In my pprevious posts, I explained why I picked this soft chamber, which was the only 2.0 ATA capable soft chamber I could find and woudl be willing to trust. Olive and Hugo sell the same chmber but different concentrators. I picked Olive because they have a better background in oxygen conentrators and Hugo/Lannx had a shady past in selling badly packed and/or non working hardware in the past.
Please read these older posts on why I selected a chamber that did more than 1.5 ATA (and would not even consider a 1.3 ATA chamber), why you simply should not buy a US made chmaber due to the 1.3ATA limitation, and how I selected chambers that I felt were well made and would deliver the proper amount of oxygen under pressure.
So, this is what I got in the end:
To all the armchair HBOT experts on FB (including those who have worked in facilities with hard chambers), and keep telling everyone that only hard chambers can be trusted, I wish they would open up to the present a little bit and recognize that one can make 2.0 soft chambers that worsk fine for a much cheaper price than a hard chamber.
Obviously hard chambers are more polished and easier to get in and out of, so if many is no issue, go ahead and get one, but if you'd like to get 2.0ATA for $10k or less, Olive is the way to go.
Important points with this chamber:
I will state right now that the seat belts that are added for strength and integrity, are a little bit of a pain to operated on your own, but it's perfectly doable. My guess is that you cannot get 2.0 ATA safely on a soft chamber without them.
Olive, in an attempt to save me money, sold me the chamber without the inside frame. I made sure to tell them that this was stupid. The chamber is really a pain to use without the inside frame, and the frame, while a bit flimsy, is cheap and does the job
Again, Olive tried to save me money by not including an air cooler, but come on, if you compress air to twice its pressure, it will get hotter, there is just no way around it. The chamber was way too warm and humid without the cooler. It was so warm that it was barely usable without clothes. Unless you are going to use it in a very cold room, it's not reasonable to use without the air cooler
Because thngs can't be too easy, the first air cooler they sent me, was misconfigured from the factory and did not release the water it created, so the air getting in the chamber was super humid and the cooler was making small pool of waters around its high voltage input. OMG, that was not safe! Eventually we did get it reprogrammed to open the valve every 2mn and dump the excess water
But even then, it did not come with a hose or anything, it just dumped the water on the ground, not cool (I had to add a tube and bottle to capture that water). This is easy to fix of course.
And while the first cooler might have worked for some people, I still felt the air was too warm for my use, so I had to wait for a newer and bigger cooler which finally did the job (but still had a water release that dumped water on the floor unless I had my own tube to redirect it to a container)
I did test that the compressor properly delivered over 90% O2 at almost 10 liters per minute when the chamber was at 2 ATA (which means the concentrator has to make 20lpm of O2, something that the Lannx/Hugo failed to do in the videos I saw). This is by far the most important point, most concentrators/compressors uterly fail to deliver the promissed airflow and O2 concentration in the chamber.
Now that you know all this, you can skip the shortcomings I had to deal with, and are now all fixed for me. I'm also being honest with what I experienced to point out that I got a great deal money-wise, but it did involve a bit of time to iron everything out. The good news is that you can skip all of these issues now as the vendor is aware of them (I Was one of the first buyers).
Let's look at pictures. This is how it arrived from China, in 2 boxes, the smaller one had the soft chamber and parts, and the bigger heavy box with the oxygen concentrator and compressor:
not something you can lift on your own
I managed to figure out how to open it and got the heavy concentrator that has wheels
what it looks like
plus parts. The manual didn't really say hwo to assemble it, but it was reasonably obvious
first job was to use the compressor hose to inflate the two stands
all done
the chamber does look like a mess with the seat belt mesh
thankfully all parts had different size hoses or thread so it was not possible to get things wrong
taking shape
a small remote that was meant for some other device that only allows on/off functionality
building the chamber the first time was still a bit of trial and error, especially with the belts and hoses
first pressure test at 1.7 ATA
As explained above, the chamber without the frame takes a long time to inflate, and it very cumbersome to zip up from inside, so after telling Olive "why on earth did you not sell me the frame", I got it and installed it. It also came with limited instructions, and I found it was best to half built it outside and then then bring it in side for final assembly:
not super easy to put together, but doable
connecting the bars was 'fun'
and now the chamber doesn't collapse to the ground when it's empty
it looks a bit flimsy, but does the job
once the chamber is inflated, the frame does not matter anyway
This video shows the pressure going down after I opened the release valve inside the chamber, and how you can open it and get out, on your own:
Yes, you can get out by yourself
How long does it take to inflate?
