battery storage after a ride

[chisixer6]

After a ride, do you remove the battery from the bike? If you where do you keep it? Just wondering, because recently got into Lipo's, need to handle with care.

When I finish a ride, I remove the battery off the bike, put it need my table to recharge. That was with Lifepo4 chem, now that Lipo has enter the scene, I still remove the batteries from the bike, I bought a supposely fireproof safe, that I lock the lipo's in, right now they are in the house, kitchen to be exact. I was considering leaving them outside in the backyard, but it will be subject to temperture, rain, other noisy people and raccoons.
I don't know if there is a fire, if the fireproof safe will contain it. If fire starts in kitchen, house will be gone, if in backyard, my harley or VW bug is at risk, if in the garage my 2 Mopar's will be gone. so far I really like the Lipo's, it's just the first problem will be a disaster.
Last week I bought a 6 gallon metal garbage can with a tight lid, do you think a Lipo fire will burn thru the galvanze metal? oh well.... thanks in advance.. don't want to go back to Lifepo4 only, cause I have a problem getting rid of 12 turniqy 5a 6s battery bricks..........Jerry

 

[dogman dan]

You are likely to be fine storing the batteries in some kind of fire resistant container. You want it to be vented, so it does not become a box full of expanding gasses if something should happen. But most likely, anything happening is going to happen during charging. So the real risk is charging and going to sleep. The other risk is physical damage during a ride, or creating a short that sets off a thermal runaway. Niether of them likely while in the box.

But it's not unheard of for a pack to start smoking in storage. It happend to John in CR. It was a new unused pack.

I happen to have a fireplace hearth in my house, so that's where I put my lipo bunkers. I use ammo cans with some holes drilled, and point the holes at the fireplace. In winter, when I want to use that fireplace, I move most of my lipo out to an old unused refrigerator outside. In my climate, it won't freeze inside the fridge. In summer, it's a bit hot for battery storage.

 

[chisixer6]

I don't know if I can vent a safe easily, it's purpose is no entry. I have no fireplace, that would be a good place. Winter is about 4 months away here, won't get really cold till January. I am going to store them outside and charge ever couple weeks.

 

[captain387]

I'm building an insulated box with 4 compartments for my lipo 24"x 18" x 12"
Here we get temperatures in the winter that swing from 5 Celsius to -30 Celsius over 4 months.
The box will be located back by the shed surrounded by wet snow covered grass.

In the box I will have the
4 lipo batteries separated by sheet metal
2 electric baseboard t stats
A light bulb base with a dual light bulb holder

Basically the t stats will be wired in parallel in case one doesn't function properly
and I will run 2- 5 watt light bulbs from the base. 2 bulbs in case one burns out.
Extension cord will be hooked into a ground fault circuit outlet.

 

[chisixer6]

I'll take another winter like last year, I don't think it got down to zero degrees and snow was not even average for a chicago winter.
Captain387;... are the light bulbs, keeping temp from going too low and on all the time....

 

[dogman dan]

Another good idea, is to just have each pack, or pair of packs as the case may be, isolated from the whole pile. Maybe several small fire bags for charging lipo, then leave the packs in the safe, but with the door able to open and burp gasses if needed. The idea is that one pack getting hot won't ingite the plastic on an adjacent one.

When you sleep, the whole thing can be put in a relatively fire resistant place, under the metal hood on your stovetop. If you rarely bake, then bag em and keep em in the oven. Just don't preheat the oven without looking inside.

Though we have proof that a spontaneous fire while in storage can happen, once you have checked out your packs, and know they all have good cells in them the risk of that happening is greatly reduced. It's going to be a bad cell that swells up and gets hot while just sitting there. So once you confirm that all your cells have normal capacity, and hold thier charge etc, the whole pile becomes a lot safer when just being stored.

All my packs with bad cells stay out in that old fridge outside, summer or winter. Bad cells are 100% discharged and disposed of once I cut em out of a pack. Till I get around to it, the whole pack stores outside the house for sure. They are in metal boxes, inside the fridge.

 

[Punx0r]

Just don't preheat the oven without looking inside.

I leave the door open slightly with the leads hanging out exactly so I don't come home from the pub and do exactly this...

