I’m approaching the end of my first year with KS7/open domes. I plan to change them whether they need it or not.
To me at least, a wax guard needs replacement when it contains enough wax to disrupt or completely block sound. The filters are small so it doesn’t take a lot of wax to do it.
Each morning I check my wax guards in one, or both, of two ways. One way is to listen to the startup beeps (I get 10 of them) on each side, and see if they sound like they should. This relies on my listening judgment and I don’t entirely trust it. The other way is to pull off the domes and look at the wax guards. In good light, I can tell with my naked eye whether the guard is clean. I don’t know if pulling off the domes too often weakens them.
My wax guard change interval has varied widely. I just went weeks before having to replace one, while in the warmer weather I sometimes replaced them multiple times per week. Also, I suspect that Phonak domes, with an arch of rubber over the sound opening, keep wax out of the guards better than ReSound domes. On ReSound earmolds the filter is exposed, so there’s no problem checking for wax, but also nothing to keep the wax out.
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I changed my wax guards after 1 month. They were very clean. I didn’t see anything in the pores but since I can only see the outside of the pores and they’re relatively easy to change, it didn’t seem a big deal to do so. I looked at one of the bare receivers, after removing the wax guard, and it was very clean inside as well. It seems the big trick in switching out wax guards is to clean up the outside of the receivers and the domes very well before doing so so that you don’t have any crud that somehow accidentally falls into the bare receivers or into the new wax guards before you put the domes back on. Since I have Sports Locks on my receivers, I also had to look out that those didn’t slip out of place in the pushing and pulling involved and prevent me from getting the domes all the way back onto the receivers. But hopefully the PR for the Jodi-Vac is correct and vacuum cleaning helps keep your dome/wax guard pores clean. With brushing and scraping, I couldn’t see how I wasn’t going to push some stuff into my dome/wax guard pores eventually.
Speaking of replacing wax guards, does anyone know if Phonak Cerustop 098-0282 wax guards work on ReSounds (particularly the Quattro’s)? On Amazon the best pricing deal on Cerustop wax guards is on the Phonak ones, advertised to work on Widex, Unitron, and Phonak. Some purchasers say that they also work on their ReSounds but the official ReSound Cerustop wax guards have a different logo on the case and are more expensive on Amazon. Hate to pay more if the Phonak’s are essentially the same wax guard, just rebranded (everything about the application tool, the case, the wax guard contour, etc., basically looks the same as the official ReSound wax guards that I have).
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Our mobile clinicians use the Jodi-vac. Works very well.
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To answer my own question, I found the following advice on the UK Keep Hearing site under Phonak CeruSTOP wax guards (claims to be the UK’s favourite hearing aid accessory store - so if that’s true, perhaps they have reason to know):
"Is it compatible with other brands?
The CeruSTOP wax filters are also found on other brands hearing aids. So do not worry if you are using these filters but are confused because your hearing instrument is from another manufacturer. As long as you need CeruSTOP, these will be fine."
So I ordered a 10-pk(80 units) of Phonak CeruSTOP’s on Amazon for $25.99 and will see how those work out. Don’t know much about the physics of sound but I’m curious that the holes in the wax guards don’t have to be aligned with the holes in the domes, etc.
The answer is “YES!” The Phonak Cerustop wax guards cited in my quote seem to work fine on my Quattro receivers. Definitively remove and replace with no apparent problems in tightness of fit and grip.
Since the case of the Cerustops says it’s recyclable in plastic category #5, that’s where I’m returning the wax guard removal tool and used wax guard to go to that great recycling bin in the sky.
EDIT_UPDATE One further conundrum arising: on the package of the Cerustops, there is presumably the manufacture date: 2017-08-24. Does anyone know if Cerustops age in a bad way just sitting around? Perhaps that’s why there is such a relatively good deal in purchasing 10 8-pk’s on Amazon of a lot that is already more than a year old. It will take me ~3 years+ to use them all up so the very last will have sat around 4 years after manufacture before being put into use.
Mine lasted three years without problem. I only got a couple of new packets a few months ago.
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Thanks for the info! I also asked on Amazon on the Phonak product page and someone there said that they’ve used packets 5 years old with no problem, too. I guess the main problem would be if somehow because of age they disintegrated or otherwise misfunctioned (! - sic) and let wax into the receivers but it’s good to know that’s not a problem. We let our house get pretty warm in summer (up to 85 deg F part of the day) so I’m probably going to subject my wax guards in storage to a bit more heat stress than most folks.
I have custom molds on my OPN, they use two waxguards behind each other, different size. The outside ones are a week to 3 weeks. I clean them myself with a (Cola)bottle warm water, with a tiny hole in the cap where I place the filter in. I do have 3 sets filters, so when they are all dirty I do all at once. The inside ones take long.
I can advise to dry your ears after the shower before putting HA in. Because all the moisture, will loosen the wax and let it easy low inside the speaker. I had to replace one speaker within a year, I think it got waxed inside.
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The Jodi-Vac PR claims that ear “oil” can seep into your receivers through your domes and wax guards and claims that using a Jodi-Vac will allow you to suck out any liquid-like material seeping in through the dome/wax guard barriers. I have no idea whether that’s really so. The first time I changed my wax guards, I did look at the bare receivers and they looked as clean as new. But thanks for the tip about showering and thoroughly drying one’s ears. I could see, too, if I plunked my HA’s in right away and had some residual water left around the ear canal openings, I might push the water right up into my ear canals with the domes. I haven’t been especially careful to dry around my ear canals after a shower but will be now! Loosening the wax or not, getting water itself into your receivers would not be a good idea - and I hadn’t worried about that too much, either!
It regularly gets up to that temperature here and about 5 deg. higher. Just keep them in the coolest convenient drawer.
