as to get used to the CPAP originally, because that took a long time, but I mean it was a few days where I was a bit irritated. However, I adapted and it was fine. That may not be true for you I'm sure some people will not adapt right, because everybody is different, but I was able to adapt after a few days and now it's totally fine.
Speaker 1:It does mean that there's one more thing you have to buy for your CPAP. This thing, however, you don't have to buy the humidification stuff. So I mean, I think it's it actually ends up being cheaper in the end. Now, this I had to buy. I mean there was no sale, no discount, but if you usually go to all the different websites like I got mine from CPAPcom there'll be discounts on the regular. So when I bought it was like a thousand bucks, but usually you can get it for one or $200 or more off that price and not have to pay full price. Now they do have adapters. You can use your current mask, but then you don't have this, so you have to get a new mask if you want to use this. That's what it looks like to me. So the reason I did that was because my old CPAP was using like almost 10 amps an hour. This uses less than one, 10 times less, so obviously I can run it for a lot, lot longer with the same power, and that was the kicker for me.
Speaker 1:The other aspect is how are you going to power it? I mean literally what the cord is going to be. So for CPAPs they come with the cord that you plug into the wall. Okay, that's AC, and if you use that AC cord, you're going to have to use an inverter on your power bank or whatever you're using. That requires more electricity because it gives off heat, because it required electricity just to run that, to change the DC power to AC power, and because it may be turning on a fan. All those things require a lot of power that you're kind of just wasting. I mean, it's not as much as the CPAP, of course, but it's like a power leak and you could think of it as.
Speaker 1:However, if you get a 12 volt plug, then you won't have to power the inverter. In theory, it actually should also be more efficient because you're going straight from 12 volt to 12 volt, dc to DC. You're not. You're going straight from DC to DC. You're not having to convert it into AC and then convert it back into DC, because that's you're going to lose something every time they convert them. Now the one thing is with the Rizmed Air Mini, it actually comes with a brick for the 12 volt, which makes me wonder, like if it's converting actually twice things converting here and that's converting it. I don't, I don't really understand how the guts are in here, because it is so small, because the AC plug doesn't have a brick, which makes me very suspicious. However, because it's not running the inverter on my power bank, it uses less electricity overall.
Speaker 1:So let's talk about Power Bank. So what Power Bank you need really depends upon how long you're going to be out in the world. You know, are you the kind of person who's going to only use this in an emergency for one night? Are you going to be going camping for one night? Are you going to be out for weeks at a time? So what I have this is the EcoFlow River 2. Okay, I've had some troubles with this, so I'm not necessarily saying you should get EcoFlow River 2. However, I'm going to tell you what the specs are of this. Okay, so the capacity for this is 256 watt hours. Okay, they all the different Power Banks. Don't talk about amps, talk about watt hours, okay, whatever. It's very annoying to me, but because watt hours and all that depends on how many volts you are talking about, where our amps would actually be independent of that. But I'm not changing that whole system.
Speaker 1:So the EcoFlow it has. You can have a regular plug or 12 volt plug. But here's the thing if I plug it into the regular plug, it's going to run the inverter, it's going to run the fan, it's running all these extra things. If you pay the extra whatever $50, $70 to get the 12 volt, then you can plug it in here and it doesn't have to run that thing. It saves so much.
Speaker 1:So this thing, with my current CPAP and with this 256 watt hour capacity, I can run for at least four nights, if not five. But it really depends on how many hours each night, because sometimes I'll sleep for six or seven hours, sometimes I sleep for eight, so it's a bit iffy, but I can count on four. So that is really important for me, so I can go camping somewhere and even if it's cloudy, even if I don't drive my car, I'm good. To be honest, I actually charge this almost every day back up to 100, and I don't try to even let it get lower than that, but I have the option, which is that's what the really important thing is for me. Now, this battery I don't use for anything else. I don't also charge my phone. I don't also charge my laptop. I have a different battery for that.
Speaker 1:I personally think you should have a dedicated battery for your CPAP. Now, there are people who get actual CPAP batteries. I don't have one of those, and the reason I didn't get that is because I wanted something that I actually was originally planning on having a battery that I use for the things. That's part of the reason I got that. Those batteries, I think, are much. They're definitely much smaller and they're lighter than this. I might get one of those for backpacking, right. So if you're doing backpacking, you're gonna need a much smaller setup, but I don't know how many nights they are, cause you have to look at what is the watt hours or the amps or whatever it is, what is the storage capacity of it, and see how that matches up.
