I only live in a small house which makes an air mattress incredibly useful when extra guests come to stay. It allows us to transform any room into a comfortable place to sleep. In addition, it’s a handy addition for weekend camping trips! To make life easier, I use an electric air pump to inflate the mattress. While it’s convenient, how much power does it consume?
Below we will discuss and test air mattress pump wattage, explain how to work it out for yourself, and calculate the total electricity required.
How Many Watts is an Air Mattress Pump?
The average air mattress pump uses between 10 to 30 watts.
The exact number depends on the size and model of your air mattress pump. For example, a small 12V device draws 10W or less, while more powerful AC air pumps use around 30W.
On the whole, these are low-powered devices. You will find that the larger and more powerful the pump the higher the wattage. A more powerful pump offers a higher airflow to inflate your mattress quicker.
How to Find Out Your Air Mattress Pump Wattage
There’s 3 ways you can work out the wattage of an air mattress pump.
- Check Product Specification
The quickest way is to look at the air mattress pump’s specification. The watts (W) is usually written on a sticker on the base of the appliance. If not, you can check the user manual or the manufacturer’s website for technical details.
- Use a Wattmeter
A wattmeter is brilliant for getting a live wattage reading and tracking total energy usage of any appliance. You can simply plug it into your air mattress pump to get instant information.
I used one to test my air mattress pump which gave a live reading of 22.6W.
- Wattage Formula or Calculator
If you know the amperage and voltage of your air mattress pump you can use this to find the maximum watt rating. Simply use the formula Amps x Volts = Watts. Or you can head over to the ‘Watt Calculator’ to work this out.
How Much Electricity Does an Air Mattress Pump Use?
You can use air mattress pump wattage to work out how much electricity it uses. Plus this can be useful in understanding how much it costs to run your air mattress pump.
A watt (W) is a measurement of power at a single point in time. A watt-hour (Wh) is the total amount of electricity used in an hour. For example, an air mattress pump drawing 30W would use 30Wh when running for an hour.
Happily, electricity bills are recorded in kilowatt-hours (kWh). A kilowatt is simply 1000 watts. So a 30W air mattress pump running for 1 hour uses 0.03kWh.
In reality, you run your pump for 5 minutes at a time. Let’s say you use it once a week, that’s 20 minutes a month. That means you would use upto 0.010kWh a month and 0.12kWh a year.
That’s a rough electricity cost of $0.018 a year to inflate an air mattress once a week.
It uses almost no electricity and is even easier than a manual foot pump.
Using an Air Mattress Pump Off-Grid
If you’re planning to use your air mattress pump in an off-grid situation like a power outage, camping, RV, boat, or semi-truck the information above is important. It enables you to pick the correct power products and know how long you can run them for.
If you have access to a vehicle then you can simply use a 12V pump to inflate items with a car adapter plug.
To run an AC pump or without a vehicle, you can use a power inverter, portable power station, or generator for electricity.
To make sure everything runs smoothly you should check two things on this equipment – wattage capacity and total energy capacity.
Your power source, like an inverter, should have a wattage capacity of at least 20% more than your air mattress pump. This ensures it will be able to deliver enough power as they are never 100% efficient. 50W should be plenty of power!
Secondly, you need to ensure your energy source, like a battery, has enough energy to run the air mattress pump for the required amount of time. As we already know, it will use upto 2.5Wh electricity for each usage. This is the equivalent to 0.2Ah on a 12V battery.
How Many Watts Does an Air Mattress Pump Use Summary
I hope you now have a clear understanding of how many watts an air mattress pump uses.
As you now know, these are very low-powered devices. They only use a little electricity to run an internal motor. If you are worried about using too much electricity when upgrading from a foot pump, then it won’t be a big factor. When on camping adventures, you can easily hook up to a vehicle or power station without overloading your energy source.
