ElectricMotorcycleForum.com
General Category => General Discussion => Topic started by: valnar on January 02, 2020, 07:46:02 PM
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Here in Ohio, there are occasional days in the Winter where it can drop considerably below freezing. This is my first year with my motorcycle and want to protect it from getting too cold on those days. I park it in an attached garage. Fortunately there is one common wall to my house which keeps it around 10 degrees warmer than outside, but even that can't compensate for < 0 degrees fahrenheit.
I want something temporary for those ultra cold days & nights. I already own a portable space heater in storage, but its low and high settings take around 650W and 1300W respectively. I've read a little about radiant or infrared heaters that supposedly heat objects but not the air. They are also more efficient than traditional space heaters.
Does anyone have any experience with these? Are they safe?
More importantly, would such a heater work on keeping a Zero motorcycle's battery warm enough to take the edge off sub-zero temps?
-Robert
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They can't be "more efficient" than resistive heaters. Resistive heaters are by definition 100% efficient -- in pretty much all machinery, lost efficiency means heat gets generated, and that's not considered "waste" in a heater.
Infrared heaters FEEL a bit better because they warm your skin directly, instead of trying to heat up all the air first, which then warms your skin. It may be a bit better to heat the motorcycle "skin" directly, but the cold air is still going to keep it from really heating up the motorcycle very fast.
Electric heat is just expensive no matter how you cut it.
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Try wrapping your motorcycle in an old electric blanket. :)
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Efficiency is measured in many ways. If you just want to prevent condensation, radiant heaters are 'efficient' by skipping heating all the air and only surfaces in view, which creates a minor convective cycle which draws away moisture from those surfaces.
In the woods where I live and grew up on the coast of Oregon, it was common to place a 100w bulb in a shack to keep the high humidity from penetrating into the stored objects.
So what I do is I have a ceramic bulb (like for a chicken or lizard enclosure) in a metal housing (like for a chicken coop or work lamp) and I hang that aiming where the the bikes are.
I've done this on our bicycles and it's very efficient at drying things off without using alot of energy or accidentally drawing in moisture like a fan sometimes can.
A heating blanket would succeed the same way on a smaller scale and possibly use even less energy but you'd have to remember to replace it after each ride. This is why the top-end electrics have this built in, and it's a common add-on to all cars in Canada.
-Crissa
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A targeted low wattage option aimed at my bike would be ideal.
I never considered a warming blanket. Is there one I can just drape over my seat to produce enough heat to keep the battery warmer than ambient, without overheating the seat material? Sounds easy to just flop it over.
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I use this: https://www.amazon.com/BOEESPAT-Ceramic-Emitter-Reptile-Infrared/dp/B07WLZB5T4
In this: https://www.amazon.com/Woods-Clamp-Lamp-Reflector-Guard/dp/B003XV8QOU
I can hang, point, forget it. I do also use potting mats in extreme cold sometimes, like to keep the propane running, but this is my mainstay.
-Crissa
Potting mat: https://www.amazon.com/VIVOSUN-Waterproof-Seedling-Hydroponic-Standard/dp/B00P7U259C
I'm sure there are other, more efficient options out there, but this is pretty simple and cheap. The amount of heat needed is only enough to stop condensation, right? And that's a matter of less than a fraction of a degree compared to air temp.
I couldn't find a reasonably priced vinyl blanket on Amazon. It could be a more efficient thing, but not the ones I saw offered.
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Thanks. I'll think about that or perhaps the electric blanket route. It's not condensation per se, although that is important, but it's more for just keeping the battery outside of ultra-cold temps. The biggest decision one way or another is whether I want that heat for anything else, like working on the bike. Obviously the blanket won't help with that.
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A targeted low wattage option aimed at my bike would be ideal.
I never considered a warming blanket. Is there one I can just drape over my seat to produce enough heat to keep the battery warmer than ambient, without overheating the seat material? Sounds easy to just flop it over.
