How Do I Dry Inside My CPAP Hose After Washing?

[Julie]

N O !

[ChicagoGranny]

Do you really need to clean inside of the hose?

In 3030, anthropologists will write this up as a quaint religious practice of an ancient people.

[zonker]

N O !

to emphasize-

HELL N O !

[lazarus]

Although some outer space aliens, much as in their so-called "sleep studies," still advocate the more complicated, controversial, and expensive 'bullet-and-probe' method:

The Lumin Bullet. . . . Insert the sanitizing probe into your CPAP hose and collapse the Bullet casing around the probe. The magnets in the Bullet will pick up the sanitizing probe. Guide it through the Bullet and in under two minutes the inside of your hose will be sanitized and ready for use immediately.--https://www.cpap.com/blog/need-know-cpap-cleaning/

Sounds painful.

[chunkyfrog]

Remember the image someone posted a few years ago?
They caught an earwig, dropped it into a hose, and did a horror photo shoot.
Probably. Pathetic twerps will do anything to get attention.
Should have given it a little mop, and put it to work.

[zonker]

Although some outer space aliens, much as in their so-called "sleep studies," still advocate the more complicated, controversial, and expensive 'bullet-and-probe' method:

The Lumin Bullet. . . . Insert the sanitizing probe into your CPAP hose and collapse the Bullet casing around the probe. The magnets in the Bullet will pick up the sanitizing probe. Guide it through the Bullet and in under two minutes the inside of your hose will be sanitized and ready for use immediately.--https://www.cpap.com/blog/need-know-cpap-cleaning/

Sounds painful.

depends upon what you wrap it around.

and hey! it's only a hundred bucks.

how have i managed to live this long without it?

[lynninnj]

Remember the image someone posted a few years ago?
They caught an earwig, dropped it into a hose, and did a horror photo shoot.
Probably. Pathetic twerps will do anything to get attention.
Should have given it a little mop, and put it to work.

I actually had an earwig in my nasal cushion.

Freaked me the fuq out so that whole summer I wrapped the entire machine in a drawstring veggie bag with a tight mesh.

That was our old place. Much better now.

Pretty sure it wasn’t me that posted photos tho. Was too busy freaking and killing at 11pm.

[chunkyfrog]

I found a dead silverfish in my water tank--once--many years ago.
Since it was already expired, I flushed it down the drain, but washed the tank really good.
As many times as ants have wandered onto the end table,
I am surprised I have never found ants inside anywhere. (knock on wood)

[Ebonyeyez]

I clean my hoses and equipment and have been doing so since I started treatment ~12 years ago. I clean once a week and I have yet to 'wear anything out'. I replace my nasal pillow and machine filter once a month and everything else gets swapped out once a year.

That said, I don't use anything to dry my hoses out, I do hang them up in my bedroom. I also empty my water reservoir (oh the horror), shake out the water, and with it open, I turn it upside down to dry.

BUT, if a person wanted to dry their hoses out, a battery-operated air pump, of the type used to inflate an air mattress, would be perfect. I have such a pump and the end of the CPAP air hose fits perfectly onto the pump fitting. The pump can be set to either blow or suck. (Comments from the peanut gallery are welcome)

I’m a year in and have read and heard soooo much in opinions on everything, in every kinda forum and blog site in a quest to educate myself.

Long story short, I understand where you’re coming from. I had the experience early in my game of rinsing, wiping, changing out whenever until…. that whenever time came around and I wiped my water chamber and kept getting pinkish/reddish marks on a paper towel I was using to clean. On further examination (holding the water chamber up to the light) I discovered pinkish/reddish fuzzy stuff in the corners of chamber. I concluded my machine settings, environment and slack cleaning habits probably all shared a blame in what I discovered growing in the chamber. That being said, I now follow a regiment very similiar to yours. So it comes down to doing what makes you comfortable.

[chunkyfrog]

As long as the hose is only washed right before use, there is no need to dry it out.
As noted before, there is little need to wash the hose at all, as it is closed to outside materials.

[Conrad]

Do any of you here know what particle size the typical CPAP machine filters are effective down to?

How about how well these filters seal in the machine? As in, look at the filter in your machine. Can anything get past the edges of the filter? Is 100% of the air being filtered?

How about the size of a virus or bacterium? How about the size of a mold spore?

While I don't know the answers to these questions, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that your CPAP machine is NOT a closed system or 100% effective at cleaning the air that you're breathing, and the air being filtered is NOT 100% free of some types of particles.

YMMV

[jimbud]

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that your CPAP machine is NOT a closed system or 100% effective at cleaning the air that you're breathing, and the air being filtered is NOT 100% free of some types of particles.

YMMV

Neither is the air one breathes ALL day long.

JPB

[chunkyfrog]

It's always something . . .

[Steerpike58]

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that your CPAP machine is NOT a closed system or 100% effective at cleaning the air that you're breathing, and the air being filtered is NOT 100% free of some types of particles.

YMMV

Neither is the air one breathes ALL day long.

JPB

Yes, but the air hose is a fairly enclosed system fed with heated, humidified air, which can be ideal for molds. I'm always amazed that my shower gets nasty black molds on the grout, despite the fact that my shower is full of soap and hot water, and I rinse it down and squeegee it every use. Molds are pretty miraculous organisms!

I would personally wash and rinse the hose once in a while and not worry at all about drying it, because any moisture left in the hose will simply join the humidified air being sent to the mask.

[ozij]

And I, on the other hand, am more fearful of mold settling in the static water sitting in valleys of my non-drying-hose-after-its-washed than I am of anything happening while the air is moving, and after Resmed's gentle blowing post-use had dried the hose properly.

Which is why - after realizing how long it takes for hose and mask to dry naturally - I rarely wash them.

If I do, DogSlobber's "use the mask test a number of times" is very helpful.