I’ve got sleep apnea and I want to go on a four-day bikepacking trip. For any sufferers, you can appreciate how this might be a bit of a conflict to reconcile. Will I just snore my head off? Will I have to lug an impossible battery? Do I need a travel machine? Read on and I’ll share my decision process with you. (Note: This solution is a summary of exploration by others and the items I settled on.)
Travel CPAP
My normal CPAP is a ResMed Airsense 10. That thing is just too big to take with me bikepacking and too power hungry. So I did some research, and narrowed things down to the ResMed AirMini, the Breas Z2 Auto, and the Philips Dreamstation Go.
I read some reviews and watched a few videos. The Dreamstation Go was out rather quickly based on size. The ResMed certainly seemed like a decent device, but I read it’s power needs were a little more complicated that the Z2 Auto, and its price point was a few hundred dollars more. So, when it was all said and done, I went with the Breas Z2.
![Breas Z2 Auto CPAP](https://i0.wp.com/lessbeaten.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/z2-auto-in-hand_jpg_egdetail.jpg?resize=300%2C227&ssl=1)
Trial Sleep
So, I’d found the CPAP, and ordered it. The time came to try a night’s sleep with it. The first concern for me was that there is no humidifier with this unit. This is no surprise as I was looking for a compact passage, but I tend to get a sore throat when my reservoir runs dry on my normal unit. Enter the HDM/HME. This acronym stands for Heat Moisture Exchange, essentially it is a small sponge that connects the end of the hose to your mask and tries to capture the humidity from your own breath and return it to you.
![Breas HME](https://i0.wp.com/lessbeaten.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/hdm-z1-heat-moisture-exchanger-hme_jpg_egdetail.jpg?resize=300%2C227&ssl=1)
The end result was of my sleep was this machine is nosier than a normal CPAP due to it’s compact size, but I tolerated it well and my quality of sleep was pretty good. Although my throat was a little dry when I woke up, it wasn’t terrible.
Remote Power
Moving on, I’ve got a small CPAP, that’s great. How do I power it when I’m at a camp site? Well, in some of my searches, I found someone who had solved this problem for me. What you need is a power bank capable of supplying enough wattage to power a laptop, and a special USB C cable that will provide the right voltage to the CPAP. This unit runs off 15 volts, so this was the cable I got:
As I mentioned, the power bank will need to supply 60 watts or more so I needed to find a suitable sized unit. I went with the Baseus unit below. Based off what I read, this should allow me at least two nights of sleep and potentially topping off other devices. I’d just need to figure out how to recharge it mid-trip.
Lastly, I had plenty of USB power supplies, but I needed a USB C quick charger so I could fill this bank fast. Below is the charger I selected.
Trial Sleep #2 – Battery Powered
I got my cables and power bank and prepared for my second night of test sleeping. Everything connected and powered off the bank just fine. I went to sleep, with my noisy little companion and woke up 7 hour later. The power pack worked fine. I checked the display and it said there was 70% of the battery left. I got 7 hours out of 30% of the charge. That was great, I should be able to get at least two days out of the battery. Now, how much battery will be used also depends on the pressure generated and ambient temperature. Luckily, I checked the companion app on my smartphone and I had stayed at the minimum pressure the whole night.
The last part of the trial was recharging the battery. I connected it to my new quick charger and the battery was topped off in 30 minutes. I could get seven hours of sleep for only 30 minutes of charging. Perfect!
2 Comments on “Bikepacking with a CPAP”
Comments are closed.