If it has a remote control, to some degree it is definitely "on" or the remote control wouldn't work. I'd write it off as a case of value electronics inside, the same way a cheap phone will pick up a lot of noise.

As someone has said before, the easiest thing to do would be to shut off the breaker that controls the place where the cpap is plugged in, then keep trying a light in different outlets until you find one where it lights up (with the cpap breaker still off). Our house now has every single room on its own circuit, but we've rented an old house that had like three fuses for the whole house, with one of them being for the basement.

Another solution would be to put the fan on an outlet attached to an actual lightswitch, or something that will *really* kill the power to the unit the same way as if it was unplugged.

Or, if it's newish, try taking it back to the store and exchanging it. Maybe you just got a poorly constructed one.

 

Extention cord should be rated as a 14/3 or 12/3. 14 being for 15A and 12 for 20. You would be more then fine with a 14.

 

ok, so one breaker in your panel box is wired to several outlets. Usually a 15 or 20 amp, it says it on the breaker. When you turn the breaker off, everything on that circuit is killed. That's how you can tell what is chained together. It may be just your bedroom or could be other rooms. Most of the time, the ceiling lights are on a different circuit and several rooms together and usually only 15 amp since lights and fans don't draw a lot of amps. Your cpap says it is 3.75 A (amps) looks like the fan might only be about 1. your night light isn't worth mentioning. So depending on what else is on the circuit elsewhere, you have only about 5 amps being drawn. Well below the 15 or 20 the breaker allows. Just flip the breaker off to see what else in the house it turns off and you'll know what you are drawing. And the fan should be fine on a regular white or brown extension cord you get at walmart, no need to get anything special. The question would be if you plug in the fan in another outlet that is on the same circuit, will it still make a noise? Some times on electronics you get feed back on things, moving it to another outlet may do the trick or you may have to fine another circuit. Or if you run the fan, does it drown out the noise you hear otherwise?

 

Yep, if a plug is controlled by a wall switch, when you turn the wall switch off, it will really be "off". The only downside to that is that it's internal clock will be "off" as well (or running on an internal battery), so you might end up with the thing blinking "12:00" at you when you turn it on.

I agree with Apollonia on gauge of the cord. The other thing about cords is their length, so if you had 100 feet of cord, that would require a thicker cord than a little 12 or 20' one you'd use in a room. 14 sounds good to me, but any smaller numbered gauge (12 or 10) would work as well, they'd just be thicker and more expensive.

 

The other thing would be whether the fan made noise *all the time* when the cpap was on or just some times. If it's only some times, and multiple rooms share the same circuit, it could also be that the load from some other device in a different room (like a washer, or a refrigerator kicking on) is what is stressing the circuit and making it get "noisy".

You know, one other thing that can cause a LOT of weird problems is a bad ground. Maybe just getting the two items to different wall sockets completely would solve the problem as well if it's related to grounding of something or other. All in all, electrical problems are a PITA IMO.

 

rating on 16 guage cord, like the regular ones you buy for inside, is up to 13 amps (not watts) for a 25 foot cord, the fan is no where near that

 

Yes, but... remember this is going in to the home of someone who has a five way power strip sitting on one outlet now. Even if the intended use now is just to run this a/c unit, what will its use be next year? What will the draw be when it's also carrying the load of an old-school Christmas tree, and a portable electric heater, and an iron, etc.? My philosophy is that the farther you are from the edge of the cliff, the less likely you are to fall over.

 

yeah but the thing is that this is just a floor fan not an a/c, it's 60 watts, like a light bulb, She said a/c at first, but clarified later it's just a fan. My bet is she has a suitable extension cord on hand

 

Ah, I thought she meant she only used the fan portion in the Winter as she didn't need the cooling. If it's only a fan, I agree a "normal" household extension cord would be plenty.

 

Hmm, being from the UK I've never understood 120v (except that more idiots get big shocks rather than turned into ash) at a guess if the fan is AC your C-PAP could be feeding back resonance into the circuit (much like the way you can set up an internet connection using your Home's sockets (unless that only works in the UK; it was an interesting alternative to WI-FI for people (mainly school friends who had just got an XBONE 3shitty and didn't want to buy a Wi-Fi router and a Wi-Fi receiver for the 360; lots of them bought them up when I said it was a cheaper (at the time) alternative and used them.
It could be some sort of resonance wave travelling back along the live or common (neutral) that is screwing with the AC powered fan.
Putting a rectifier in somewhere in this circuit might help though that would require electronics and soldering knowledge.
Or you could try getting a second extension cord and a multi adapter plug, use one cord for the C-PAP and one for the AC.
That's a shot in the dark, but it may fix things.
Emphasis on the may.

Or your C-PAP might have a really weird fault causing it to give off lots of radio noise.
Unplug them and run a radio (the more basic the better) on AM tuned into quiet static, then plug things in one by one and see if your radio starts making a heap of noise.

If it's radio noise then you can either build a faraway cage around the offending item, the "victim" item or replace the offending item.

Edit: A C-PAP machine would need a pump to make sure you breathe correctly, right? Never saw one here in my life. Too expensive for the NHS probably. Anyway that pump may have an AC motor as well as your fan and for some reason I don't understand they could be affecting each other (possibly due to electrical pulses sent down neutral "out of sync" affecting one motor. That would be way above my understanding of electrocity.

You could always draw a pentagram on your floor with chalk, place candles at each point and put the AC unit there and see if that makes it communicate louder.
Not responsible for any demons summoned.

 

I found it shocking they didn't have cpap as well. I'd think that was something the NICE panel could prove was worth its cost.