Camping with a concentrator?

Hi all!

I have a Respironics EverFlo oxygen concentrator unit, and I am on 2.5L of O2 while I'm sleeping, because for some reason (and we don't know why) my O2 drops into the low to mid-80s when I go to sleep. I've had it chugging away next to my bed for 2 years now, and I'm pretty used to it.

However, we have several family camping trips planned this summer, starting in May, and two of them are at sites that don't have electricity. I've had some people tell me to just do the car battery + converter thing that a lot of CPAP users do, but I've also been told that you can't run an O2 concentrator on that setup. I've been looking at portable power supply units (the jump-starter kind) but they don't have the wattage, and they're expensive.

Does anyone have suggestions?

Liutgard wrote:Hi all!

I have a Respironics EverFlo oxygen concentrator unit, and I am on 2.5L of O2 while I'm sleeping, because for some reason (and we don't know why) my O2 drops into the low to mid-80s when I go to sleep. I've had it chugging away next to my bed for 2 years now, and I'm pretty used to it.

However, we have several family camping trips planned this summer, starting in May, and two of them are at sites that don't have electricity. I've had some people tell me to just do the car battery + converter thing that a lot of CPAP users do, but I've also been told that you can't run an O2 concentrator on that setup. I've been looking at portable power supply units (the jump-starter kind) but they don't have the wattage, and they're expensive.

Does anyone have suggestions?

sure you can, you just need a LOT of batteries and a big ass inverter.

I suggest oxygen tanks.

Like PR said....get some oxygen tanks...the portable kind like you would use if you went to the grocery story or something.
That way no power is needed at all.

Check with whomever you are getting your oxygen supplies from as to what they can offer maybe with a short term rental.
They come in various sizes.

My uncle camps a lot (gold hunter) since he retired. He uses O2 at night, but not a cpap. I don't know much about O2, but I do know that he had to buy a portable (and lots of batteries) to be able to go off grid. He can justify the cost since he does it regularly. But one or two nights a year? When I looked at standard oxygen concentrators, it looks to me like they will not work with batteries at all because they require too much juice (Continuous flow).

Now, another thing I noticed from another thread was that you are supposed to use continuous oxygen with a cpap, not the pulse dose. When you are comparing portable oxygen concentrators, they always list the pulse battery life rather than continuous. My uncle uses the pulse, BUT, as I said, he does not use a cpap so that works for him.

Hi, my husband uses an o2 concentrator with his cpap.
We are looking at doing RV traveling (full time at some point, a 10 day trip without any electrical source coming up in Jan).

I am right now researching O2 Concentrators used on batteries - but I have the 12V RV batteries I can use so different than camping with no RV.

We have tent camped with the CPAP but not since we got the O2 Concentrator.
FYI, fire stations, hosts at campgrounds, and others will gladly let you charge your batteries you use for your cpap / o2 concentrator, so when we tent camped even though the battery should have lasted several nights we charged it with the camp hosts daily (they had regular 120V electrical, we just hooked it up on the front porch as we headed out for the morning and picked it up in the late afternoon/evening when we got back).

I have been told an o2 concentrator uses a lot more than a Cpap. I am still researching that and will do a post soon, but I am guessing 2-3 times as much as a cpap for a smaller portable o2 concentrator (not the huge home units).

To figure out what you need and the size of battery, first get a DC adapter for your O2 Concentrator and test it out to see how long it lasts or get some devices to measure usage (Capnloki has listed some he has used).
Or call the company and ask what it is for your setting (much harder than it seems it would be based on my last couple of days - you have to get to an engineer not the people who answer the phone).
Tell them what you are doing, one model the engineer said that their machine needs 12 volt batteries to run (degrades at 11 something and shuts off before it gets as low as 10), so they say while they will sell you a DC12 adapter do not use their machine that way, use an inverter instead (more issues come up if you do this).

Then make sure you have a battery to get you through the night (with room to spare) and a place to charge it daily or enough batteries to get you though the entire time you will be gone.

Liutgard wrote:Hi all!

I have a Respironics EverFlo oxygen concentrator unit, and I am on 2.5L of O2 while I'm sleeping, because for some reason (and we don't know why) my O2 drops into the low to mid-80s when I go to sleep. I've had it chugging away next to my bed for 2 years now, and I'm pretty used to it.

However, we have several family camping trips planned this summer, starting in May, and two of them are at sites that don't have electricity. I've had some people tell me to just do the car battery + converter thing that a lot of CPAP users do, but I've also been told that you can't run an O2 concentrator on that setup. I've been looking at portable power supply units (the jump-starter kind) but they don't have the wattage, and they're expensive.

Does anyone have suggestions?

First of all, using a car battery plus inverter for a cpap is a bad idea - a deep discharge will permanently degrade the battery - if its already old there's a fair chance it won't start the car in the morning. It the very least, get a proper deep cycle battery, sized for your device. Your O2 concentrator uses much more power than a cpap and at the very least will require a sizable battery to run a full night - as I read the specs it would actually take several large marine batteries!

Portable concentrators can be rented for reasonable prices - several hundred a week, but you'll have to carefully review the battery use. These are intended for short airline travel, so multinight use probably needs bigger batteries. An O2 tank is probably the cheapest solution, you'll have to review your needs but an m90 might last two nights. These can be rented for under $100, or even purchased for about $250. I assume they can be fill with your equipment.

Please ignore the advice to forego the camping trip - if this is important to you there are certainly solutions.

I am still doing checking, but so far it looks like the new (on the market 4-5 years now), smaller o2 Concentrators which go up to 3 liters continuous, use about 9-10 amps each hour at the 3 liter level. That adds for a full nights sleep and is a big difference than the 5-10 amps for the entire night that cpaps need that CapnLoki has talked.
I agree with CapnLoki adding an inverter to the o2 concentrator - battery combination makes no sense - it would just uses battery up quicker.

Since we will be RVing without power (no other choice acceptable for us), likely we will be creating a small bank of batteries just for the O2 concentrator to run off directly with a DC power cord and charging them every day or two with the generator / solar. And use the cpap on the RV coach/house battery bank since it is a much smaller drain.

I expect to finish my research by tomorrow and will do a post with full information sometime after that.

If allowed, use a generator. Honda eu2000i is very quiet. Run a 50ft extension cord or more so you dont breathe that nasty exhaust. I have both concentrators and the honda generator. I would rather sleep with the noise of the generator to give you an idea how quiet it is. Technically it is louder than a concentrator but a consistent hum. They are expensive ($900) but it is because they are the quietest on the market.