Beards with Respironics DreamWear Full Face Mask?

I understand the 'different strokes...' part of this therapy. Different equipment, adjustments, settings, responses...it's as varied as are the personalities and body types here. In that respect, the military attempts to find commonality to the extent possible to keep their inventories manageable. This was true in the case of gas masks. One size didn't fit all, but they learned a few pragmatic realities once they learned to make them available in at least three sizes. One of them was that facial hair had to be removed during operations where gas masks might have to be used. In garrison and on leave, no problem. But once on a ship or in a foxhole, one had to be clean-shaven. The reason is that those who had facial hair had more 'failures' in the gas chambers where we were obliged to test our equipment annually...along with our First Aid and field craft skills. We would be required to don our face masks and enter a chamber filled with CS gas, tear gas. With a particular flare for sadism, we would be taken to the gas chamber on foot...jogging...so as to raise a bit of a sweat. This would be especially true around our crotches and armpits (sorry if this is too much for some readers). When CS gas meets damp skin it BURNS...oh, how it burns. So, while your face mask might save you from burning lungs and nasal tissues, the gas still let you know of its nastiness elsewhere.

Once in the chamber, we would continue to jog in place or around the room in a circle to test the fit of our masks. It would be seconds before someone put up his/her hand and asked to leave the chamber...which they were immediately encouraged to do. After drying up, replacing their filter or tightening straps, they would be obliged to return inside and resume their test. If nothing else, this was to instill confidence in the efficacy of the masks.

That was a long way of saying that facial hair is likely to be a confounding factor in the efficacy of a mask of any kind that must cover one's mouth and hose at the same time and provide a reasonably good seal. Many is the service person who found out the hard way.

It did work with my beard. Yay for thick hair I guess?