Van Life - Sleeping Above / Near Batteries Inverter etc

Samsonite801 said:

Or have ever heard of quantum entanglement

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Yup.

Ever heard of having a particle essentially exist in two places at the same time?

“Time of the Sixth Sun:”
I’m not really into the ‘conscious’ metaphysical enlightenment stuff. Or gypsy paganism for that matter. Those are the original grifters imho.
Not that I’m anti-spiritual, either! I’m just anti superstition anti fortune teller con-artist. The appearance of spirituality but lacking the power therein.

bryn said:

LiFePo4 is safe enough for RV use, we have been running a 240ah pack under our bed for 3 years, it is fused on the stud and is enclosed with ventilation ports to reduce heat.

I'm am upgrading our system to 608ah as soon as the new cells arrive and have not issues with using the previous pack off-road

As far as i know there aren't any health issues, i dear say that our phones cause more issues than a battery pack.

but i'm not a doctor, nor does it concern me, i'm more likey to be killed by a road accident

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So is there a hum when in use or charging?

What about that fuel tank under the RV and it's potential to leak and or off-gas? Wouldn't that be a greater possible hazard than lifepo4 cells?
Not to mention the obvious hazards from propane, etc. Then there's the possible off gassing from manufactured materials used in RC's.

Gasoline and propane are stored outside the passenger compartment. Old technology, known risks.
Lithium batteries can and do catch fire, and people here have seen that occur inside a van.
Often these batteries are used inside. So something to hold back the fire, spill combustion gasses outside, trigger an alarm, would be good for safety. You need the opportunity for escape without injury.

B\\

Hedges said:

Gasoline and propane are stored outside the passenger compartment. Old technology, known risks.
Lithium batteries can and do catch fire, and people here have seen that occur inside a van.
Often these batteries are used inside. So something to hold back the fire, spill combustion gasses outside, trigger an alarm, would be good for safety. You need the opportunity for escape without injury.

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Well, yeah, but considering the threat level, I wonder what is the cause of most RV fatalities? CO? fire caused by propane? what would be the more likely scenario, a lithium fire or a fuel tank or propane fire? Not that you wouldn't want to consider all hazards, just sayin'

AstroBob said:

B\\

Well, yeah, but considering the threat level, I wonder what is the cause of most RV fatalities? CO? fire caused by propane? what would be the more likely scenario, a lithium fire or a fuel tank or propane fire? Not that you wouldn't want to consider all hazards, just sayin'

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FUN FACTS:
Propane is heavier than air (one molecule has 3 carbon atoms), so it tends to 'pool up' down low on the floor/ground level when it leaks out.
Natural gas is lighter than air (one molecule has 1 carbon atom), so it tends to float up high, to ceiling level, or beyond (if it has a way to vent upwards and out).

When I was training for ASE F1 CNG certification, I learned from the NFPA 52 book that the biggest advantage to NG is that it is inherently much safer than gasoline and propane, because it just floats away if it has a way to vent upwards. Gasoline leaks tend to pool up, linger, and take hours to evaporate and the vapors to dissipate (which is very dangerous at an accident scene).

Propane tends to pool up too (invisible), but much less so than gasoline (because it is vapor), wind can blow it away horizontally and such, but inside of a garage or something, propane can linger down by the floor level for hours (like fills from the bottom, up), where NG will float up naturally, and many cases, simply escape through the attic door seams.

Since I had worked in CNG installations on vehicles (alt-fuel for powering internal combustion engines), I had always wondered if someday an interest would ever spark up for its use in the RV world for utility fuel.

CNG stores as a vapor, it is less dense than propane so it won't condense into a liquid (LNG) unless it is cryogenically frozen, so the idea is, in order to get enough volume (BTU storage) on a vehicle, it is stored at normal ambient temperature as vapor, at 3000 or 3600 psi to get enough BTU volume for practical use.

Of course if it was ever used on an RV for utility services, all of the appliances would have to be re-jetted for NG, and then you are tied to the CNG distribution network which is generally not as available as LPG (in the USA at least), especially RV parks. So there is probably very little incentive for the RV industry to change the current trajectory. But NG is cleaner burning and safer than propane, it is just not as compact in storage as propane, making it less convenient as an alternative.

When I had CNG on my old truck, I always parked it in the garage, and as a precaution, I removed the attic door cover, just in case if my CNG ever got a leak, it could easily just float away (since the house's roof also has roof attic vents too)...

So, from what I have read/watched, the safety risks for lifepo4 are from cell puncture or short circuit. Is this true? Is out gassing almost nil, or could there be any possible perils from that? I'm guessing minimal. Lifepo4 batteries aren't known to spontaneously combust, are they?