Aerostitch used an electric blanket to keep the battery warm while their FX was sitting outside their garage during sub-zero temperatures. It seemed to work well enough to allow the battery to charge. No doubt you can find a cheap twin-size electric blanket on Amazon, or maybe one of your neighbors has one that they want to get rid of. A twin size blanket is probably large enough to be wrapped completely around the battery area of your entire bike.
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I think you would be better off installing a silicone resistive heater https://www.mcmaster.com/silicone-heaters directly to the battery & just plug it in when needed (may also need a thermostat control).
You may also consider electrically heated clothing.
Milwaukee Tools offers this https://www.google.com/search?q=Milwaukee+heated+jacket&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en-us&client=safari jacket that's 12v so you should also be able to plug into the bikes 12v system to use when riding.
I use a Warm & Safe heated shirt for riding but could be set up for off the bike useage .
https://www.warmnsafe.com/collections/heat-layer-shirt
NOTE: The power supply on these bikes is low wattage so do your homework before adding too much additional load(s).
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They can't be "more efficient" than resistive heaters. Resistive heaters are by definition 100% efficient -- in pretty much all machinery, lost efficiency means heat gets generated, and that's not considered "waste" in a heater.
Infrared heaters FEEL a bit better because they warm your skin directly, instead of trying to heat up all the air first, which then warms your skin. It may be a bit better to heat the motorcycle "skin" directly, but the cold air is still going to keep it from really heating up the motorcycle very fast.
Electric heat is just expensive no matter how you cut it.
Infrared heaters are more efficient at heating objects as they don't require a medium (air).
Also Heat Pumps can be upwards of 300% more efficient at heating (air) then resistive heating).
P.S. HVAC is my thing.
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Infrared heaters are more efficient at heating objects as they don't require a medium (air).
Granted, to an extent. But the cold air does drain heat off the objects, so until you get the air heated up too, the amount of heating you can do is limited.
Also Heat Pumps can be upwards of 300% more efficient at heating (air) then resistive heating).
P.S. HVAC is my thing.
That's true, too. But heat pumps don't really create much heat (they do create some waste heat). Mostly they just move heat from one place to another. And with the high cost of electricity compared to, say, natural gas, it's probably still cheaper to heat your home with a gas furnace than a heat pump.
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Over the life of a heat pump it's cheaper. Even for mostly heating.
But this depends on what you want the heat to do: Dry up condensation associated with cold; raise the battery pack temp to charge/use, etc.
For me, moisture is the big one. So radiant is best. For charging, a heat pad (with contact thermal control so it knows when to turn off) is best. For actually using the bike, a blanket may be best, because capacitors are also susceptible to the cold.
-Crissa
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I appreciate the discussion but I think it ventured a bit away from just keeping my motorcycle warm, while parked.
I like the electric blanket route. I thought about the ceramic heat emitter but since that's somewhat directional, I'm not sure how I hit both sides of the battery without buying two of them.
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The question NOBODY seemed to have asked is WHY you want to keep your motorcycle warm? Is it because you know if it gets too cold you won't be able to charge it to take it for a ride? Or is there another reason. There IS no humidity in air below the freezing point, by the way. That's why you get so much static discharge walking across a rug in the winter and hardly ever in the summer.
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There is no humidity in the air because it all condensed onto the bike!
If your rug was in the garage where you brought the bike in, it would be damp.
-Crissa
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I don't know why humidity was brought up. This is about keeping a lithium battery warm below zero degrees Fahrenheit. It can't be good for it to sit too cold for too long. (and I don't mean cold, I mean COLD.)
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You can only have humidity or condensation if the temperature is above the freezing point. Below the freezing point, water is a SOLID and is not suspended in the air in the form of humidity. The OP was concerned about his bike in below freezing temperatures, not NEAR freezing.
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I am not 100% sure BUT I believe that as long as the battery is kept between 30 -- 60% charge you shouldn't have any concerns. I know you don't want a discharged lead/acid battery freeze but I'm not sure about lithium. Hopefully someone can chime in. For my ICE bikes (pun intended) I just leave them on the battery tender all winter and they're fine. Of course, we rarely have more than a few days in a row where the temperature remains below freezing ALL the time where I live. The ocean does a great job of keeping our temperatures relatively stable.
