Sierra

I have the F20 and gave up on it for the same issues you are having with the Simplus. I have used a ResMed AirFit P10 nasal mask up to about 15 cm with reasonably good success. Perhaps Bonjour could comment as I believe he uses that mask too. The problem with that mask is the headgear is kind of flimsy. The ResMed Swift FX nasal pillow could work for you. ResMed claims it is good up to 20 cm of pressure. The air vent on it is a bit of a problem depending on how you sleep with it. I have now been able to attach the Swift headgear to the P10 mask and it seems to be working really well for me, but I limit pressure to 11 cm. The one issue with a nasal mask is that if you open your mouth in the night air can leak out. The solution to that can be mouth taping and/or a chin strap. See the recent thread on mouth taping, as well as those on the mask hybrid solution, and the Swift FX comparison to the P10. One solution may be to buy the P10 and when the headgear gets too stretched then buy the replacement headgear for the FX and fit them together.

That was not the result I expected to see with a fixed 16 cm. The PB has come back. Your 15 to 16 min max was better. But unfortunately it takes probably a week to two weeks to see the real trend. I think I would go back to the 15 to 16 or try a fixed 15 cm.

To see your leaks better, you may want to manually set the scale to 50. The top trace is kind of meaningless as it included intentional leakage. The bottom trace should be the true unintentional leak rate, which is the important one.

Thanks for posting. I was just about to walk out the door to buy some. I think it would have clicked when I saw the roll at the store, but somehow I caught some metric to imperial dyslexia. I'll get the 10 cm wide stuff. That also matches your price of $13.00

I am assuming it is this one?

Mefix Surgical Tape

It looks like it is sold by the same place I got my 2" 3M Micropore tape. For $4 it seems to be worth a try.

I would like to get away from using a chin strap too, but have not found a tape that is up to the job without the chin strap also. Thanks for the tip. I will look into that type. With it being 10 cm (4") wide I take it you cut narrow strips off the roll and tape vertically rather than horizontal?

That is an excellent idea. Just use the humidifier warm up mode and you can just set it and leave it. Here is how the ResMed warmup works:

*"Q. What is warm-up mode?

A. The HumidAir™ heated humidifier will rise to a target temperature of 104°F over 20 minutes. The device then holds this temperature for a further 10 minutes, ready for therapy to start. If therapy does not commence in that time, the device will automatically enter cool-down mode, where it will blow a small amount of air for around 20 minutes to stop condensation forming in the device."*

Hannah, I think I have made a breakthrough with my P10 mask. I fitted it to the Swift FX headgear which you can buy for $31. It is only $6 more than the replacement flimsy headgear intended for the P10, and even comes in a smaller pink For Her version. It does require you to cut the gray plastic legs on the P10, but it is no big deal. Here is my post on how to do it.

P10 Headgear Upgrade

It may be partly good luck, but I got another really good (for me) leak rate chart with the hybrid setup last night.

As bonjour says all your detailed data will be on the SD card unless your provider played a dirty trick on you and removed it. From the factory they all come with a 4 GB SD card. It is behind the flexible cover on the left side of the machine near the top. The data being transmitted wirelessly to your provider is very limited, and essentially the basic summary level stuff you see on MyAir. If there is no SD card in the machine, then you have lost all the detailed data. You can put one in and it will format it for use. A 4 GB is all that is needed but I believe it will accept up to a 32 GB card.

Here is a link to a technical manual on your machine. See page 29 for details on what data is being stored where. See page 8 on how the machine distinguishes between central apnea and obstructive apnea by using a forced oscillation technique. It does not lump them together, and reports them independently. The machine will raise pressure in response to obstructive apnea, but not central (clear airway) apnea. Once you display the results in SleepyHead it will become obvious. It will show you exactly what types of events you are having and when they happened.

I do suffer from central apnea and it definitely got worse with PAP treatment. There are some ways to do something about it, but I would prefer to see a Daily Detail screenshot on SleepyHead first to be sure what problem you are exactly having, before I comment.

I solved my problem of liking the P10 mask the best, except for the headgear. I arranged a marriage between the FX and the P10. Thanks to Sleeptech for the button hole elastic solution. That got me to thinking how it could be done... See this thread where I describe the wedding arrangements. Sorry BUG, I couldn't find the pink tape!

Swift FX - AirFit P10 Hybrid

I took the long and more expensive way to get there, but I believe I have finally found a good durable solution to the ResMed AirFit P10 flimsy headgear problem. I fitted the ResMed Swift FX headgear to the P10. Here are the steps I took to do it:

• Removed the fabric covering over each side of the attachment area on the P10. You kind of stretch it toward the nose piece and it unhooks.

• You will find a gray plastic strap that has a bend in it under the covering. I am not sure it is totally necessary, but I took the time to heat up the gray plastic in the area of the bend with an electric heat gun being careful not to overheat it, and then straightened out the strap.

• Next I cut the strap to leave 17 mm of it remaining. I used a sharp box cutter. Then I trimmed off the corners a bit to match the recess in the Swift FX strap. See this photo.

• With the tabs fitted into the FX strap I then taped each one with 1" 3M Micropore tape (used for mouth taping) to hold it secure. This probably will not survive a wash, so the tape will have to be replaced with each cleaning.

• The finished product. I'm thinking of naming it the Sierra FX-10 Hybrid!

And best of all it seems to actually work and feels very comfortable. There is no jet engine velocity air rushing out of the mask. The headgear is secure on my head, and it does not seem to leak. My Leak Rate graph from last night:

The only little issue was that I bought the complete Swift FX fit pack, and all I really needed to buy was the headgear for 1/3 the cost!

Update: One issue I had with this mask is that the black strap would slip up on my head during the night. I tried a couple of things but settled on using Shoe Goo to glue the hook half of a strap of Velcro to the inside of that strap. Now it stays in place and is still comfortable. Has not pulled out all my remaining hair - yet!