PureWick External Catheter leakage, any suggestions?

No external odor here. System is used at night only. Dock station is bedside on the floor placed on a heavy weight baking sheet for air flow. In the morning I remove the tubing daily to rinse, then wash in soapy cold water, rinse, disinfect with 70% alcohol, then final rinse. Air dry. I wipe the dock and metal sheet too. Use a brief and bed pad as a precaution. It works well— user is on Xarelto and at risk for internal bleeding and falls. For those reasons IMO the catheters should be covered by insurance.

I don't have an answer for the leakage from the purewick catheter. I guess we are lucky, we haven't had much of a problem there. What was a problem is the horrible smell of urine that was spewed into the room from the suction pump. With some 3/8 tubing and adapters from Amazon I easily ran a tube through the window and moved the pump outside. The pump has to spew urine vapor into the room as it draws air through the catheter and the tubing which are soaked in urine. I don't know if I will also move the canister outside, at least it is sealed. In the hospital it is mounted to the wall and hooked to a suction source that is located in an industrial room somewhere in the hospital. They most likely had to change the vacuum discharge in hospitals to deal with the smell of urine.

MODIFYING THE PUREWICK DRYDOCK
I'm upgrading the pump in the Purewick Dry Dock from a Fusion 500 to a Fusion 700 to get better suction. Sometimes it's kind of hit and miss as far as suction goes.
Go to Ebay to locate this pump. Only about $20.00! To install... Remove the 2 torque screws on the back of the dry dock, and on the bottom, the front screw that hold the rubber foot on and replace pump. Fairly simple.
But before you close everything back up,,, There is a fix for the urine smell in the room! It is as follows: Remember,,, To be able to have suction, you have to have discharge! On the Fusion pump, there are two 1/4" exhaust ports. This is how the urine smell gets into the room. To solve this, plug pump in and find which port is exhausting. Next, drill a hole in the Dry Dock housing lined up with that port. Now attach 1/4" clear Tygon tubing thru hole in Dry Dock and attach to the exhaust port. It's a good snug fit, nothing else needed.
The next thing I did was drill a @1/4" hole in the drywall above the baseboard. @ 4"between the studs. Run the tubing into the wall. Since I went into an interior wall, I also drilled a hole into the top plates so that the small amount of exhaust could vent out into the attic.
Not only did this decrease the urine smell in the room, the tubing out of the Dry Dock and the 1/4" hole in the wall is barely noticeable!
Hope this helps anyone that may be frustrated with the workings of the Purewick.

Before placing the wick, bend it into a C shape. Bend 3-4 times but bend gently. This worked wonders with my mom. Now having probs with cutoff valve in lid.......

Realized this is an old question from Aug 2019

My mother used this product when she was in the hospital. I recommended it to her urologist. My mother was on Lasix IV and it helped tremendously, although it did leak at times. I loved it and it help keep her dry. We also used it when she got out of bed into the chair. It is not perfect and it will leak at times, but my mother was dry most of the night with only one change as opposed to every two to three hour changes . My mother had 800cc in the canister during the night. Sponge external catheters should be changed every eight hours per instructions. This is a fairly new product and eventually the company may find a way to prevent leakage. In my opinion the sponge catheter is too big. I would like to see the company make a smaller one. The company is working on Medicare coverage. I would not use anything other than what is supplied by the company. Just a little humor, when my mother first used the product in the hospital, you could hear the urine being suctioned forcefully into the canaster as she looked down where the catheter was placed and started whining. She got used to it, though. Great in the hospital for patients on intake and output measurement. Eventually the company or others will improve the product.

Here’s a few tips I have. Positioning of Cath is most important. You need to find the position that works best. After that, I’ll tell you a few secrets. The pump is undersized. Mine died at 5 months and they won’t even talk about a no charge replacement or selling even selling me parts. So, I had to undertake a repair myself. Upon opening the unit I found that the pump is nothing more than a $30 aquarium pump set to suck air instead of blow air. Since the company only wants to sell me a $330 replacement unit, I replaced the pump with a more powerful aquarium pump. This upgraded pump draws off liquid twice as fast and allows more latitude in placement.

I honestly think those things are just going to leak, no matter what. We did 2+ years with mother's and she leaked all day, everyday and all night. She wore tight depends AND 2 poise pads and STILL managed to leak on everything. The leaking, for the most part was contained in the pads and such, but then we had to deal with constant UTI's and that was ridiculous.

She has an internal catheter, which she just hangs on her walker at home and straps to her leg when leaving the house. It, too, leaks, but she seems less bothered by it. The supra pubic cath looked awful and painful, but she never said it hurt. Then internal one gets twisted and such, and I don't know what she does--mostly just lets the urine run down her legs, until someone shows up to clean her up.

Sadly, I think this is a lose-lose situation--but you have to do SOMETHING!

Also, I have found that she is less likely to keep 'ahead' of the draining of the cath bag--so she thinks she can go an extra hour or more and it results in a mess for everyone.