Protecting Battery Heater Pad Wiring

[foxontherun]

Good afternoon,
I have some concern over the heater pad wiring getting snagged by the aluminum plate over time with road vibrations. I have two Newtipower 300 AH Batteries with a gap between them at the bottom of about 1/2". I was planning to mount the wiring up on the side of the battery in that gap since the wiring comes out between the two batteries. I am concerned where the wiring coming out from under the aluminum piece it could snag the edge of the aluminum sheet. (Under the batteries will be silicone trivet pad - then heater pads (4) - then aluminum sheet - then the batteries). Side note: the batteries are butted up to each other at the top; they taper as they go down to the bottom hence the 1/2" gap between them.

I have zero experience with Kapton tape but I have bought some to wrap around the aluminum sheets and thought maybe I could use some kapton tape to tape the wiring down where it comes out from under the aluminum and that it might offer some protection assuming the kapton tape will adhere to the silicone trivet pad. The wires on the heating pads appear to be 22 GA so they are quite thin.

Any thoughts or suggestions on how to best protect the wires would be much appreciated.



https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0794 ... UTF8&psc=1

Thanks,
Harry

[featherliteCT1]

Depending on the gauge thickness of your aluminum sheet, maybe edge trim on each sheet would work.

https://www.amazon.com/Rubber-Channel-P ... =1-30&th=1

trim edge jpg.jpg (12.68 KiB) Viewed 1299 times

Or, maybe make your own by slitting some thin rubber tubing glued on with silicone caulking.

[foxontherun]

The aluminum I am using is from the .040 aluminum siding I cut out of my trailer side when installing the A/C. It was a perfect size piece, which I didn't expect. According to this website: https://www.riversidesheetmetal.net/she ... ght-chart/ it looks like it would be around an 18 gauge if I read it correctly. Edge trim sounds like a reasonable idea, thanks!

Harry

[bdosborn]

I used 1/4" aluminum plate under mine, my reasoning was that is would serve as a heat sink to keep hot spots from forming under the batteries. I doubt your 18 gauge plate will do much to spread the heat around and honestly I don't think my plate does much either. I doubt I would use one if I was to do it again. Here's a couple of photos to show you my arrangement, my padding is basically a piece of carpet:



You don't need any kapton tape on the plate if this is your battery; it's in a non-conductive case:


BTW, that's a good price for a LiFePo4 battery (assuming it's any good ) and they have a $100 off coupon on Amazon right now:
Newtipower 300 AH Batteries

Bruce

[foxontherun]

You don't need any kapton tape on the plate if this is your battery; it's in a non-conductive case: Bruce

I thought that would be the case but just wanted to be sure it was safe to do without the tape; thanks for confirming that.

BTW, that's a good price for a LiFePo4 battery (assuming it's any good ) and they have a $100 off coupon on Amazon right now:
Bruce

Yes, this is the battery I have; I got them at Xmas for $649 each. When I priced what it was going to be to do a DIY battery build for the same AH, these were only going to be about $150 more since I would need to also purchase the equipment to do the build and testing. If these Newtipower batteries work out it will be worth the $150 more to me. I had planned to do the DIY all along but this deal came up so I took the shot at it. Time will tell.

Hopefully, I will get to test them out here in the next week or so and see if they live up to the AH they say they are. The batteries actually have a simple (voltage/% full) built-in meter on the top that will tell you how full they are. They both arrived to me on December 28th at 100% according to that built-in meter. Still showing same readings today; the multi-meter I checked them with today says 13.79V and 13.78V. I think the readings back in December were 13.8V on each one.



Thanks for the input!
Harry