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Going hunting at an outfitter with my dad and a couple of buddies for moose this fall here in Qc.

My dad has a CPAP machine ( he has apnea ), Anyways, we`re staying at an outpost camp with now power.

Question is, how would I go about rigging up say a marine battery and stuff to power this?

I would contact the manufacturer and see what the power needs and options are. A lot of people with CPAP machines travel, you won't be the first person with this question.

A quick google using the make and model of the cpap and inverter should provide a list of vendors. Just remember to also bring a battery charger as well.

Or call to the vendor that he got it from, they will also have BPS C 100 systems, which is a lithium ion battery , you can leave it plugged into the wall to charge the battery when there is power available and when the power shuts off it switches over to battery. These are not cheap. About the price of good trolling battery and high quality inverter combined. But a lot lighter to pack and carry.

You'd think they'd have a portable version that runs of D cell batteries. Might be cheaper to look into a battery pack or even a small generator. Sucks to lug extra gear, but it's a compromise you'll be willing to make once you're on youu 3rd sleepless night. Lol

I'd go with a deep cycle marine battery and a power inverter. You can charge up the battery off a vehicle if it runs low.

Cheers Grizz,

Thanks for the replies gents.

I`ll talk it over with the old man and see what he thinks!!

Grizz has the right idea, two batteries might be a good plan. my cpap works well with an inverter....... make sure you get a good quality one with plenty of power.

cornplanter2 wrote:Grizz has the right idea, two batteries might be a good plan. my cpap works well with an inverter....... make sure you get a good quality one with plenty of power.

Exactly. Don't know much about those cpap machines but a poor quality inverter that doesn't have a nice clean signal might cause problems.

Cheers

I have good news and bad...

I was asked to look into this exact same question a few weeks ago as my company makes portable power products for the military. I was able to get the specs for the CPAP and found they use a LOT more power than you would expect.

The GOOD news is that most of them actually have a "DC Voltage" input on them, so you don't need an inverter, you just need to hack together a power cord. In the case of the exact model I was asked to look at, it had a 24V input, so two marine batteries in series would power it directly, saving the power that would be lost in the inverter.

Here is a copy of the email with some quick power calculations:
_____________________________________________________________________________

For this CPAP Machine:
http://www.resmed.com/us/en/consumer/pr ... r-her.html

This CPAP machine can use 24V input, so you don’t actually need an inverter, it could run directly from our military batteries or from two marine batteries.
The unit draws a peak of 100 watts if you have the humidifier on. The manufacturer suggests that when running from batteries you turn off the humidifier (which is really not needed in summer anyway, especially outdoors) which lowers power to 50 watts.

Each of our batteries contains 150 watt-hours of energy, so you would get about 3 hours per battery, you can chain them together, so 3 batteries will give you 9 hours.

If you do decide to try this with a marine lead-acid battery and inverter, the battery you would need should have a rating of “100 Minutes Reserve Capacity” (this is the rating that they use on marine batteries). That will give you about 8 hours of CPAP operating time on a brand new battery. For example, this battery at Canadian Tire would be appropriate http://www.canadiantire.ca/en/pdp/group ... ZfX7vlVi1g

Reserve Capacity on lead-acid is rated based on a load of 300 watts, so if the CPAP is being operated at 50 watts, then you will get 6 times more run-time (approximately, and the number goes down with an inverter, so 100 minutes becomes 600 minutes or 10 hours, then discount that by perhaps 15-20% for the inverter losses).

The lead acid battery is about 50 pounds, plus the weight of the inverter.

Our batteries are about 8 pounds total (for all three) yet have the same energy, so you can see why soldiers love them.

One last word, don’t try running your machine off the cigarette lighter of your car. A car battery doesn’t have nearly enough energy to keep the machine running all night. You would probably only get 3-4 hours from the car and it wouldn’t start in the morning ?

Might be easier to leave him home.

All jokes aside, we had to tell a guy we didnt have a spot for him at hunt camp this fall and it was due to his snoring.

I know about the snoring, been there done that, but, sleep apnea will cause you to stop breathing which is hard on the heart and the rest of the body. If he really wants to go hunting there is ways to make the cpap work as the previous posters have said. Good luck.

Again, thanks for all the info guys. Much appreciated.

I think he`s going to try the CPAP with a marine battery and inverter before we head up there to see how it works. I`ll post results as they become available.