solar power for dry camping & cpap machine

MEXICOWANDERER wrote:
ANY ANY ANY 12 volt light fixture can be tapped to run a duplex wire to feed a CPAP 12 volt machine. Running an inverter is not quite up to minimum intelligence specifications.

on the light fixture, In theory, yes, in practicality, given trailer wiring, not always. Trailer wiring is often 14ga, sometimes 16 ga wiring, and sometimes long runs. plug in a cpap and in some cases and the voltage at the cpap drops below the cpap input threshold and oopps.

Or, it runs, you think your home free, then discover in the middle of the night, cpap off because battery voltage dropped just enough to cut it off, or your battery was fully charged at home, and your at 90 percent when camping and oopps, drops out.


Seen that happen on several trailers I've helped wire for cpap's. often the cpap may not need that many amps to run, but inrush is high enough that it can't get going.

Best to check first

And cpap with humidifier can really wreck havoc with marginal wiring.

Best solution is if in doubt, run a dedicated short line with 12ga wire to the cpap.

I agree, using an inverter is not a good idea unless you have either a very old cpap or a odball new one that won't run on either 12V dc or 24V dc. The 24V dc ones have 12-24 dc to dc converters readily available.