WATER COMING UP IN TUBE

What would make the water in my machine come into my hose and up into my face? when it start it was water spot in the tube but then two night ago it woke me
up my face and my sheet were wet so I jerk off mask. don't know why I made sure that I don't over fill my tank so I don't know what going on. hope someone can help out
thanks, D.MOORE

Condensation is happening in the hose and/or mask.
Commonly called rain out.

See posts number 2 and 3 here in this thread for your options on how to prevent it.

http://www.cpaptalk.com/viewtopic/t9403 ... -road.html

But for right now, be sure your machine's is situated lower than your mattress so the water will run back to it and not to you.

"But for right now, be sure your machine's is situated lower than your mattress so the water will run back to it and not to you."

I keep on seeing this recommendation & it still makes no sense to me. The water is due to condensation, which will occur all along the tubing. The tubing from the machine to the head is either:

1) Supported above - in which case, condensation taking place between the support point & the headgear will go towards the face no matter whether the machine is above or below the mattress

Or

2) Drooping below the level of the mattress - in which case, the condensation will head to the low point in the tubing.

In neither situation, will the machine being above or below the mattress level make any difference.

Am I missing something basic here?

mpeg2 wrote: ↑

Sat Jan 14, 2023 8:13 am

Am I missing something basic here?

Depending on where the condensation is happening at the idea with the machine placement lower than mattress is so that any water that has condensed can maybe run back down the hose and into the water chamber. Let gravity help out.
For years and years that was a main idea and sometimes it did help....and it was about all a person could do anyway.
There were no heated hoses like there are now and hose cozies weren't common (and sometimes didn't help enough anyway).

Unfortunately the water doesn't/can't always drain downward for any number of reasons.
Type of mask used or even just using some sort of hose hanger for hose management can prevent water from letting gravity help out.
Water can't run uphill...simply can't no matter where the machine placement is.

My own personal experience with condensation in the mask or hose has made me abandon the "put the machine on the floor" idea because when I look at my mask and my hose and the way the hose attaches to the machine.....it's a poor idea and never worked for me.

Physics is causing the condensation and a better choice IMHO is to let Physics help prevent it in the first place.

Pugsy: Thanks - makes a lot of sense to me. Physics/Thermodynamics determine what will happen & its best to work with them rather than against.

I'll simply continue to put my machine on a convenient stand next to the bed - I have a heated hose & have experienced rainout maybe twice in the 5 months I've been doing this CPAP thing (I'm sort of a newbie, but feel lucky that I haven't had some of the issues I've been reading about here).

mpeg2 wrote: ↑

Sat Jan 14, 2023 8:51 am

Pugsy: Thanks - makes a lot of sense to me. Physics/Thermodynamics determine what will happen & its best to work with them rather than against.

I'll simply continue to put my machine on a convenient stand next to the bed - I have a heated hose & have experienced rainout maybe twice in the 5 months I've been doing this CPAP thing (I'm sort of a newbie, but feel lucky that I haven't had some of the issues I've been reading about here).

My own cpap therapy pre-dates integrated heated hoses since I started cpap in 2009. The only heated hose at the time readily available (if you can call it "readily" ) was the Aussie heated hose. A stand alone heated hose that cost about $150 (plus shipping) and had to be ordered from Australia for the most part. There was one US seller who imported the Aussie hose and was sold out most of the time.
Then we had the stand alone Hybernite heated hose for about half the price of the Aussie heated hose.
They helped to some extent but were far from perfect especially when the condensation was happening at the mask level or in any short hose that a mask might use.

My own personal preference is for a cold bedroom and maximum humidity and some sort of nasal mask that always seemed to use a short hose.....prime recipe for lots of condensation happening. I have tons of experience with rain out ranging from cold showers out the vent holes to a freight train running down the hose.
Even with the new integrated heated hoses at max temp it isn't always enough but it is better than "put the machine on the floor" advice.
I have had bad rain out (freight train noise) and got up and held the hose totally vertical and it just didn't drain enough to stop the freight train. Gravity didn't do a good job.

I want to add to Pugsy's comments.

Like Pugsy, my nose likes a lot of humidity. And I and my husband like a cool-cold bedroom (thermostat is set at 61F at night and our bedroom's heating vents are closed during the winter.) And I use nasal pillows masks with so-called "short hoses" that run between the main hose and the nasal pillows themselves. And I started CPAP just before heated hoses became a common option. Unlike Pugsy, I don't have my hose temperature set anywhere close to its maximum setting specifically because I dislike the feeling of sleeping in a swamp that is caused by having air that is too warm and too moist coming through my hose. My hose temp is set for a few degrees above the room temperature right now. I can't recall if it's at 65F or 67F, but setting it at 70F was too warm for me.

