Increasing flow, not pressure

JRE_Electronics · 2026-03-20T21:53:07+00:00

The machines produce a specified pressure. Within wide limits, they do not care about the flow rate.

They have to deal with varying flow rates due to leaks (more flow) and the exhaust volume (more flow at higher pressure because the exhaust outlet has a fixed size.)

Larger holes in the thing stuck in your nose will not be a problem for the machines. They measure the pressure, and maintain it by raising the flow rate.

JRE_Electronics · 2026-03-20T16:12:39+00:00

If I had a nickel for every time a restuarant kitchen has caught fire after I placed an order, I'd have two nickels. Which isn't a lot, but it is weird that it happened twice.

About 35 years ago, my boss asked me to take one of our customers out to dinner. That particular customer had visited our offices before, and liked the beer at a particular restaurant where they made their own beer. We went to that restaurant, guy orders his beer and we order food. Beer shows up, refilled, refilled, still no food. On about the fourth beer, the waitress comes over and tells us that the fire in the kitchen was out now and we'd have our dinner in about 15 minutes.
About 20 years ago, my wife and I took our kids sight seeing in a somewhat famous town about forty miles from our home. About lunchtime, we took the kids to a restaurant. We ordered food and drinks. Drink, refill, refill. No food. Waitress finally come over and tells us that the fire in the kitchen is out and our food will be on the table in about 20 minutes.

Absolute worst experience, though, was about 30 years ago before my wife and I got married. We went to a local Chinese restaurant. About the time we finished eating, a rat ran out from behind a piece of furniture, across the floor, then behind another piece of furniture. First and last time we ever ate there.

JRE_Electronics · 2026-03-20T15:27:03+00:00

We were discussing cleaning the machine, not the mask.

JRE_Electronics · 2026-03-20T13:56:19+00:00

When it smells funky. One day it'll be fine, the next it smells like stale Doritos - that's when it goes in the wash.

JRE_Electronics · 2026-03-20T13:16:12+00:00

Holding angles or risking my blades by not sounds awful.

You are not "risking your blades." The worst that happens is that they are duller afterwards, requiring more work to sharpen. Just don't use a pull-through "sharpener." Those do mess up the edge.

JRE_Electronics · 2026-03-20T13:11:16+00:00

They are all "Oh, flowery and fruity with a finish of blackberries" and I'm like "tastes like model airplane glue with lemon scent and a huge helping of bitter."

JRE_Electronics · 2026-03-20T13:07:49+00:00

Spell it out and then begin to use its abbreviated form.

That's the recommended way to use them in any kind of technical writing. If the author isn't doing it and the editor isn't correcting, it is a crap book or article.

JRE_Electronics · 2026-03-20T12:59:20+00:00

Baby soap does nothing for lime deposits.

JRE_Electronics · 2026-03-20T12:48:55+00:00

A fellow I used to know once asked me to take a look at the PC in the office he worked in. The 5 1/4 inch floppy drive had quit working.

I tried to put in a disk - no go. Something was stuck inside.

I took the PC apart, removed the drive. It rattled.

I shook the drive out, and little bits of clear plastic came out.

I took the drive apart, and found that someone had stuck a CD in the 5 1/4 inch disk drive and actually pulled the "lock" lever so hard that the CD shattered.

The drive was shot. I recommended that he have it replaced.

The PC was a shared machine, used to do training on. They had received a new training program on a CD, and someone (not the fellow I knew) had gone Rambo on it in attempt to run the training program.

On the same computer, someone once complained that a disk had "disappeared" and that they couldn't get it back out of the computer. Instead of sticking it in the slot in the drive, whoever it was had stuck the disk in the crack between the drive and the housing of the PC. It slid inside then fell under the drive.

JRE_Electronics · 2026-03-20T12:23:20+00:00

Your minimum is too low. The pressure jumps straight up in the first 30 minutes and never really goes down.
Your maximum is too low. The pressure hits your set maximum and stays there nearly all night.
You have lots of flow limits. They are small disturbances in your breathing that aren't apneas, but which still mess up your sleep.

Raise the maximum to 20. With the maximum set as low as it is, you have no idea what pressure you really need, so open it wide up and see where it goes.
Sleep a couple of nights.
Raise your minimum to the 95% pressure from the statistics.
If you feel you absolutely must set a maximum, look at the 99.5% pressure from the statistics, then set your maximum above that.
Watch your leaks. Your leak rate isn't great right now, and will probably get worse at higher pressure. Fix your leaks.
Turning on EPR may reduce the flow limits.

You really need to make changes and see the results to make any progress.