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Maybe, in the interest of science, you could only use the Jodi-Vac on one aid for a while.
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Does the Jodi-Vac collect the material vacuumed up? In other words, can you see how much stuff you remove over time?
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On the Jodi-Vac website there is a page showing clean and dirty vacuum filters (even a little video if you want to and can allow Adobe Flash on your device-could not find an equivalent YouTube video for the consumer device). The stuff accumulated in the filters looks rather dry and powdery, no worse than dried earwax on your HA’s themselves. I’m just amazed the machine can keep vacuuming as the filter tube fills up - I guess the dried wax is hard enough that “pores” remain between wax granules for air to keep flowing towards the pump. As I mentioned, the Jodi-Vac is a lot cheaper on Amazon than purchased directly through the Jodi-Vac site (for anyone interested) and in buying spare filters directly from Jodi-Vac, they didn’t even have a web shopping cart so my choices were basically giving the woman I spoke to my credit card info over the phone or mailing a check - the latter is what I did.
http://jodivac.com/how_jodi-vac_works.html
I’m just a Jodi-Vac enthusiast - not earning $$$ sellling anything here 
But for folks who invest a lot of effort trialing different HA’s, which certainly involves some expense, if only driving back and forth to an audi, paying a restocking fee, if any, etc., it might be worth it, if the device piques your interest, to give it a try. And it’s good to hear from folks, too, like @Psocoptera who told feel that the device is not all that useful for the way that they like to work with and clean their HA’s, just to balance things out. Until it breaks (!), it’s fun to use and I enjoy cleaning my HA’s with it alot more than the brushing, probing, cloth-rubbing route.
I guess what I’m wanting to know is that if one brushed hearing aids regularly, would one get much visible stuff in the Jodi-Vac filter?
I tried the brush, cloth, scraper, probe for the first week or so. Particularly with regard to microphone openings and dome pores since it seems like a nuisance to me to remove the domes, clean or soak the openings every day, dry them, replace them, etc., it’s just so much easier to have one tool that does it all, not have to worry about cleaning the brush or a cloth, or chucking them (more landfill) and replacing with fresh, etc. And as I mention in another thread, since the HA’s come out of a non-sterile environment, go back into the same environment 8 or 10 hours later, I don’t feel compelled to remove every last little bit of gunk (except from the microphone and the dome pore areas) so I am not worried about sterilizing my HA’s or having them absolutely clean everyday-thoroughly drying them every night and then (scraping where necessary and) vacuuming away debris seems good enough to me. (I wonder how many people actually UV-sterilize their plain old earbuds, etc. So there is probably a far larger “control” group of normal-hearing people in the world just plunking earbuds into the ears everyday, handling them willy-nilly, and we have not heard of ranging endemic diseases there). But I think folks should do whatever makes them happy. Whatever method addresses one’s concerns and makes one feel best about enjoying one’s HA’s is the one to use - different strokes for different folks, so trite but so true.
I’m a minimalist. I’ll stick with brushing wax away from domes and trying to be careful with dirty hands. I’m not at all concerned about sterility, but am curious how much stuff Jodi-Vac would remove if surface visible stuff was brushed away.
I guess the only way to find out would be to try it yourself. With a filter that’s already dirty, it would be hard for me to tell.
The thing about the Jodi-Vac is that you don’t have to be switching tools and you don’t have to unfold the dome to clean the inside of the umbrella (under the dome). So after doing the microphone, switch crevices, and the dome pores, it’s very easy and facile and fast to just keep right on going to remove crud elsewhere. Most of the time, you can use the needle as a scraping, poking tool at the same time you’re vacuuming. Sometimes there are areas that are so plastered onto a receiver that it does pay to switch to a wireloop scraping tool, then vacuum up the loosened wax with the Jodi-Vac needle, though.
I think Neville or Stephen Bright** has already commented that they use vacuums in their professional care of HA’s for users. Perhaps for most people a Jodi-Vac is too much more expense, too much extra “stuff” requiring more of a place to use, an electrical outlet, etc., but for me, I find it does a great job and more thorough, easy, less messy cleaning (since the gunk is sucked into a container) than brushing and worry about where the stuff is flying. Like (sic) if you were cleaning your house, would you vacuum it or just brush the dirt off things onto the floor, then brush up the floor, etc. For centuries people just brushed and beat stuff clean (as well as washing and scrubbing). So a vacuum is just a new-fangled invention that has its pros and cons but just like I prefer to vacuum my house rather than brushing, sweeping, or feather-dusting, I prefer to vacuum (and scrape) my HA’s with a Jodi-Vac needle. People should use whatever makes them feel good and efficient about cleaning their HA’s. There are other brands of vacuums, too. And obviously HA OEM’s don’t feel vacuuming is very essential since it doesn’t seem to be mentioned as an option in the instructions. They’d probably be selling vacuums themselves if vacuuming offered an unusual special advantage (Our brand comes with a FREE vacuum when you plunk down $6K for your HA’s!!!). So it’s just like disposable batteries vs. Li-ion rechargeable batteries. There are some reasons to prefer one approach over another. And it depends on how people weigh the pros and cons of each in what’s important to them as to which method you choose. Anyone who is perfectly satisfied with cloths, brushes, and scraping/poking tools should just keep using those and not think twice about any brand of HA vacuum cleaner.
** Think @Neville stated in a post that his practice uses vacs and @Um_bongo has a YouTube video I believe on using another brand of vacuum - hope I got it right.
Edit_Update
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The waste collects in a small test tube-like clear container but after many uses mine had only a barely visible smear on the side of the container. That was after vacuuming the whole aids including battey compartments, domes, under the filters etc. many times, so I guess my general maintenance is doing well and vacuuming occasionally would seem to be enough for me.
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