Speaker 1:The thing is is that this is was I don't know like 200 something dollars. You can get very reasonably priced power stations at this level. Once you start getting more than this, they become a lot more expensive quickly. And that's what I mean is, if you have a you're the current CPAP you're gonna have to get a much bigger power bank, and the reason is is that, while my CPAP can run off this for four to five days, my old one is this would only give me not even one night if I ran with humidifier. So I would have to get a much bigger power bank and, as we're going to talk about in a second, I have to charge it every single day and it would still just give me one or two nights. So that's why I think the most important thing you can do is buy some kind of CPAP that's for travel, because it's just going to use less power, and that one that I got I got because it had the kind of weird pseudo-humanification thing.
Speaker 1:So the third thing is generation. How are we going to generate power. So another great thing about these power banks is that the current newest models of these power stations you can plug them into a wall, an AC plug, and they will charge in about an hour. Okay, this will charge to 80% in an hour and then it takes another 20, 30 minutes to charge the last, because the last party is kind of a slow charge. It is so fast charging and there's all kinds of ones out on the market now when I bought this, this is one of the only two ones that were like it. Now that they that's kind of now become the standard is to be able to charge in about an hour, that is amazing. Also need to look at how long will it charge with solar, how long will it charge with the car, because some of them will be like a lot longer than others because they pull different amounts of power and are rated for different solar panels. So I have a solar panel.
Speaker 1:I rarely use it because I only use it when I'm like camping and I'm not going to move my car and it actually is sunny enough To use it. I'm not going to use it when I'm parked in a parking lot, like this right, and that's to have on a Civic. I'm not putting solar on the roof. It just isn't very workable and a bit 100% not be stealth. The main way I charge it is my car. So there is a 12 volt plug that I plug into my car and if I charge it every day it only uses it goes down to about 83% at night 82 to 83% at night. So if I plug it in it takes about 15 to 20 minutes to charge that right back up. I'm always going to drive around 15 to 20 minutes and so I'm literally like camping somewhere and not driving anywhere and it charges up. Fine, and I'm good If I'm not moving and I'm camping somewhere and I'm not going anywhere at all and there's no like tristy for me to plug it in Like I'm at a hotel or something like that, then I may go a couple nights and let it go down and then I just have to charge it while driving around.
Speaker 1:That is what I do most of the time, casionally. I do take it in somewhere and plug it in. The one problem about this specific one is that the fan kicks on when you plug it in. It does the super fast charging and the fan is loud. That is not true about all batteries, okay, but that is true about this one. So it's kind of weird. If I do that in a quiet place like a library, it's really loud and I'm just not comfortable with doing it. I have done it a couple times, but it's not really my thing.
Speaker 1:However, you can charge it at anywhere that you can plug something in. You can charge it when you go to your friend's house. Obviously, if you aren't living your car, you're just going on road trips, you can charge it at home, okay. So this is really the thing that I'm obviously trying to communicate is you have to look at your CPAP and figure out how much power does it need? This isn't just from the manual. So the manual is going to say, oh, it needs X number of watts. That's really just what this plug is rated for. Okay, that's how much power can go in without it disintegrating, or what. Actually it probably has fuses in here without the fuses going off. That's how much power it actually uses. There are these little meters you can get that. You can buy from Amazon whatever that you plug into the wall and you can plug your device into it and see how much power it draws over the course of the night, because one of the things is is that it doesn't.
Speaker 1:It's a CPAP. It's not kicking on constantly in this. You know, like it, if you use humidification, the humidification comes and goes, so how much power it uses is going to be it depends on your personal situation, right In every seat, and you might have a completely different kind of CPAP and you may, you know, if you have. There are multiple different kinds of therapy that people need, so you need to find out how much power does it need and then test it out. I recommend getting a battery.
Speaker 1:Whatever battery you get, it'll typically have at least a 30 day return period. You use this over those 30 days and see if it's enough. Use it at home in your apartment or house or whatever, and see if it's enough for your current CPAP during that window return time and then send it back. It's not going to be enough and then you can get something else. Okay, so that's my biggest recommendation Test to see how much power your current CPAP uses and decide if you have the budget to get a different one or if that even would work for you in your particular medical situation, and then buy a battery and actually test it out in your real conditions and see if it lasts and for enough nights for your purposes, and then really generating power with whether or not you use solar, whether or not you use your car, whether or not you plug it in, really depends upon how you're traveling, and everybody travels in a little bit different way.
Speaker 1:Again, this is Elizabeth off grid, and thank you so much for watching or listening, depending upon where you are watching or listening this podcast. Please subscribe, if you have not already, either to the YouTube channel or to the podcast, and the podcast that will be on all the places podcasts are located. I'll talk to you next time. Bye, bye.