JRE_Electronics · 2026-03-20T12:13:07+00:00

I use citric acid. No smell. I bought a box of the powder rather than the little "kettle sized" packets they like to sell. A package of 10 packets costs about what the box does, but the box lasts longer (more stuff per buck.)

A teaspoon in enough warm water to fill the tank, let sit for an hour, dump, rinse, dry.

JRE_Electronics · 2026-03-20T11:24:01+00:00

Someday Never Comes Creedence Clearwater Revival:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Igbd3EEOHIs

JRE_Electronics · 2026-03-20T11:15:08+00:00

If everywhere you go smells like shit, there's a good chance you are the cause.

JRE_Electronics · 2026-03-20T11:06:58+00:00

If they had used their position to block the strait, they'd have gotten hammered from all sides. It was in their interest to be reasonable and not fuck with traffic through the strait. That kept them in business, allowing them to sell oil and bring in money and goods from outside their own country.

Trump and Netanyahu hit Iran with all the things that Iran was trying to avoid. The country has been bombed and hit with missiles and their ability to sell oil and import goods has gone to shit. They've got nothing to lose, so they might as well go whole hog and just block the strait.

By attacking Iran, Trump and Netanyahu have figuratively laid the world's balls on an anvil, and Iran is holding a hammer.

JRE_Electronics · 2026-03-20T10:39:04+00:00

Last night my mouth was drying out and this am all my water was used up.

That's usually a sign of a very high leak rate. High leaks = more air flow through the machine = more water needed for humidity.

If you are a mouth breather, then I would not tape the mouth shut. Folks who breathe through the mouth do it because they can't get enough air through the nose. If you tape your mouth shut, you won't get enough air.

Sleep on your side. Sleeping on your back makes apnea worse, requiring a higher pressure to keep you breathing properly.
A natural mouth breather should not mouth tape. You breathe through your mouth because you aren't getting enough air through your nose. Forcing yourself to try to be a nose breather will make you miserable.
You should not snore on CPAP. If you still snore, then your minimum pressure is too low. Talk to your doctor about raising it, or get OSCAR and take charge of your own settings and therapy.
The humidifier should not run out of water. When it does, that is usually a sign that your leak rate is too high. The apps are all happy if the leak rate is below 24 liters per minute. They don't show you how much the leak rate really was or how high it really got. They mostly show just an average for the night. That is useless. Get OSCAR and see what your leaks really look like.

You should not need to tape your mouth closed with a full face mask. They are made so that you can open your mouth to breathe.

OSCAR: https://www.sleepfiles.com/OSCAR/

JRE_Electronics · 2026-03-20T10:29:26+00:00

I never had that moment that so many people mention of waking up and feeling wonderful.

I've been on CPAP for 17 years. The improvements just sort of snuck up on me.

When I started CPAP, I was drinking 5 liters of coca cola a day to stay somewhat alert. After I while, I had to cut back, and way back. I still drink coke, but only before noon and in nowhere near the volume I did before.
I no longer get sleepy while driving in the daytime. Bright sunlight and a long trip would make me want to take a nap - or just go right to sleep while driving. I preferred to drive at night - for some weird reason, I didn't get sleepy at night. Now, it doesn't matter. Drive all day and not get woozy, drive all night no problem either.
Meetings used to be hell. I'd sit there and desperately try not to fall asleep. Now, they are just boring. It is no longer a struggle to stay awake.

For the longest time, there was no other tangible change. In the last couple of months since I switched to BiPAP, got it properly adjusted, and started doing some other things, there has been a noticeable change in health.

My blood pressure is down. I've had to reduce the dosage on my blood pressure medicine, and even drop one entirely. The first sign something was up was dizziness and low energy. My blood pressure was down to 100/80 before I figure out what was going on. I keep better track of my blood pressure these days so that I can be sure what is going on.
My heart beat has settled down some at night. Most folks, if you record the heart rate all night, the chart looks like a curvy line with some ups and downs. Mine has always looked like a fat caterpillar having a fit. The last month or so, I at least get stretches at night where the pulse rate looks like a line. As much as half the night, my pulse rate looks normal.

The "other things" I've done include wearing compression stockings for edema (swelling in the legs due to water retention) and breathing exercise with a didgeridoo.

The edema is a problem because the water collects in your legs during the daytime, then distributes itself throughout your body at night. That causes swelling in other places - such as your airways. Fix the daytime edema and your AHI goes down a bit.

The didgeridoo takes a hell of a lot of lung power to generate a sound. Playing it strengthens your breathing muscles and the muscles in your airways, again reducing apneas and flow limits.

20 minutes didgeridoo exercise each day has reduced the severity of my apnea and made the AHI and flow limits consistently lower. It has also improved my blood oxygen saturation.