So I've dealt with rain out problems, but mine have never been as extreme as a lot of people's problems are. Why? I don't really know. I do know that I've always had my hoses (both the long one and they short one) inside hose cozies---more because I can't stand the plastic feel of the hose than as a rainout preventative measure. And I've always routed the hose under the bedcovers and next to my body. I also tend to sleep with my head under the covers---this is a habit that predates my using CPAP. I do make sure the mask vents have a pocket of air to vent into. We also have a whole-house humidifier attached to our heater and so the ambient relative humidity in our house (and bedroom) is not bone-dry in the winter time. Because the ambient air is already relatively moist, the CPAP's doesn't need to add as much total water vapor to the air and this may also help keep the air in the hose from becoming supersaturated and hence prone to condensation.

There are two kinds of rainout that I deal with on a pretty regular basis: Rainout in the pillows themselves, and rainout that collects in the lowest point of the hose.

Rainout in my hose actually is pretty easy to deal with by simply holding the hose up and letting it run back towards the machine even though I am using a Resmed AirCurve 10 VAuto and my heated hose has the coupler with the 90-degree elbow at the machine end. In my case this trick works because the rainout is condensing in the short stretch of hose between the machine and where the hose goes under the covers. There is typically a low spot where the hose hangs down below both the mattress and the machine, and that's where the rainout collects. Once there's as little as a teaspoon of water in that part of the hose, the freight-train wheezing in time with my breathing starts, and then it's only a matter of time before it wakes me (or my husband) up. As I said before, when this happens, pulling the hose up to eliminate the low spot allows that teaspoon of water to run back towards the machine.

If water is condensing throughout the main hose, however, and the hose is mostly horizontal, the droplets of condensation may never coalesce into big enough drops for gravity to cause them to run downhill. The reason is water tension and it's the same reason that fog droplets that condense on a bathroom mirror don't automatically run down to the bottom of the mirror. When a droplet is really small, the water tension holding the droplet together is also enough to cause the droplet to cling to whatever surface it is on. Only when the droplet grows large enough does the water tension become overtaken by the force of gravity and the drop runs down hill.

Water condensation in the mask itself has two sources: The added humidity from the CPAP that is coming through the hose and the added humidity from your own exhalations. Your exhalations are also at close to body temperature, and 95F air is capable of holding a lot more humidity than 80F or 70F degree air. If the air in the mask is substantially below body temperature, the result can be significant condensation inside the mask and a very wet nose. If you are using a mask that connects directly to a heated hose, cranking the hose temperature up to its maximum may help since that will minimize the difference in air temperature between the air you are exhaling and the air coming in from the hose. If you are using a mask that has a small hose that runs between the mask and the main hose, the air temperature can drop enough during the time the air is in the short hose to aggravate the rainout. Putting a hose cozy on the short hose may help. Running the short hose along your body may help. If you are using nasal pillows, a pillow cozy from Padacheek may help. But in spite of all those things, you can still wind up with a wet nose.

For me, there have been times where I've had to keep a cloth hanky either in my hand while sleeping or on my bedside table: When I wake up feeling like the area around my nostrils is getting too wet, I'll pull the mask off my nose just enough to give both the nostrils and the nasal pillow cones a good swipe to try to dry things out. That usually is enough for me. But there have been a few occasions when the rainout in the pillows combined with my natural tendency to drool profusely have made it necessary for me to simply change the nasal pillows and their cozy in the middle of the night. So I now keep a supply of extra pillows wrapped in pillow cozies in a bag of cpap supplies in order to make it relatively easy to both find a new pair of pillows and to minimize the time I need to swap the wet pillows out for a pair of dry pillows in a dry cozy.

mpeg2 wrote: ↑

Sat Jan 14, 2023 8:13 am

"But for right now, be sure your machine's is situated lower than your mattress so the water will run back to it and not to you."

I keep on seeing this recommendation & it still makes no sense to me. The water is due to condensation, which will occur all along the tubing. The tubing from the machine to the head is either....

The alleged benefits of lowering the device to prevent rainout are way overstated. In order for it to work, the water must condense back into liquid in a location where there is a high slope back to the machine. Rarely is that the case.

This advice *seems* intuitive, but it's not. It's the type of advice often given by people who don't experience rainout, but have read others give it.

You know what happens here a lot, regarding rainout:

• Advice is given to lower humidity setting.
  Recipients respond positively, that it worked.
• Advice is given to increase tube temperature (heated tube, or use a cozy)
  Recipients respond positively, that it worked.
• Advice is given to increase ambient room temperature
  Recipients respond positively, that it worked.

You know what *never* happens around here:

• Advice is given to lower the machine.
  Recipients respond positively, that it worked.

It just doesn't happen.

I promise never to do it again.

I am unable to lower my machine.
That's where I put my shoes.