 

[captain387]

I'll take another winter like last year, I don't think it got down to zero degrees and snow was not even average for a chicago winter.
Captain387;... are the light bulbs, keeping temp from going too low and on all the time....

Last winter was great, easy on the heating bill and the back since I only had to shovel the driveway five times.

The storage box will function the same as a heater. Both thermostats will be inside the box as well as the light bulbs. When the temperature drops below the thermostats
set temperature (10 Celsius) the light bulbs will be turned on until the box temperature rises above (10 celsius).
2 light bulbs and 2 thermostats will be used in case a bulb burns out or the one thermostat doesn't work correctly.

 

[dogman dan]

Maybe a reptile heater would keep a box toasty, but not overtoasty. Works for the snakes, why not for lipo. Nice gentle heat, but not much.

 

[chisixer6]

Wish Sears didn't haul away my old frig, when I got a new one.

So far all my batteries check out good.

ok.. on the safe, I just won't push the lid down till it clicks, leaving it ajar.

 

[dogman dan]

You could still do something that restricts the lid from fully opening, that would help point a potential flame towards something less flamable. Metal sheet of some kind, tiled area , piece of cement type siding or tile backer board, etc.

Smoke alarms, normally you don't have one 2 feet from a fireplace, but I do now.

In a way, rediculous overkill some of this, but it helps you sleep well. Only tested and known to be good packs inside the house or garage. Any with early fail cells outside. Trying not to sleep with packs known to be contaminated and puffy.

 

[bigmoose]

Another thing to consider is smoke damage to your residence. There is burning it to the ground, and dealing with smoke residue. As an example the wifey left the house with two hot dogs boiling in a bit of water in a frying pan... when she returned hours later they were carburized crud with the aluminum pan partially melted into the electric burner.

That little "sorry I forgot..." resulted in all carpet, drapes and furniture being cleaned. All walls washed twice, and a HEPA filter about the size of a 55 gallon drum run in the living room for a week to remove the odors... smoke stinks!

BTW my batteries are stored in a covered trailer away from the house and other valuables. It is next to the wifey's car in the summer and my truck in the winter.

 

[icecube57]

Man i need to step up my respect for lipo. I have 25+ pounds of lipo in a rack bag on the lower shelf of my work bench at 4.15v ready to go when i want to take a ride. I check them occasionally but even with less than 10 cycles on the packs im complacent as hell. Im a little too comfortable...

 

[dogman dan]

It's true, smoke damage will be pretty bad if you have even a small lipo fire in your bunker when not home. I've done quite a few fire jobs, and it's amazing how many coats of paint it can take to seal in smoked sheetrock. A bit of uncombusted lipo fart is at least fairly toxic, you wouldn't want that in a house with a baby for example. Me, I'm old, played with mercury as a kid, used paints, glues, and solvents daily for a lifetime. That horse left the barn for me.

I've been tempted to plug in the old fridge, set it on it's hottest setting, and keep it all outside. that means $$ though.

But the main thing is no pack I don't trust is kept inside. I feel that a pack that is testing out fine is not contaminated, and therefore a fairly slight risk of going off just being stored. A pack doesn't flame in storage for no reason. So the flaky packs with one or more cell that puffed right away go outside and stay there.

I don't want to be a fearmonger with all this talk of a lipo bunker. I kept my first lipo packs on a table next to my bed for the first six months. Then one day a guy at the flea had a pile of ammo boxes, and for $30 I bought 4 of em. I wasn't worried really, but at about that time I'd bought a lot more lipo and got to thinking about a bigger fire. It was not expensive or hard to just put em in a metal box that would at least slow down the process of lighting up the house.

Even if you had to buy a new one, a dorm size refrigerator is only about $100 -150, and big enough to store two bike size packs.

 

[Gregb]

And that is why I use LiFePO4................................. :wink: :wink: :wink:

 

[roadrancher]

hey, just thought I'd mention, seems like an old wood stove insert off of craigslist could be the ticket. built in vent, door in front, last for years outside...also,
depending on dimensions, triple wall pipe for a wood stove might work fine too. You could call your local gas/pellet insert dealer, they pull old stoves all the time on installs. Can't count how many old stoves I've had forked onto my flatbed. Just watch your back. You can get 20 bones from a scrap dealer when you're done, too!

