My shop (which is located at 8000 feet in the mountains of Colorado) is unheated when I'm not in it.
A couple of years ago we had a good freeze (an extended period of -20 temperatures) and after it was over I was saddened to find that of the 16 lithium batteries I had in the shop about a dozen of them were dead and would not take a charge. (Yes I know how to bypass the protection circuit and attempt to force them to take a charge but that is not the point of this post
)
So I decided to build a heated cabinet to keep this from ever happening again.
The key components are a ThermoCube:
and an industrial heated floor mat:
Then I threw some foam I had laying around into the cabinet to somewhat improve efficiency.
I'm going to add another shelf to the space for usable "warm space" but this gives the idea:
Basically the switch for the heated floor mat is on all of the time and plugged into the thermocube.
The thermocube turns the electricity on if the temperature drops below 35°F and then turns it off at 45°F.
So when the temperature starts to get down to about freezing, the cube triggers, the heated mat turns on and heats the cabinet. The mat runs at 90 watts which heats it to a maximum of 130°F. Once the temp in the space is above 45, the electricity is cut and it starts to cool. Repeat until the cold spell is over.
Should solve the issue of ever having frozen battery failures ever again and I can stop schlepping batteries from the house to the shop (which is what I did all this past winter - never failed - every time I didn't bother to bring one out I had to run back in at some point and get one ).
I'm going to do some testing and if this works well I think I may in fact insulate this entire cabinet and also keep things like wood glues, paints, etc that are temp sensitive in it.
Just thought I'd share in the hopes that it might help someone as I have learned a bunch reading on GJ about lightbulb cabinet solutions, etc. that other's have posted
cheers!
Edward
A couple of years ago we had a good freeze (an extended period of -20 temperatures) and after it was over I was saddened to find that of the 16 lithium batteries I had in the shop about a dozen of them were dead and would not take a charge. (Yes I know how to bypass the protection circuit and attempt to force them to take a charge but that is not the point of this post
)So I decided to build a heated cabinet to keep this from ever happening again.
The key components are a ThermoCube:
and an industrial heated floor mat:
Then I threw some foam I had laying around into the cabinet to somewhat improve efficiency.
I'm going to add another shelf to the space for usable "warm space" but this gives the idea:
Basically the switch for the heated floor mat is on all of the time and plugged into the thermocube.
The thermocube turns the electricity on if the temperature drops below 35°F and then turns it off at 45°F.
So when the temperature starts to get down to about freezing, the cube triggers, the heated mat turns on and heats the cabinet. The mat runs at 90 watts which heats it to a maximum of 130°F. Once the temp in the space is above 45, the electricity is cut and it starts to cool. Repeat until the cold spell is over.
Should solve the issue of ever having frozen battery failures ever again and I can stop schlepping batteries from the house to the shop (which is what I did all this past winter - never failed - every time I didn't bother to bring one out I had to run back in at some point and get one
).I'm going to do some testing and if this works well I think I may in fact insulate this entire cabinet and also keep things like wood glues, paints, etc that are temp sensitive in it.
Just thought I'd share in the hopes that it might help someone as I have learned a bunch reading on GJ about lightbulb cabinet solutions, etc. that other's have posted
cheers!
Edward
