Help. Please?

[usaf_wife]

Hi everyone! I am new here and hoping I'm in the right place.

My husband and I recently became workampers. We are preparing to travel cross country from CT to WA. We are new to full time RVing (we just purchased a 25 foot Mallard travel trailer) and would appreciate any suggestions on keeping our costs down for our trip. Atm we don't have much money to work with.

Our primary concerns are finding safe parking places and decent food. My husband uses a machine to breathe at night so we would prefer plug in locations if at all possible. Do any of the truck stops allow this? What would the alternatives be? I would appreciate any and all suggestions, as we've never taken a trip this large. Thanks!

[Dakota98]

C-Bears X 2

Yes, My very reason for determining how your make & model of CPAP can be used. Your options for overnight stays improve drastically if you can run from DC. Your other option is an Inverter (pure sine) as a last resort. If you run off of the House batteries, & not a "dedicated" battery, get a cheap multimeter & monitor the system. Do not depend upon the coach monitor telling you the Batts are good. If your converter/charging system is functioning correctly you should have no problem with DC power supply through the night. The batteries will get charged enough during daytime driving.

Happy Trails :B

[C-Bears]

usaf wife wrote:
Hi everyone! I am new here and hoping I'm in the right place.

My husband and I recently became workampers. We are preparing to travel cross country from CT to WA. We are new to full time RVing (we just purchased a 25 foot Mallard travel trailer) and would appreciate any suggestions on keeping our costs down for our trip. Atm we don't have much money to work with.

Our primary concerns are finding safe parking places and decent food. My husband uses a machine to breathe at night so we would prefer plug in locations if at all possible. Do any of the truck stops allow this? What would the alternatives be? I would appreciate any and all suggestions, as we've never taken a trip this large. Thanks!

If you get the breathing machine figured out so you can run off battery, then your cheapest way to go may be to use truck stop parking every other night. Most Flying J and Pilot will allow overnight parking.

State and Federal campgrounds would be your next best bet for the other nights. Your rig is small enough and these types of public CG's are very cheap. By mixing it up this way you may average under $10.00 a day lodging.

As full timers our food expenses are not any different than when we had a house.

If you are getting groceries at Walmart, a lot of those will allow RV's to spend the night in their lots for free also.

[usaf_wife]

@Grey Mountain---my husband is retired Air Force. He was a PJ in Vietnam from 1961-1965.

Not on much atm---we are cleaning out the pop up and loading up the new trailer. Lots to do in a short time! 🙂 I will check back again tonight when things have settled a bit. Thanks for all the help. 🙂

[Clay_L]

usaf wife wrote:
Thanks for the pics. I need to figure out how to change my settings so I can actually see them. 😛

My husband's already asleep (he's sick) so I will look at his machine tomorrow morning and post the info. Thanks for all the help---I appreciate it!

Assuming that the machine is fully data capable and assuming that you are wanting to see the full menu you can go to this CPAP FORUM and download the clinician setup Manuals. On the top line of the forum click on "CPAP Setup Manuals"

[answerswillvary]

Moved from Roads and Routes to Full Time RVing for more input.

[Grey_Mountain]

You sign on as "USAF wife." Are you or your husband retired military? If so,you are eligible to camp at military Family Camps across the US at military installations. Cost for these, most with full hookups, is usually less than half of what it costs in other campgrounds. There is a website that shows all of them.
There are many communities that have local city- or county-operated campgrounds. My hometown in SW Oklahoma has RV sites with 30/50 amp hookups, water at selected sites and a dump nearby for $5.00 per night.

GM, AF vet.

[Johno02]

One of my older CPAP machines would run on either 12v or 120. Had two plug connectors, one for the 120 cord, and the other for 12V. The last two had an external brick that provided 12v to the machine. I bought one of the 12V adapter cords for the first one, and have used the machines on 12V ever since. At home, I have the Brick plugged in, and do not even take it with us in the RV. The adapter cord,(which is nothing except a wire) has powered all my machines directly from a 12V outlet installed on the side of hte bed. The two black things on each end of the cord are supposed to keep electrial noise from the machine from feeding into the 12V supply, but are more for appearance and regulations than actual function. As my machine iw on a shelf above the bed, I did have to extend the wire to reach it. I have two 12V batteries in our coach, and have run the cpap for two or more nights with no problem.

[usaf_wife]

Thanks for the pics. I need to figure out how to change my settings so I can actually see them. 😛

My husband's alreayd asleep (he's sick) so I will look at his machine tomorrow morning and post the info. Thanks for all the help---I appreciate it!

[Dakota98]

Pics of my CPAP & it's connections.


BACK OF CPAP


12 VOLT CORD CONNECTION, DIRECTLY TO BATTERY


120 VAC CORD TO NORMAL HOUSEHOLD OUTLET OR TO AN INVERTER


Either way, the information needed will be recorded on the "chip / card"
to satisfy Medicare requirements.

MEDICARE WEB SITE CONCERNING CPAP'S

[darsben]

Francesca Knowles wrote:
Question for Cpap experts:

I think some cpaps are actually 12volt already- they run off 120v by means of the "adapter" that plugs into the wall. Can such a machine just be run directly off a 12v power supply via a machine-to-battery connection?

Is there a brick or wart as some call it on the power line
Looks something like this



Or is it a plain cor. If it has a brick look at the rating on the brick and see if the output is 12 volts if 12 volts then you can buy or make a cord to run off cigarette lighter type 12 volt plug

[Dakota98]

Francesca Knowles wrote:
Question for Cpap experts:

I think some cpaps are actually 12volt already- they run off 120v by means of the "adapter" that plugs into the wall. Can such a machine just be run directly off a 12v power supply via a machine-to-battery connection?

Yes, I run my CPAP directly from the machine to a dedicated 12 volt deep cycle battery.

No inverter.

[Dakota98]

usaf wife wrote:
We need to get an adaptor so the CPAP can run off the 12-volt. We wanted to buy one that ran on a battery but we were told we'd have to bring the machine in after three months so they could verify it was being used. (Medicare requirement) We will be in Washington by then. We had to get a regular CPAP where we could just mail the chip in.

Let us know the make & model you have. Something doesn't sound right.

[Francesca_Knowl]

Question for Cpap experts:

I think some cpaps are actually 12volt already- they run off 120v by means of the "adapter" that plugs into the wall. Can such a machine just be run directly off a 12v power supply via a machine-to-battery connection?

[RoamingGnomes]

I use a cpap. Take a look at the manfacturer's tag to see the power draw (watts). Mine said 400w so I bought a 600watt "true sine wave" inverter. It worked great. Some CPAP have a temperature setting on the humidity level. Reducing this setting reduces the demand on the battery(s). I found I can go 2-3 days without using the humidifier, it helps extend the time before you "have to plug in" some where.
Hope this helps.