 

[dogman dan]

Woodstove would work inside too, run the stovepipe out through a window pane replaced with a piece of steel or some such thing. Stout metal box with a pipe to shoot the fire outside. Oughta work. A bit overkill, but not if you have kids or grandma in the house.

 

[chisixer6]

Gregb said» And that is why I use LiFePO4

and I just left Lifepo4 for Lipo, but I really like Lipo, cheaper, smaller and more dangerous.

I have an old weber grill, that is not being used, that would make a good storage, if noone steals it.

I have a small freezer, if I get a larger one, that little freezer would hold quite a bit Lipo bricks.

 

[cal3thousand]

I'm going to convert an old computer case for a LiPo chest. Was looking for Ammo Boxes, but that will have to wait for a house (not a tiny ass apartment )

Points for PC case:

already metallic and fire-resisant (to enough degree)
already vented
utmost ubiquity
Might be able to find one with a working PSU built-in that can be converted to power your charger
Looks clean, like another PC in your house.
and.........LEDs are pretty in PC cases.

 

[dogman dan]

Sure, any metal box beats a pile of lipo on the table, on top of a weeks newspapers. Any flea market likely has some kind of medium size old metal toolbox for sale.

 

[chisixer6]

I don't know the last time I saw a small metal toolbox at Menards or Home Depot. all I see are the plastic ones.

 

[dnmun]

you should not have to worry about lipo like this. the risk is only when you are charging, or when you are connecting it to other batteries which could short it out.

a flower pot is enuff for storing it if you think that is needed or when charging and only charge while you can pay attention and actually best to just charge up the lipo when you are gonna need it. jmho.

 

[dogman dan]

I did not worry either about long term storage, till I saw how John in CR had a pack try to catch fire just sitting there.

It was a new pack, so he hadn't sorted out the contaminated ones yet. I have very little fear of my lipo that I have found to operate normaly. The duds I don't trust, and they never come inside.

But since a metal box to store them in cost me about 8 bucks, it seems like a small thing to do to sleep a bit better at night. The idea is to controll the direction a fire would we pointed, into the fireplace in my case. Hopefully, giving me time to hear the smoke alarm, get the people and pets out, then maybe have time to get the shovel and heave it out the door. With luck, nothing but smoke damage.

Again, it's not that I'm so worried, but when you have about 25 packs of lipo sitting there, you start thinking maybe seperating the non flaming ones from the flaming ones with a few metal boxes is worth 25 bucks. All of em in one big pile does multiply the tiny bit of risk that exists.

No, you don't get metal toolboxes new much anymore. The thrift stores like goodwill are full of them though, as are the flea markets and garage sales.

 

[veloman]

I keep my lifepo4 on the bike all the time.

I keep my occasionally used lipo bricks in a fire safe in my room where I sleep. At first I was really worried, but I've not had any problems.

I have a small 3s 0.5ah pack sitting on my desk.

I wouldn't store batteries in cold temps as charging them or riding them when they are cold isn't the best.

 

[Kingfish]

I have a large amount for the occasional cross-country trek. Of that 18 batts stay on the bike in the Triangle Bag. The rest are stored on the carpeted floor. Good ones are stored away from bad ones, and the dead ones of the bad are stored even farther away.

• The Dead (RIP), are Grateful being at Zero volts, although they are puffed like a fat man in the bathtub with the blues.
• The Bad, not being Good though arguably Ugly, have a middle voltage on the good cells, and Zero or nearly so volts on the dead cells.
• The Good cells I keep at about middle volts and unified through in parallel through the Balance Cables. I check them periodically to be sure the cell-circuits are within 0.05V; normally I can coax them to 0.02V with a quick top-off.

These cells can and have remained in storage for up to a year like this without issue. At least once a year they are rotated into service – if not used for cross-country.

I understand that this may sound completely contrary to common wisdom, however I do not worry about venting or fires. <knock wood> I can’t fathom how a battery could catch fire if the voltage is zero’d. Like children, I am an attentive father to my stash, and I pet them frequently to feel the pressure on the puffies and to ensure they are not warm to touch. So long as the environment is stable and the packs are at a middle-volt (if not zero’d), there shouldn’t be cause for concern.

But then I’m known to live dangerously. KF