takes around 5mn to get to chamber fully inflated and pressure going up
and another 5mn or so to get to 1.7ATA
Then, the next problem was fixing heat:
unsurprisingly, the compressed air is very warm (it's celcius of course)
had to buy this peltier cooler, it helped
it was ok at start
but by the end, it was starting to get warm
problems with it creating water, though
due to a bug in this relay to release water
this is what it did before the relay release was fixed
and yeah, the first cooler was only so good, 32C output was still warm
Because the first cooler didn't cool enough for me, I waited until Olive had a new cooler (that works more like a fridge) and it was more seriously built without exposed high voltage and easy risk of shorting and smaller risk of fires (the peltier one was a bit of a joke safety-wise). Sadly, it still din't come with anything to route the water that would just fall on the floor, so I had to get my own tubing and a bottle to capture that:
the older cooler is smaller and in the back
So, I did use the chamber at 2.0 ATA, but in the end I elected to use it at 1.7 ATA so that I don't have to worry about oxygen toxicity, and as a middle ground between higher pressure treatment and lower pressure ones (some actually work better with slightly lower pressures). I did check that the Olive compressor did a good job doing the right pressure and O2 concentration:
note 95% at 10lpm, while a Hugo test I saw showed numbers that were terrible
I confirmed it did deliver around 10lpm inside the chamber
Now the last bit I need to mention is nose canulas are worthless for giving you 100% O2, and most masks are also crap as they let outside air in. I recommend you get this kind of mask with a bag so that the bag fills up when you're not breathing and you get a real full breath of O2 when you're actually breathing:
So there you go, this is what the chamber really looks like and how it works. Despite Olive not selling me everything I needed when I first got it, and having to order in pieces, I'm very happy with the end result, and I'm still convinced it's the only soft chamber that can do 2.0ATA safetly for that price.
How do you get one?
It depends on what country you live in. In some countries, Olive sells direct, in others, they use distributors, which you have to use but will sell to you locally and provide local support and warranty. The latter does cost a bit extra, but having someone local to help is of course a plus.
In the US: affordablehyperbaricsolutions@gmail.com (I did talk to them quite a bit while choosing between Olive and Hugo last year, and they were helpful in providing info on poor past experiences with Hugo, which is why they picked Olive and I did too. They Emailed me to offer buyers a 10% rental discount or 5% purchase discount if you ask them :) ).
Outside the US distributor #1: please contribute and I will add to this page
While I'm at it, Olive did not provide me any discounts or payment for this blog. They did however help me timely when I was buying and working through the problems I mentioned above, so I was satisfied with their customer support, but if you work with a local distributor, you will be better taken care of and avoid the trial and error I went through.
I'll start this by staying, I'm not a doctor, I'm not a lawyer, I'm not a sales person, and I'm not a medical device medical engineer with FDA approval/regulations specialty, although I did use to live with one for over 10 years, so I have some understanding of that FDA process while not being a specialist on it either (but neither are most who talk about it). Before I continue, I'll point out that multiple people who post about HBOT and call themselves doctors are not medical doctors with medical degrees, and therefore their medical background or opinion should be on the same level as mine. You should trust what I say no more than what they say, but hopefully I'm giving enough reasoned information below that matches what's currently happening in the US market, that you can consider my points as hopefully valid.
Now that this is out of the way, I'll summarize what I've read and seen, partially to help others, as well as encourage someone who actually knows this stuff inside and out, to tell me if I'm wrong, why, and show me supporting evidence like clear FDA regulations and how they apply to what I'm going to explain below. I will however say right now that I will only consider "you're wrong" opinions with clear supporting evidence in a well written reply with references and ignore you if you say "I know this stuff, but I don't have time to write the details as to why I'm right and you're wrong".
Summary:
way too many people post in the US that soft chambers can only be 1.3 ATA at most in the US
incidentally all of them I've talked to myself, happen to sell/resell soft chambers, and from what I saw all of them sell/resell soft chambers made by US manufacturers. Potential conflict of interest obviously.
my understanding is that US manufacturers of soft chambers must make such chambers to meet one FDA approved use, and there is only a single FDA approved use of soft chambers, namely to transport a patient with decompression sickness to a hard chamber capable of higher pressures (treating DCS can require pressures of 3 ATA or more, which soft chambers are not capable of). If you have heard of double blind placebo controlled studies, this is where those come in. They make sure not only the treatment is not otherwise harmful, does help for the intended use, and helps more than spontaneous healing due to luck or people healing themselves by the power of their mind (if you think this is a joke, it is not, look up "placebo effect"). The premise for those studies is sound, but they are slow and expensive.
