Batteries need to be cool and ventilated from the explosive gasses they generate, specially the flooded types; therefore the
engine compartment is not the best place.
If you have an enclosed compartment, how would you ventilate it? Or do you?
A small intake
grill on the
cabin side to suck in cool air while a small computer fan blows it towards the
engine compartment through a hole in the bulkhead?
What if that fan blowing is then, inside a flexible duct, directed towards the
alternator to keep it cooler also, but with the
danger of igniting those explosive gasses from the
batteries?.
Or the fan blowing into the duct, towards the outside of the vessel like a
bilge blower which makes another hole for
water to come in ?.
If this venting duct is combined with the existing
bilge blower duct hole, some of this air/ gas mixture will settle down the bilge duct into the engine's compartment and deep bilge anyway, so why bother doing that.
The batteries could be
charging from several sources;
shore power battery charger, engine
alternator and even
solar panels and
wind generator, which is my case for 6 batteries in that enclosed box space.
In all these cases, the batteries would benefit from being ventilated since they will generate heat and gasses while being charged.
What other ways you ventilate your batteries?
Many electronic gadgets reside near batteries in most
boats and that is the case in this compartment.
Things like monitoring gauges, Ammeters, Voltmeters, ACR, also 1-2 both switches, other switches, buss bars, shunts,
fuses and many connections that will corrode faster if all those corrosive gasses are present.
What do you do to try to avoid explosion, heat and
corrosion?
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