Cooling and/or venting electrical closet

[Winter-Vale]

So we (foolishly) built the electrical closet inside instead of in underbody. Everything in there: battery bank, charge controller, inverter. etc . The closet gets HOT. I want to cut a vent and install a small two way fan, probably on the 9V panel. Has anyone vented their onboard utility closet?

[Winter-Vale]

I meant foolish only because it lost me space for pull out pantry and slightly larger shower...

[Iceni John]

I suggest moving the batteries to outside your living area, if only because FLA batteries give off hydrogen when charging, and we all know what happens when hydrogen and oxygen meet a source of ignition... Batteries are heavy, so they should be down low to keep the bus's CoG as low as practical. I made pull-out trays for my eight house batteries and two start batteries, and they're open to the ground: if anything should leak, it will just drip harmlessly to the ground. Batteries also need to be easily accessible for regular topping-up of water, otherwise they run the risk of being forgotten and then slowly dying a lonely and premature death.

The inverter and charge controller should be as close as possible to the batteries, but without being in the same actual compartment as them. This keeps their heavy DC cables as short as possible, but prevents fragile electronics from being damaged by acid fumes when the batteries are charging. Like the batteries themselves, these electronic items should be where they get cooling air: heat kills electronics quicker than almost anything else.

John

[Winter-Vale]

Thank you. These are lithium batteries and i dont think they off-gas cuz they're sealed. But your reply was very useful. You know we're never finished with these projects! So maybe we will start staring at the space underneath the utility closet. Its never too late!

[Rock-N-Ruth]

Originally Posted by Winter-Vale

So we (foolishly) built the electrical closet inside instead of in underbody. Everything in there: battery bank, charge controller, inverter. etc . The closet gets HOT. I want to cut a vent and install a small two way fan, probably on the 9V panel. Has anyone vented their onboard utility closet?

All of our Solar Controllers are indoors. We used a heater blower out of another bus we have in conjunction with this nifty thermal controller https://www.amazon.com/dp/B019I3YCFS...roduct_details
to move the hot air outside when the temp in the controller closet rises to 100 degrees. It shuts off at 89 degrees. We set it that way so that it could reach a shut off point if we were out and about and had the air conditioning off.

Had you placed your electrical box under body you would still want to deal with keeping it ventilated and now you have the additional challenge of keeping the dirt out.

Depending on where you go or where you live you want to keep your batteries warm when it is cold.

our 30KW battery bank resides under our king bed and has an electric under floor heating mat for wintertime. This also provides about 60% of our heating needs all winter long. Once the batteries are up to 70 degrees F, the thermal mass radiates out to the bed and from the bed to the rest of the house.