Dangerous?

[TomG2]

Would you advise someone to:

Sleep in a camper shell with a flooded cell battery that was neither being charged or discharged?

Sleep in a camper shell with a flooded cell battery that was being discharged at the rate of two amps per hour?

Sleep in a camper shell with a flooded cell battery that was being charged at the rate of two amps per hour?

Why?

[Wild_Bill_888]

So, You build a battery box, the battery fails the box burns your overcome by smoke and die in your sleep, the trailer burns, the propane tank explodes, nothing left but ashes.

Don’t use batteries, don’t drive don’t fly don’t ride a bicycle everything you do is dangerous, don’t do it. In the end you will die.

Google “battery Vent tube”.

[pianotuna]

Worst case:

The not in use battery has a catastrophic plate failure, heats up and explodes.

Not likely. But as Clint Eastwood used to say "Do you feel lucky"?

I won't do it.

[2oldman]

DrewE wrote:
A quick mild rant: an ampere is a rate of electrical current flow. "2 amps per hour" or "2 amps per day" are pretty much meaningless terms!

🙂

[DrewE]

A quick mild rant: an ampere is a rate of electrical current flow. "2 amps per hour" or "2 amps per day" are pretty much meaningless terms (or rather, would be indicating some sort of change in current flow over time, somewhat like acceleration is a change in speed over time). Charging at 2A is charging at 2A, regardless of whether it's carried out for an hour or a day; in the first case, it results in a charge of 2 Amp-hours, and in the second, of 48 Amp-hours.

I would generally rather not have a flooded lead acid battery in the same room as me when it's being used, but that's more because of the tiny amount of acid that tends to escape over time rather than hydrogen gas generation. The amount of hydrogen produced at a slow rate of charge is very small, and hydrogen dissipates very rapidly in the open air--particularly if there's any sort of ceiling ventilation. If there's a chance of something failing and the battery being shorted out or charged very rapidly, then it's quite a different story; I definitely don't want to be in the same room as a battery that explodes or self-destructs!

[2oldman]

I wouldn't even if it was 2 amps per day.

[Ed_Gee]

A battery under charge vents hydrogen gas. Hydrogen is not really harmful to you in small quantities, although I suppose one could suffocate if the concentration is high. It is, however, extremely flammable/explosive.

[BFL13]

I would not advise somebody else to do it, but have done it myself in a slide-in camper we had where the battery box was inside. No fumes resting or discharging noticed, but fumes when charging.

The 2 amps charging and fumes or not can depend on how far up the battery is in SOC, whether it has reached "gassing voltage" yet.

The fumes we got on charging set off the LP alarm, so that was another thing besides the smell. Based on those fumes, got AGMs instead for the camper, and now have them inside the Class C with the no fumes advantage (I do not overcharge them till they might vent!)

I don't know if the fumes are dangerous as such to a person sleeping, or if they would light off if any sparks or you use the gas stove top.
Might depend on whether the roof top vent is open or whatever. Probably a bad idea. So no-- I would not advise it.

[KD4UPL]

Neither charged nor discharged, sure. I don't see any harm in that at all. It's an inanimate object at that point.
Being discharged, again, I don't see any problem with that.
Being charged, that's the one that has the potential to cause a problem. I doubt it would actual cause a problem but it's at least possible.