After a short tease of reasonable temperatures, another arctic blast has descended upon us, with highs in the 20s and yesterday’s overnight low of -1º! Such temperatures should be against the Geneva Convention. Melissa had told me about surviving camping in 1º at the Grand Canyon before her journey to Quartzsite, where we met, but now I’ve survived that with her, though in a better-equipped van with a heater. That cheap Chinese heater is working perfectly and is the only reason why we can continue to live in the van right now.
Out of an abundance of caution, I flipped the circuit breaker for the solar panels off to avoid damaging my batteries, which can’t be charged below 32ºF. Unbeknownst to me, the batteries have their own temperature protection system, which turned one of them completely off when it hit 32º. The other one, closer to the heat lamp, got down to 33º. One more degree and I would’ve lost all 12-volt power, including the very important heater!
I went through a bit of a panic yesterday, both trying to revive the disabled battery and looking for a way to prevent this from happening again since it was going to be just as cold overnight. I moved the heat lamp to warm up that battery. I also left the peg board panel off the electrical compartment so the sun could help warm things up once it moved around that way. It worked. Once the battery hit 40º, it turned itself back on again, and everything was back to normal.
To avoid a repeat of this experience, I went out and bought a second work light, then put the 60-watt heat bulb I already had into it. Now, instead of trying to heat both batteries with one lamp, each battery gets its own. This worked amazingly well. Although the temperature hit a low of -1º overnight, both batteries didn’t get below the high 40s and remained operational. Crisis averted!
It would’ve been nice to know how these batteries reacted to a cold shutdown before it actually happened and what it takes to get them turned back on again. I couldn’t find that information online anywhere. For the record, unheated SOK batteries shut down at 32ºF and reactivate automatically at 40ºF. I’ll be keeping the heat lamps on for another day until temperatures actually get back above freezing again. I’m still operating well beyond the van’s original design parameters, but we’re making it work. I certainly would’ve done things differently if I’d expected to be in this kind of cold, specifically getting batteries with built-in heaters and insulating the floor. Maybe one day, I can address these shortcomings.
Smokey Da Van 