

| Subject: | Re: Under-Sink Battery Installation |
| From: | Steve Williams |
| Date: | Wed, 10 Aug 2011 07:46:21 -0700 |
I don't want to seem argumentative, but just another note on venting the battery compartment: At 11:23 AM 8/9/2011, Rocket J Squirrel wrote: >... my aux battery, a honking but 130 A/h Trojan deep cycle, which >lives under the bench seat. That's hardly an airtight compartment. >Any hydrogen that bubbles out vents right out of the seat ... But >under the sink ... the hydrogen leaking upward would pass right next >to sources of ignition ... It might be dangerous. You go first. The kitchen cabinet has a long vent at the top, extending the whole width of the cabinet just under the window. And the shelves and dividers inside are anything but air-tight: There are big gaps everywhere. Yes, there are ignition sources in there. (I have a big ignition source from Propex under my rear seat, too, as it happens.) But to present a hazard, any hydrogen vented from the battery would have to collect to create a combustible mixture. It's hard to imagine that happening in such an open cabinet. So I'm comfortable going first. (Or copying GoWesty's installations, which precede mine.) If I don't explode in a year or two, I think we're safe! (Writing this led me to the Wikipedia article on "Flammability Limit," which is kind of interesting. Hydrogen, it says, is flammable at 4% mixture with air, and explosive at 75%, if I understand.)
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