Whoever paid for that FDA study to get soft chambers approved for it likely had to pay millions of dollars and spend over a year to get this approved, that's how the FDA works. If you want to add a new FDA approved use, or change the chamber pressure to 1.5 ATA, you need to do a new study which can cost again about a year and millions of dollars. Few companies have that time and money.
there are 14 FDA approved uses of HBOT in hard chambers, and covered by insurance, and they are listed in this page. Odds are none of those are what you are trying to do, or if they were you'd likely go to an approved hard chamber facility and get those treatments and reimbursed by insurance: https://www.hyperbaricmedicalsolutions.com/blog/hyperbaric-oxygen-insurance-coverage
Most uses of hbot by people looking at buying their own chambers for home use, are off label. Off label means using an FDA approved drug or equipment for a medical use other than one that was part of a tested and approved use tested by a study. It is actually a huge loophole in the system, it allows using just about any drug or equipment for any ultimately other use that wasn't properly tested as part of a rigorous study as described above. For instance if you are using trazodone, an anti depressant, for sleep, or gapabentin (an anti nerve pain drug) again for sleep, or even seroquel (an anti bipolar drug) for sleep, those are all off label uses and none of those 3 drugs were rigorously tested to work as sleep drugs, although many doctors know by now they work well for that use too and prescribe them to some patients for deeper/longer sleep.
Back to HBOT, my point is that by definition no off label use is FDA approved, but the good news is that the FDA does not prevent off label use.
In turn however, this means the 1.3 ATA limit on soft chambers for early DCS patient transport, does not apply since this is not what off label patients are using them for. However, US manufacturers apparently can only build soft chambers for an approved use, it's the only one, and it's limited to 1.3 ATA, hence the 1.3 ATA limit.
But this is where things get interesting: in the US (not true of Canada for instance), the FDA does not currently prevent a patient from buying a soft chamber made by a non US manufacturer, it does not prevent anyone from using any soft chamber at any given pressure including pressures above 1.3 ATA (you can make the point that there are some limited risks especially at 2.0 ATA and above for uninformed patients treating themselves without doctor supervision, so the FDA might want to regulate that use, but as of right now it hasn't been enough of a problem for them ot do so). The FDA does not prevent importing your own soft chamber capable of 1.5 ATA+ from a non US vendor, and from what I can tell it does not seem illegal for US resellers to sell non US made 1.5ATA+ chambers in the US to US buyers. That last part I'm not 100% certain about, but I know multiple US companies that sell them and if it's somehow not quite legal, that's ultimately their problem and risk not yours.
So there you go, this is why you can buy and use a 1.5 ATA+ soft chamber in the US, and why many resellers or US manufacturers seem to keep repeating it's not legal, when it totally seems to be for now. I'll now repeat that if somehow it were to be not super legal for US resellers to sell those chambers, as a buyer, do you really care as long as you can buy the chamber you want and need? Obviously my own answer is no :) In Canada, some users have found that they cannot get a soft chamber shipped to their home, but they can get one sent to the US and drive it across the border themselves. That's more of a pain obviously.
I have seen other posts talking about non FDA standards related to construction, fire risk, maybe electrical norms (like anything sold in US is supposed to be UL certified). I am certain those chinese made chambers were not tested to meet each and every of those non medical, non FDA certifications, but apparently it's not against the law to sell, buy, or use them either, or if it is, no one seems to care or enforce that, so you can decide if you care yourself. I'll point out that a lot of stuff sold today on amazon or elsewhere also does not meet some of those other regulations either, or maybe they do or even exceed them, but they never paid to get certified to the US test/norm.
The one thing you should hopefully care about is "is that soft chamber going to burst?", which would be a catastrophic failure that can cause injury and potentially really damage your ears if it happens at the wrong time at high pressure. This is where you have to decide how much you trust each product. Whether it's US made or not, does not make me feel that much better, and honestly a lot of "US made" stuff is really made in china anyway, just saying.
The truth is that some Chinese manufacturers do care to make properly engineered and tested stuff, it's the same than when I was sourcing computer and electronic hardware from there, some was utter crap and would fail because it was cheap. Others were well made and tested to be durable by companies that did rigorous engineering and testing, using chinese testing norms that were equivalent or even superior to the US ones.
