CPAP problems

The weather for the past few days has been wintry: cold and rainy. I've probably written this many times before, but a kibbutz is not built for such weather: there is no double glazing and no covered passages. Apart from anything else, this can make walking the dog a problem. Fortunately (or unfortunately, if one is a farmer) we don't get very many days like this, so one has to shut up and suffer until the weather improves.

During Friday night, I thought that I heard gurgling noises from my CPAP machine, and I also thought that there was a crack in the roof through which water was leaking, as I felt some drops on my hand. I have to admit that my critical capabilities are somewhat diminished at night and things that happen might get attributed to wrong causes. On Saturday night, I only had to turn the machine on and the noises started immediately. It quickly became clear that there was no way that I would be able to sleep with that amount of noise so unfortunately I had to sleep without CPAP - very difficult. My wife said that I "snored like a tractor" so she didn't sleep well; neither did I, but not because of the snoring.

As this happened over the weekend, there wasn't anything that I could do about this problem, but on Sunday morning I telephoned the service facility for the machine. "Disconnect the pipe from the machine", I was told, "then hold the mask high up so that the pipe is perpendicular to the floor. Water should flow out of the pipe". And indeed, when I did this, a few drops of water came out of the pipe. I then reconnected the pipe and turned the machine on. No noise.

The technician explained that with the cold weather that we are currently experiencing, water vapour gets into the pipe (presumably from my exhalations) and instead of returning back into my nose, the water vapour coalesces into water droplets and this is what is causing the noise and misfunction. I hope that he is correct as I don't fancy repeating Saturday night's experience. 

I am noting this for future reference.