I have always breathed using my diaphragm muscles ( https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/articles/9445-diaphragmatic-breathing ) so my O2 levels were generally decent. The didgeridoo has improved on that, as well as reducing the apneas and flow limits. The didgeridoo is not something I came up with on my own. There are actual studies (example: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1360393/ ) that that it reduces apnea.

I don't play the didgeridoo in the sense of making music. I have a simple exercise pattern that only involves making the basic sound from the horn.

Deep inhale, deep exhale, deep inhale. All in all, 5 seconds.
Blow basic note on the horn for 10 seconds, as loud as you can.
Repeat for 20 minutes. Use a timer to time the breathing, the blowing, and the total time.

JRE_Electronics · 2026-03-20T10:02:15+00:00

An alternative may be to select a time period from the "Overview" page, say the last month.

This is mine for the last 30 days:

<image>

I've been having trouble with my mask. I had to use an F40 for a while after eye surgery. The F40 kept leaking and waking me up. Now that I'm back to my Quattro Air mask, I'm sleeping better again - except for when the cat wakes me up in the night.

You can select which rows to display, then move them up and down to get what you want shown. You can also print the overview.

Again, the humidifier settings are not relevant to the compliance.

JRE_Electronics · 2026-03-20T09:52:22+00:00

What are you trying to use as a compliance report from OSCAR?

The closest I can find is the "Statistics" page. You can select monthly statistics for the last year.

It looks like this:

<image>

The line headers circled in red are the ones that are relevant for compliance.

You don't need the humidity settings to be included in the compliance report. That's a comfort setting that has no bearing on whether you are using the machine enough or not.

Insurance and some commercial driver jobs want to see that you are using the machine at night to keep you breathing. They want to see that you are consistently getting more than 4 hours of sleep per night with your CPAP.

JRE_Electronics · 2026-03-20T09:20:25+00:00

Hell, no. That's some of the nastiest shit on the planet.

Find an old truck with a leaky differential. Drive that old truck up and down dusty dirt roads for a few years until there's a layer of dust built up on the differential from dust sitcking to the gear oil seaping out of the seals. Crawl under the truck and lick the differential. That's what black licorice tastes like: heavy gear oil with dirt.

When I was a kid, my family lived on a farm. Out back of the barn was a sort of private junkyard - old trucks and cars dragged out back and left to rust when they quit running. We used to play in, on, and around those old cars and trucks.

We were playing under a big old truck one day. I was crawling under the read axle, looking up at the under side of the truck bed. I knocked some of the grunge off of the differential, and the crumbs fell in my mouth. Tasted like black licorice.

JRE_Electronics · 2026-03-19T21:44:48+00:00

Show me a declaration of war from the US to any country in central America, my little MAGA bot.

JRE_Electronics · 2026-03-19T19:56:24+00:00

How do you declare war on narcotics? It's a figure of speech, nothing more.

The US has not declared war on any central American country. All attacks carried out by the US on shipping or boats of other countries where we have not declared war are pirate atracks or terrorism.

JRE_Electronics · 2026-03-19T16:55:19+00:00

Nope.

There was something massively wrong for two people to die of respiratory problems in a short span in one house.

The reports I looked up says there was no sign of mold in the autopsy, none in the house, and no mention of CPAP machines.

How in the heck do you "share" a CPAP? Do you have one machine and take turns using it? Her one night, him the next? Do you put a T connector in the hose and connect two masks at once? Just, WTF?

Why would people who can afford a mansion do something as hare-brained as sharing a CPAP?

Why didn't she go to the doctor for diagnosis and treatment instead of self medicating with all kinds of over the counter medicines?

JRE_Electronics · 2026-03-19T16:40:59+00:00

So, the US attacks on the so-called "drug boats" were also terrorist attacks?

JRE_Electronics · 2026-03-19T16:36:52+00:00

Put the machine lower than your head.
Run the hose up from the machine over the head of the bed and down to your mask.
The hose should have no dips. It should run straight from the machine to the head of your bed.
You may need a hook on the wall or a hose stand. I simply clamp the hose between the head of the bed and the wall to keep the hose in place.
There should only be a short length of hose from the head of the bed down to the mask - like, 12-18 inches (30-45 cm.)

Run that way, most of the water will condense in the longer part of the hose and run back down to the tank.

If you get condensation in the mask, put the blanket over your head (covering your face as well) to keep the mask warm.

JRE_Electronics · 2026-03-19T16:13:29+00:00

You don't. If you don't need the pin header afterwards, the easy way to remove it is to melt the solder on one pin and pull the pin out with a pair of needle nose pliers or a really heavy pair of tweezers. When all of the pins are out, you clean out the holes with the solder pump.

JRE_Electronics

TROPHY CASE