How to Clean CPAP Machine, Tube and Mask | Tips for Cleaning

hello everyone welcome to the cpapstore.ca my name is Tristan and today we're going to be cleaning our CPAP gear uh uh we're going to be cleaning uh air sense 11 a mask and some tubes so first things first what do you need I have a little bucket here now this bucket here just kind of helps me sort my clean CPAP cleaning equipment it's a little Overkill size uh bucket tote thing but it's basically what I had um and as you can see it's a nice clear bucket it has a little sponge in there we're going to talk about that sponge in a minute and then we have some white vinegar and some Palm Olive mild dish soap okay and the reason why I use a bucket is because I do recommend using a bucket like this over your sink with the sink you're more likely to have bacteria in a sink or if you have a partner in your partner cleans the sink with Windex or bleach or pour some Drano or something some drain cleaner you know a sink might have a lot of things in it whereas a CPAP bucket with just uh your CPAP chemicals is just a lot easier and you know it's going to be cleaner now with something like a medical thing like a CPAP you don't want to be using bleach you don't want to be using any type of alcohol those are going to clean your machine and your hose quite easily however those harsh chemicals will leave Trace molecules that can hurt your lungs and your nose and stuff like that so it's best not to use any harsh chemicals first I have a little mask here and this is a ResMed was this a p n 30 right n30i yeah and 30i um we can disassemble some of the stuff here so I can take off the elbow like that and then we can take off just the cushions I just have to wash my hands there because I realized my hands are a little dirty I was in the garage before filming this video so first step wash your hands now back to the mask after we deconstruct it we're going to put it to the side and we're going to quickly rinse out my bucket here so I have a bathtub right here so you can obviously use your sink or shower for this but for the purpose of this video I'll use this bathtub it's easiest I will rinse out my bucket and then I will fill it with some warm water I put some Palm Olive dish soap in here okay just like that and I will use my hands to get it nice and bubbly and then I will just wash my masks in here now on the sections where you're going to get more grease on your uh headgear here like the soft part I put a decent amount of soap in this water already but out of explanation sake I will rub it in my fingers and just rub it around the headgear like so just like that scrubby dubby dub and scrub around now you can also let this sit and that allow the soap just to kind of work on the mask a little bit and then after about five ten minutes we're going to continue going around like this making sure there's soap all throughout the area now for a hollow frame mask on tubes like this what we can do as well you can drop a little bit of soap in here if we want and then run some water through it just like so and shake it around on the inside you can also run it through the top and just allow it to flow out the bottom foreign mask enough you should make sure to rinse it out the best you can you want to make sure that none of the suds are remaining in your mask now when cleaning CPAP supplies you can use both the vinegar or mild dish soap I prefer mild dish soap for the mask because it smells a little nicer and doesn't you know smell like vinegar when you put on your mask again so once your headgear is all rinsed off you can take a microfiber cloth like this or any lint-free cloth and just squeeze it a little bit get some of the water out that way when you put it on top of a towel in the dry it'll dry a lot quicker now with the tubes we can clean this a pretty similar way in the dish soap with our bucket just soap it around let it sit and then rinse all the suds out but I prefer using vinegar with this and because of that I'm going to show you a different way that you don't have to use a bucket but in this example it's preferred that you get in your shower because it can get a little bit messy so if you want to keep things cleaner you might want to do this with less clothes on than I am now but we will take some of our white vinegar and we will hop into the shower and we will rinse our tube with some water and then after we do that we will pour some white vinegar in there put some water in it foreign for obvious reasons and now we have a vinegar slash water solution here we will shake it around okay just like this let all the vinegar get everywhere now you're going to do that for about a minute you don't have to go all day but when you're done you can just simply kind of pour it out make sure it gets all over the ends here okay and then we just rinse this out in our sink or our bathtub or the shower you can also use this method with some soap just drop a little bit of soap in there fill it with water and the same type of deal just get it washing and swishing all over the place of course putting it in our soapy bucket is also an option putting it there making sure it's filled with water and just let it sit fully submerged in water for about 10 minutes or so and then you're definitely good to go once you're fully done whether you use vinegar or soap you will have to rinse it all out so I will take some warm water and fill it once you're done and no longer smells like vinegar you can hang it up to dry or let it sit again on like a towel or something a little out of air dry in this situation we will let it hang dry now if you hang dry it like this there can be a kink in here over time so what we're going to do is we're just going to take a little towel we're going to fold it up nice put this over the side okay and there you go and now there won't be a any Kink there's no pressure anywhere and it can drip dry a lot faster than if it were just sitting and lying just on a flat towel now the last thing we have to wash is the machine with the machine itself we can just wipe it down with a damp cloth obviously the outside of the machine's not really interfering with your breathing at all however making sure that it's dust free