The tricky part is to find which chinese companies you can trust, and which ones you should not. I used my experience in dealing with those vendors and knowing what questions to ask to get a good feel for my own purchase. Whether you want to trust my experience, research and feel, that's entirely up to you. I'm sharing the work I've done and the points to consider, so you can redo that work for yourself if you wish, but don't simply assume that if you're buying form a US manufacturer, everything will automatically be ok. There are enough clear examples of the opposite. I would say that it's true that if you get a 1.3 ATA only chamber, it's easier to meet those specs and limit the risks, but you're also settling for what I consider a lesser chamber compared to a 1.5 to 2.0 ATA capable chamber. It's your call at this point.
There are US made 1.3 ATA chambers that have failed catastrophically (exploded). There have been fires in hard chambers with people dying because they couldn't get out, and the operator was not there to watch them and let them out. I have heard from a practitioner I worked with, of 1.45ATA soft chambers that failed slowly (leakage in seams or zippers that prevented reaching full pressure), but nothing catastrophic. I have seen 2 vendors of $8000 2.0 ATA chambers on meubon that sold chambers with no reviews and did not fill me with confidence (they are listed in my previous blog linked below). Those 2 Meubon listed chambers made me nervous enough that I would not use them and go in them even if I got them for free.
So applying all of the above, this is what I did to get my own chamber:
I'm willing to believe 1.3ATA is sufficient treatment for some off label uses
I'm fairly convinced that for most of those treatments, they would work better and faster at 1.5 or 1.7 ATA
Some likely work better and faster at 2.0 ATA
I have read some opinions, that may be valid, that some specific treatment might work better at 1.5 ATA than 2.0 ATA. This is just a feeling, without a rigorous FDA double blind study, anyone who says anything either way (including me), is just guessing. I'll add that some of that advice came from someone who isn't a medical doctor with a medical degree, so it's jut an opinion based on personal research from public sources that should have the same weight as if you or I did that same research from similar sources.
I personally do not believe any off label treatment I care about needs or will work better/faster with more than 2.0 ATA
I found exactly one soft chamber that does 2.0 ATA and from a manufacturer I'm willing to trust after talking to them and their competitor for several weeks, and asking them tough questions to know whether they knew what they were talking about, and whether the had rigorous testing to back up their sales claim. Olive won over Hugo/Lannx, and if you are in the US you can get the 2.0 ATA one from the US distributor AHS / affordablehyperbaricsolutions@gmail.com
If you don't think you need 2.0 ATA, or fully trust a soft chamber to do 2.0 ATA safely, don't you want to use a 2.5 ATA tested chamber at 1.5 ATA if that's your target pressure, instead of a 1.5 only ATA chamber that is reaching its design limits each time you use it?
This is the Olive 2.0 chamber I got for myself:
For the rest, please read my previous blog on chambers and how I compared them. I also list 3 1.5 ATA only chambers you can pick from and that I would reasonably trust. The price is similar enough though that the only reason I would not buy the Olive 2.0 ATA chamber is if you don't like the car seat belt straps you need to use in addition to the zippers and that are needed for extra structural integrity. You can use them as a single user without help, but they add I would say 20 to 30 seconds of work getting in and out of the chamber without help.
I will repeat this point because it's important: in engineering it's always better if you can to get a product that will exceed your requirements so that there is more of a design buffer between your use and the engineering limits. In my own use, I may end up using my 2.0 ATA Olive chamber at 1.7 ATA, haven't full decided yet.
Here is the previous blog: Learning about HBOT/Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy I was referring to. I would also repeat from that previous blog that aside from the actual chamber safety, you should very much care that the concentrator and compressor can deliver at least 7lpm of 95% O2 at your target pressure. I will say right now that too many products (even some 1.3 ATA chambers when OMG, it's not hard to deliver at that low pressure) fail to deliver the right amount of airflow, or if they give you the airflow, they fails to deliver enough O2 percentage at that airflow level.
So there you go, hope this all helps, good luck on your selection and purchase.
After writing this, I did find two resources people cite as problematic:
NFPA-55 - You can't have bulk oxygen (generally classified as more than 13,000 cubic feet) in residential areas or housed indoors: this is not relevant to chambers that use O2 concentrators since they make that O2 on the fly and none is stored in your house
