I just pulled one of the batteries out of my Lance 855S and, sure enough, there is a hole in the bottom of the battery box and it is piped to a vent on the rear of the camper.
I assume that this creates a low-pressure area (partial vacuum) at the bottom of the battery box when traveling at speed and any gases produced by the battery will be sucked out the bottom. Of course that assumes that the battery boxes are well sealed and not like those depicted in my original post.
Much thanks to JumboJet for pointing this out. Due to this I remove my dire warning about hydrogen gas buildup in the compartment due to positive pressure into the forward facing vents.
I respectfully submit that Lance still needs to address the safety issue created by the dealers cutting gaping holes in the battery box top covers. In my letter to the President of Lance, I urged him to contact their customers and find out how pervasive the installation problem is. The dealers are doing a poor installation job because it is difficult to do otherwise. I believe that people will do the right thing when it is easy to do it. When it is difficult, people will take shortcuts. That is human nature and to expect otherwise is irresponsible of the manufacturer.
As I wrote in my previous post, we all take safety of a product for granted. It is a basic contract of our developed society. How many Lance campers are out there with leaky battery boxes sitting next to an AC-DC converter that is not ignition safe? How many of the owners of those campers are clueless to the hazard this presents? The Venn diagram of those two sets is greater than zero.
Enough said.