I haven't yet heard of any RV involved lifepo4/lithium fires, but I'm sure they might exist. Interesting.

This is sort of relevant:

As it might pertain to LiFePO4. Under normal use, LiFePO4 does not vent any gas, nor does it emit any radiation. You might be in close proximity to it, but what exactly are you concerned about being exposed to. Perhaps a very low level magnetic field from electrons moving through wires, but no more so than just sitting just about anywhere on the planet.

Cell phones do not cause brain cancer. Nor do large power transformers. And being in proximity to a LiFePO4 battery is not harmful either. At least with cell phones and emf there is an identifiable mechanism that might cause harm (but has been shown to not) but will LiFePO4 you simply are not being exposed to anything.

Samsonite801 said:

the biggest advantage to NG is that it is inherently much safer than gasoline and propane, because it just floats away if it has a way to vent upwards

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That’s only one aspect. Natural gas is combustible in a wide range of concentrations- closer to gasoline behavior. Propane only ignites at a narrow concentration around 5% to air.
There was a house near where I grew up. Something happened with the kitchen stove. Father came home, opened the door- apparently there was a static discharge opening the door? He lived, and while the house had surpringly limited fire damege it blew out all the windows and the man suffered burns and had landed in the neighbor’s yard. Propane feels kinder to me.

12VoltInstalls said:

That’s only one aspect. Natural gas is combustible in a wide range of concentrations- closer to gasoline behavior. Propane only ignites at a narrow concentration around 5% to air.
There was a house near where I grew up. Something happened with the kitchen stove. Father came home, opened the door- apparently there was a static discharge opening the door? He lived, and while the house had surpringly limited fire damege it blew out all the windows and the man suffered burns and had landed in the neighbor’s yard. Propane feels kinder to me.

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Well I did say 'if it has a way to vent upwards'...

We had a house in our area that exploded due to a natural gas leak not even originating inside the home. The leak was some distance away but traveled underground (from the area where the leak originated) along the outside of the pipe into the basement of a house and filled the basement up with natural gas. After they had thought they had the leak resolved, the Questar Gas employee and the homeowner went into the house into the basement, attempting to light the pilot light again on the hot water heater, which blew up the whole house. Yeah it was a tragic story:

For sure with any fuel you have to know that it is dangerous when the conditions are right for combustion. The houses they build today are usually sealed fairly tight and don't vent very well I suppose. I always wondered why they never smelled the mercaptan (sulfur rotten egg smell), but perhaps they both had colds and didn't have strong sense of smell that day or something.

Ya, sickening. That just sucks.

12VoltInstalls said:

Between cell phones, radio, tv, data transmission, air lane monitoring, gps, wifi, alarms, power lines….. we are continually immersed in a soup bath of radiation every second of the day.

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There are two things driving fear of electromagnetic radiation. One is an understandable, but irrational overreaction to the era of fallout from nuclear weapons. Yes, they're both called "radiation," but the non-ionizing kind represented by radio waves has no demonstrated negative effect on living things, unless strong enough to cause heating of tissues at a rate faster than blood flow can dissipate that heat. The two areas of the human body most prone to that effect are the eyes, and parts of the male reproductive apparatus.

It doesn't help that people cooking food in microwave overs use the fun but scientifically incorrect term, "nuking it."

The other thing driving the unfounded concern over EM is that people protesting radio towers and power lines have found it an effective tactic when rallying their neighbors to pick up torches and pitchforks.

As many on this forum are aware, when you take a walk in the sunshine, you're subjecting your body to wide-spectrum solar radiation of about a thousand watts per square meter, way beyond what you can get from everyday electrical objects. Unlike power line or radio exposure, some components of sunlight, such as UV, can corrupt DNA. To be efficient at its job, a power transformer must trap a very high percentage of its magnetic field in its core, whether ferrite or the old laminated-plate type. I don't worry at all about sleeping near one. If the hum keeps you awake, well, OK. Steady humming sounds actually help me sleep.

Rising numbers of cancer diagnoses are happening at the same time as rising exposure to electromagnetic radiation, but there's no evidence the radiation is causal. If you're looking for the causes for increasing diagnoses of cancer, I think it's more likely related to processed foods, obesity, and chemical exposure. As has already been mentioned, there's also the issue of improving medical technology finding cancers which, in decades past, would have been listed on death certificates as "causes incident to old age."

In short, worry about sleeping in weak EM fields if you want, but make sure to wear sunscreen first!

I'll just stick with natural vitamin D, thank you.