Perhaps but I don’t keep that tight a track of when they are changed - usually they start to tear or feel thinner and I figure it is time to change them. I have a good supply and I only remove the domes to clean them when I am at home so they are easily replaced if I think they need it. The tearing is minor and easily spotted.
I was just worried about you getting one stuck in your ear canal one day…
My audiologist told me that if a dome ever gets stuck in my ear, I should come to her office rather than going to a doctor or urgent care. Medical people will make a big deal out of the situation, while someone at her office will just pull the dome out.
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My wife has gotten pretty good at it.
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I’ve never done that. I put mine in a little dryer that has an ultraviolet light.
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[quote=“6934ca706e439a3ddaa2, post:8, topic:40271, full:true”]
OMG. I had no idea I was supposed to remove domes and wipe them down with alcohol each night. …[/quote]
I think it’s important to wipe the domes off each night. It gets rid of wax. I don’t really see a benefit of the alcohol. Yes it’s a tad cleaner, but a lot more bother and expense.
Also, I wouldn’t remove the domes per se. Just wipe them down well each night. My HAs came with a little cloth for doing this (every once in a while, I wash it in soap and water to get rid of built up wax). When the domes start to come off as I’m wiping, I know it’s time to replace domes. Generally, a pair of domes last about six weeks to two months. Given that a pair of domes cost only ~$2, we’re talking something like $1 to $1.50 for domes each month.
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I’ve been changing mine about every three weeks. I figure that those tiny holes get plugged with ear stuff. Seems to me that fresh domes make the HAs louder and clearer.
Although a Jodi-Vac consumer is expensive (~$100 on Amazon), it does a good job of cleaning up the dome openings plus everything else - and you can use it on a daily basis - you don’t have to wait three weeks, 2 months, or whatever. One needs to buy replacement filters for the device (direct from the mom-and-pop operations about $16 including mailing for a pack of 6, which should last 3 to 6 years). Compared to the cost of going to a premium audi, the cost of a Jodi-Vac is spare change. It is a good idea to pinch the dome slightly against the receiver when vacuuming the openings. Don’t think you could really pull it off - the suction is strong but not overly but that’s what my audi advised me to do. I have also been running the Jodi-Vac needle over the microphone openings on my HA’s to suck out anything like dandruff that might have fallen in there - but don’t actually stick the needle down into the openings - pass the needle around the switch fitting into the body of the HA as well.
BTW (edit update), although it’s not that loud, I wear gun muffs (ear protection) when using the Jodi-Vac as I have it on a table close by my ears. It’s basically like a fish pump with a nice tubing/needle/filter system. The design seems to be very simple but well-thought out. One could probably try building a home-made device but it probably would not be anywhere near as well put together. With time, some wax seems to build up inside the syringe needle tube that causes some resistance in reinserting the reamer pin. One can overcome this by taking the syringe needle off the filter tube and running the reamer pin through the back side of the syringe needle. Also, moistening the pin with a little bit of your favorite cleaning solution and reaming the needle tube helps clean it and make the pin slide back into the needle easily. Otherwise, you may find so much resistance builds up from a slight amount of gunk inside the syringe needle tube that you’re in danger of bending the reamer pin when you try to reinsert it in the syringe needle when you’re done vacuuming.
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Just wondering which brand HA has domes that fall off so easily. Mine cope well with being removed 5-6 nights per week for cleaning and they have never gotten loose and only need changing every few months so 6 weeks seems quite quick.
I also have a Jodivac but don’t use it often anymore because I did not seem to collect anything much in the trap. I mainly use it for the microphone area but not very often. My filters and domes are supplied by my audiologist included for the life of the aids…
On the Jodi-Vac, maybe it’s one of those YMMV things. I let my HA’s dry overnight before using the Jodi-Vac on them. Any residual wax is nice and dry by then and it’s easily suctioned up. I’ve been using the device two months and the filter is about 25% full - so at that rate the filter would last 8 months. There is a clever foam ball in the flow path to judge the strength of suction - if you have suction, the ball gets sucked up to the top of the filter tube but if you don’t, the ball falls to the bottom of the filter tube under gravity (and you know you need to ream the needle tube, etc., which is required only very infrequently). So presumably I can use 100% of the volume capacity of the filter as long as the ball doesn’t drop because debris accumulation blocks flow. So since my filter usage falls within the parameters that Jodi-Vac says the average customer can expect, the rate at which it works for me must be typical of the average customer and perhaps folks who don’t see anything accumulating have unusually wax-free ears or only use the Jodi-Vac to vacuum microphones?
