Catalog Pg. 59

Battery Box Examples

I took these pictures of various battery box designs while on a trip to Maine this Summer. We spend so much time describing battery box designs, we thought it might help if we included a few examples in our catalog.

First, notice how all but one design have the batteries at waist height. (The one that doesn't is in a crawl space.) This allows you to easily perform maintenance tasks on the bank without killing your back!

Second, all boxes have a lid to keep kids and pets away from the battery bank.

Third, notice the air inlet holes towards the bottom of the box. The boxes shown here use soffit vent covers over the holes to keep unwanted critters out.

Finally, and possibly most important, most of these boxes use a power vent fan in a 2" PVC pipe for ventilation. The fan is switched on and off at battery gassing voltage by a voltage controlled relay in either an SW inverter or a special voltage controlled switch. (See our battery venting kit and battery venting fan on page 54.) A passive thermosiphoning vent system could also be used. This could be fashioned from 2" PVC pipe running up through the house and out the roof much like a plumbing vent. The power vent pipe has the advantage of exiting the box sill, a much easier pipe run.

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