and even the area on your nightstand remains dust free pet dander free is important for a healthy CPAP experience on the machine we also have the filter here take that out here and this should be replaced about once a month okay and then we have our little water chamber here so how do we wash this this right here is pretty much the same as our mask on the tube we can use both vinegar or dish soap so I'll show you dish soap first we're going to take some of our Palm Olive again put just a little drop in there I think I've been going a little overkill on the soap for this video I just a couple drops for each item is totally fine fill it with some water there we go fill it with some water and shake shake and just let this sit for 15 minutes maybe half an hour something like that again if we are using our soapy bucket if we're using this system then we can just put it in here kind of whoosh it around and just let it sit in our bucket for again 15 30 minutes or what have you the Soapy bucket also allows for you to get it full of water and shake it around like this without really making a mess so if you don't have a big bathtub like this a little bucket like this it does help a little bit now if your water chamber does have a little bit of grime that you notice you can use a little sponge like this but I got this sponge specifically throughout this video because this sponge has kind of this abrasive texture on it and you don't want the abrasive texture on it so you just want to use this type of side but it's better to get a sponge without any abrasion at all on it because you can put little scratches in the plastic even if you can't see them they'll be really really tiny and over time it'll build more bacteria faster and you'll have to replace your gear much faster so you can take your abrasive sponge like this and throw it out and just add your microfiber cloth to your cleaning kit so your microfiber cloth as long as it's soft and lint free you can use it for your water chamber here just wipe off the outside as well as wiping off the inside making sure that you get any biofilm or any Grime out of it if you do notice some mineral deposits building up then you should try using vinegar and then that will help a little bit as well but yeah just wipe anything off rinse it back in the soap and then let it air dry on a towel now the last component of your machine that you might forget about is the little valve in here if you have an air since 11 it'll look like this and you can just push this tab with your finger and you will see it slide out and you can pull it out like that and you can wash this little valve in the soapy water mixture as well or just rinse it off when you're doing your wash to put it back in we simply just slide it back in that hole and it does need a little bit of force and you'll hear it click there now I know the length of this video kind of makes it look like washing all your gear is a really tedious process but I assure you when you're doing it all together and not separate kind of like in this video you can break down everything pretty quickly soap it up and it won't take you much time at all now next thing I want to talk about is the replacement intervals for your CPAP supplies so filters disposable filters like I said once a month for those if you have an additional pollen filter which is generally called like washable filter or non-disposable filter it's still disposable but you can wash it and you're going to wash that with your cleaning interval your cleaning interval should be roughly once a week or maybe even more than once a week so just rinse that out once a week and then you can replace that every three months now when I say once a week for your CPAP cleaning that's totally fine for your tube and just wiping down your machine and your water chamber but for the mask it is good to do a little rincey rinsy after every night or you know every other night just to keep it a little more clean so I do recommend clean The Mask a little bit more often now for the next replacement it's the tube you can generally keep the tube for a year that's what the manufacturers say one year and then you should replace it however with most of our CPAP users they use a tube for much longer than that as long as you're keeping it clean and checking for no hose leaks or you know like little tube leaks or tube holes in the tube you can use it for much longer than a year so if your insurance doesn't cover that use it for one year use it for two years as long as it's clean and working well with your water chamber it's about the same thing if it's working if it's good you can use it for about a year and then replace it but similar with the tube if it's working well and you're keeping it clean you can use it for longer than a year as well now with the mask it's a little bit different for everybody just like anything that goes on your head or anything that you wear like a baseball cap some people wear a baseball cap and it looks clean after you know a couple weeks a month two months three months a year of wearing it for some reason the baseball cap doesn't get any yellowing or whatever some people wear a baseball cap for a week and it looks dirty and gross same thing with the CPAP headgear some people are going to be able to go six months and not replace the headgear and just wash it out with some dish soap and they'll be clean and good and they don't have a lot of oils to break it down and it's going to be functioning well some people are going to need to replace the headgear or maybe the frame or the the nose cushion um once a month so it really depends on you how much you sweat how much you know what type of composition your your sweat and grease and stuff in your hair oil and stuff like that it kind of depends on that so for the mask it is different from person to person most people replace it every three months to six months okay for all the components there I hope you found this video helpful please consider subscribing or leaving a comment if you did

Channel: The CPAP Store

Views: 396,073

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Id: CaOHxPQARPw

Length: 12min 25sec (745 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 19 2023