Tomorrow I take delivery of my CPAP machine and have been researching what water I should use in the humidifier. The prevailing wisdom for CPAP machines is that one must use distilled water. From my research tonight I put this in the same category as “You must drink 2 litres of water a day”. Sounds good, but is incorrect.
Certainly I have some confirmation bias in my research but:
- The official FAQs for my Prisma Smart Max says use tap water.
- The cost of distilled water over a replacement humidifier ― assuming I don’t clean it at all and it fills with scale from tap water to the point of destruction ― is less than 18 months.
- A replacement humidifier is made of significantly less plastic than 18 months of plastic water bottles.
- There is only 1 delivery cost (dollars and carbon) for a replacement humidifier.
It’s going to be tap water for me.