battery box fan [RE-wrenches]

[Kurt Nelson, SunWise]

Travis Creswell, Ozark Solar wrote:
> 
> My opinion is that active battery box venting is not needed.  A passive vent
> to the outside if to get rid of the charging smell is really all that's
> necessary.  Let's face it if the hydrogen was a problem then a lot more
> systems would have had some sort of explosion.
> 
Greetings all,

On the hole battery vening issue, I often wonder about passive venting
and vent "plumbing".  I did one system this summer that has the vent
opening on the Northwest side of the builidng which in this case gets a
lot of strong northwest winds off Lake Superior.  That whole side of the
building ends up under pressure.  I did install an equalizing fan on
this system, which is a muffin fan blowing into the front of (and low)
on the battery box, pressurizing it.  It has a backdraft preventing
sheet of heavy (Too-Tuff) plastic secured on the inside/top fan opening
(fan mounted on outside of box).  The clients are weekenders and I have
told them to use this fan to also warm up the battery when they come up
during cold weather (wood heat).  No SW here, but like the idea of using
an Aux relay to bring the fan on at high battery voltage.  Monkey shit
(that grey putty that never dries) must be placed in battery cable
conduit to prevent gases from being pushed back into the electronics
end.  On passive with only one vent opening, I feel the vent pipe needs
to be fairly large diameter, and many of my boxes that contain four to
sixteen L-16's vented with 1-1/2 inch PVC.  Vertical rise is nice, but I
have gone straight out the back of the box/wall as well.  I think fans
push much better than they suck, but perhaps that is a matter of fan
type as well.  I always place the vent opening high (or in the cover) on
the box and any other opening (vent or conduit) low.  Any thoughts about
the necessity/not of having a low vent opening (open to the building
interior) to supply air to the enclosure and incourage air flow to the
upper vent that is plumbed outside? -- Kurt Nelson

PS - I tried a couple Radio Shacks around here and the little S-cage
fans are not to be had.

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