Midnight... There's a monsoon raging outside, but we're sound asleep... until the doggone power went out again. It shut down the fans and my CPAP machine. It was raging too much outside for me to go outside and fire up the genny, so we tried to make do. Five hours of restless, poor sleep later, the alarm clock goes off and I went outside to fire it up to get the hot water and well pump ready for showers. Sure enough, the power came back on just a couple minutes later.
I really need to figure out another way to run my CPAP without firing up the generator in the middle of a storm. I'm thinking either a deep cycle marine battery
with an inverter
, or a jump box such as the Wagen Power Dome EX
. Some reviews are great, some are awful, so it looks kind of hit or miss as to the quality of each individual unit. I think I could probably get three or so hours of CPAP power off of it, which would at least get me a little good sleep (and let my wife get some good sleep without me rattling the plaster down with my snoring).Any body out there have a similar situation?
If you get a deep cycle you can use it for your HAM radio too! :)
ReplyDeletePuritan Bennett GoodKnight 420 travel series has a battery pack -- made for people who like to camp/backpack. The battery pack is still available at CPAP.com, but the travel CPAP unit is officially discontinued, so you may need to try eBay. I use the travel one just because it is small and good for travel, but I never got the battery pack. With this set-up, at least you can sleep a night or two before you need to recharge the Li battery. They may have a newer replacement for the whole set up, as the 420 series has been around for about 6 years. URL for the battery pack is:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.cpap.com/productpage/CPAP.com-Battery-Kit-GoodKnight-420-Series.html
PS to previous post. Just found a customer review on the web. Apparently the battery pack works for a couple of weeks between recharges.
ReplyDeleteFunny you should bring this up. I have been thinking about how to power mine after the hurricane and the CA blackout. I need to do some research and work on a few things. I am a little tired this morning due to not using mine last night. I fell asleep without putting it on after a late night. The sluggishness is another reminder of why I need it. I will keep you posted!
ReplyDeleteRobo
i use two 45watt sets from harbor freight with 4 deepcycle 12v's from sams, a xantrex controller and no name inverter from amazon. runs all the small stuff indef.on sale and with the 20% off coupon in the paper the sets run 160 or so. add batts as you can afford. added xantrex when it became expensive if i fried the batts. i ran a cabin on one set and one batt, in the summer of course, with 12v water pumps and lights/tv. i'm so sold, i have 4 more sets in the attic in case, bought on sale 139 a piece......much cheaper than buying a new house when your genny shorts while you sleep, or your angry neighbor snaps.........good luck.
ReplyDeleteThanks for all the feedback!
ReplyDeleteCarolyn - One of these days I'll get HAM'ed up :)
Anonymous - That's very interesting, I'll have to look up a unit like that
ROBO - I responded to your email - sounds good!
RiverRider - A friend used those Harbor Freight panels to run his beer fridge on the patio with good results - As far as the snapping neighbor, did you catch the story out of San Diego today? I'll link to it in today's post - luckily, I live far enough away, my neighbor can't hear my generator, and I can't hear his.
I had good luck during Irene's blackout running small items off a deep-cycle marine battery (from BassPro Shops) when the genset was off. But because these items included battery chargers and other "sensitive" electronics, I used my pure sine wave inverter which is kind of small (300 watt) instead of my bigger modified sine wave inverter (3500 watt).
ReplyDeleteYour CPAP might require very "clean" power to work properly, or at all, so be sure to check before you try to run it off a garden-variety modified sine wave inverter. Bad power might void the warranty, or even kill it outright.
Oh, and if the power draw is too great to last all night with just one battery, get two and hook them together in parallel with size 2/0 interconnect cables. On sale, I think I paid about $99 or so for each battery, so it won't exactly break the bank and besides, how much is it worth to keep The Lovely Spousal Unit (TLSU) happy?