Heat from Victron Quattro 5000 inverter.

[GRIT]

Hi Svbravo . Thanks for your interest.

I found a 200w 12v DC heater on amazon.ca. A12v thermostat, on amazon.com (I bought two. One for the batteries, and one for the fridge, to control a spillover fan from freezer to fridge).
My battery compartment is only about 1.5 cubic meters. And the cells are in a box, raised off the floor by about 12cm. So some holes on the bottom of the box, and near the top.

There's a nice bulkhead mounted, dual, 12v fan I may get, to encourage flow into the battery box. I could heat under the box and let convection do the work, but I want to get a feel for how hot the heater will get. The elements are surrounded by aluminum, so no fire risk, but the box is epoxy over honeycomb, and I don't want any part of it to reach above 60 Celsius, or it'll soften, as that was my post cure temp.

200 watts is a lot, but it'll cycle, and the compartment is all insulated with the foam core. If it's too much, I'll just heat under the box (with the thermostat in the box, )with a couple incandescent bulbs, At about 30 watts, and let convection do the work for me.

When I'm aboard, and heating the cabin to 20C, even at minus 19 C outside, the compartment is at plus 15 with the door cracked open. But when I'm not aboard, I want some heat in that compartment. The two Esparza heaters take about 40w each at minus 19C. So 200 watts cycling at 30 to 50% won't be too bad, if we are not running the espars.
I'm out of country right now and posting with android. So please ignore choppy sentence structure... Let me know if you'd like me to post the links to the gear.

Cheers.
Paul.

[svbravo]

Originally Posted by GRIT

Hi Svbravo . Thanks for your interest.

I found a 200w 12v DC heater on amazon.ca. A12v thermostat, on amazon.com

There's a nice bulkhead mounted, dual, 12v fan I may get, to encourage flow into the battery box.


When I'm aboard, and heating the cabin to 20C, even at minus 19 C outside, the compartment is at plus 15 with the door cracked open. But when I'm not aboard, I want some heat in that compartment. The two Esparza heaters take about 40w each at minus 19C. So 200 watts cycling at 30 to 50% won't be too bad, if we are not running the espars.

Let me know if you'd like me to post the links to the gear.

Hi Paul
That all sounds good thanks for the quick reply. And yes, when you get to it, I'd appreciate it if you'd post the gear you're thinking.

Typically we'll only be charging when we're aboard, as the boat is our home. I was thinking that when it's below freezing I could have a thermostat blowing warmed cabin air into the batt compartment. But the dedicated batt heater would only be needed when we leave the boat, so the cabin gets cold, and the solar panels are charging the batts in our absence. (I guess another option would be to simply flip the Pv panel's breaker off when we leave the boat for any length of time in cold weather, as my understanding is that the batts are fine being stored below freezing, but it's when charging that they need to be above.)

cheers
Adam

[GRIT]

Thats my plan as well. When im aboard, everything is fine, as the battery is on the bridgedeck, forward of the nav station. If I leave the door to the utility closet open, it gets warm enough. IfI leave for a trip, I'd rather not heat the whole boat just to keep the system running.

At the moment, while I'm away, the battery is isolated, and sitting at 13.3 volts.

Thermostats with remote sensor.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...?ie=UTF8&psc=1




Heater
https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B07D7X77XL/...v_ov_lig_dp_it


Cheers.
Paul.