On free domes and wax guards, I got a much better deal than most folks by going through TruHearing.com. I didn’t pay $6K or $7K for my ReSound Quattro 9 61’s, only about $4,400 before insurance and because my wife is a highly paid MD still working, in addition to my own retirement income, I like to buy my own stuff and not ask for freebies when I got a cut-rate deal from my audi, who seems very competent, but being older may be suffering a bit from competition, i.e., maybe that’s why she’s willing to take less lucrative customers from TruHearing? There seems to be an audi on every block in San Antonio - the same for dentists! So the cost of domes and wax guards is so incidental, it’s not a big deal to get them from Amazon and I don’t have to depreciate the value of my nice car just by driving 20 miles or whatever to get stuff that I can have delivered directly to my door. And hopefully, then, I have no need to visit my audi more than once a year for an annual checkup, unless something goes wrong with the HA’s.
I clean the domes each night so I would not expect much from vacuuming them but in the beginning I vacuumed all over the aids daily but it was a lot of work for little gain That is when I decided that the dome cleaning was enough most of the time.
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I brought mine to work and tried it under a microscope. That’s when I discovered that it doesn’t work well on fresh wax. So, like you said, I use it first thing in the morning when the wax is dry.
I managed to extend the life of my filter using hot water and isopropyl. Made it look brand new. I DO NOT recommend doing this. It was really gross. I will not do that again. 
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I’m not sure I’d say they fall off easily. I think I might wipe a bit too vigorously. It’s just that as the domes age, they slip off more easily when I wipe them down and I begin worrying that one day they’ll come off inside my ear canal. That’s never happened yet. But, it seems to me that they get a bit grotty after about 6 weeks, despite the wiping.
FWIW, I’m wearing Oticon Agil Pro HAs. I got them in 2012, the same year I got new, plastic eyes, a new grandson, and a retired spouse.
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Sounds like an epic year!
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Am I facing prison time? 
Have had my KS7’s 355 days and never changed the domes (click domes - - they don’t come off easily).
When new, I did wipe nightly with the dry cleaning cloth provided for a couple of weeks. They go in the UV dryer every night.
I plan to continue following this forum from jail.
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Haven’t changed mine since May so approx half a year.
I just wipe them with a clean tissue when obviously soiled turning the domes inside out but never unclip the dome.
Also remove the minifit tube from the BTE and thread the plastic cleaning tool through.
They just air dry overnight. On average, they need a weekly wipe.
Regarding bacteria, as mentioned, air drying will remove moisture and inhibit growth.
Secondly, using solvents often damages plastics. I’d use nothing more than a damp microfiber cloth.
Everyone is individual. Some have harder drier wax, other have wax that is wet. Similarly, skin in the ear canal will slough off more or less easily for some.
Common sense as always. Do what works for you.
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Ditto - for the exact same reasons.
What are these?! Do tell!
I had cataract surgery, so it’s really only the lenses in my eyes that are plastic. Whatever, they can’t adjust to different distances, so I have special pairs of glasses sprinkled around for seeing at various distances, one pair for the computer, one pair for playing music, one pair at church for playing handbells, etc. For just walking and reading, bifocals are fine. It’s the intermediate distances that are problematic, for example, I have to have a special pair of glasses for trimming my beard. 
FWIW, so-called progressive lenses on eye glasses, which are supposed to take care of this problem, only work with one’s neck cocked in a certain direction. When you have a stiff, arthritic neck, progressive lenses don’t really work.
Now that I think of it, 2012 was epic in another way, but not a good one. I lost my beloved Golden Retriever, Brewster, that year.
I should probably say something HA related so as not to get pitched from the forum. I’m waiting for a call (since October) from my audiologist, who is going to help update my HAs. I’m quite excited about the idea of getting blue-tooth connected with the world.