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Okay, I found this article which explains why you do NOT want to charge a lithium battery that is below the freezing point:
https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/263036/why-charging-li-ion-batteries-in-cold-temperatures-would-harm-them
I remember Electric Terry posting something a few years ago. If you maintain the 30-60% charge during storage, you'll want to take the bike out for a ride before charging it. Riding the bike will cause the battery's internal temperature to rise. I think he said a good ten mile run should heat the battery enough for it to be safely fast charged, but certainly good enough for a slow one. You might have to dig through the forum to find that info.
But I would think using a radiant heater in the garage to heat the battery till it is warm before charging would work too. No reason to have it heated 24/7.
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The battery doesn't care, but can't be used until it warms back up.
And if you think you can't have condensation when it's freezing out, then you misunderstand how humidity works. Most of all because as long as you live and breathe there's humidity... Not to mention ice melt from pressure, heat, or further drops in temperature squeezing more water from the air.
That water goes somewhere, and that's onto cold things. Like metal things. And that's something we don't want, hence keeping the bike surfaces above the ambient temperature.
A radiant heater would need a huge amount of power to heat a bike to keep it above freezing. It will just prevent condensation, remove precipitation, and slow the heat loss from a warm bike in from a ride.
A blanket heater would be the most efficient to keep the bike operating and ready to ride at negative freezing temps.
A block heater for the battery would be even more efficient, but wouldn't keep the bike ready to ride when the temp dropped, but it would let you precondition or charge the bike in situations where you're just getting freezing temps in the lows of the day.
It all depends on what you need, how much water is getting into your storage area, including on the bike when you come in from outside.
For me, rain and fog are the enemy, so a radiant heater is best and yes, it runs 24/7 in the winter. Any time you let the temp in your storage area drop, is a chance for condensation to form. Even if it's freezing out.
-Crissa
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I appreciate the discussion but I think it ventured a bit away from just keeping my motorcycle warm, while parked.
You only have yourself to blame on the course of this discussion.....
Garage heaters?
The biggest decision one way or another is whether I want that heat for anything else, like working on the bike. Obviously the blanket won't help with that
I don't know why humidity was brought up.
Because Crissa is being helpful & giving you some advice that excessive humidity is a bad thing for electronics of which your bike has lots of.
Humidity is reliitive to temperature and the colder the temperature, the higher the humidity.
I look at Dew Point when determining moisture content in the air (you didn't ask for that info but it's good to understand it & others may appreciate the knowledge).
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I appreciate the discussion but I think it ventured a bit away from just keeping my motorcycle warm, while parked.
You only have yourself to blame on the course of this discussion.....
Nope. I never brought it up. But that was me trying to put it back on track.
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The only reason it's dry when it's cold is because all the humidity in the air went somewhere. Usually as condensation.
Every time you heat the air, it starts sucking the water from all available surfaces.
Every time the air cools back down, that water has to go somewhere. And it goes to cold things first. Like wires in your bike.
So even though it's 'dry' during the day doesn't mean it's not humid at night.
-Crissa
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In Norcal when it threatens to dip a little below freezing we cover small citrus trees with blankets and put a 100W incandescent bulb underneath.
I haven't tried it, but I think if one were to use an oversize cover and a trouble light on the floor underneath, the bike might stay plenty warm. The temperature could be tuned by varying the wattage (40W, 60W, 75W, 100W), with the 100W costing $0.10 to $0.20 per night.
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FWIW, Jeff Dahn (battery guru at Dalhousie Univ.) says the best way to prolong life of lithium batteries in storage is to freeze them....
Sent from my SM-T380 using Tapatalk
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In Norcal when it threatens to dip a little below freezing we cover small citrus trees with blankets and put a 100W incandescent bulb underneath.
Hey! That's where my first suggestion came from ^-^
FWIW, Jeff Dahn (battery guru at Dalhousie Univ.) says the best way to prolong life of lithium batteries in storage is to freeze them...
Yes. As long as you don't want to use or charge the battery, it doesn't care about the temperature. But you have to bring it all the way back up in temperature to use it again.
-Crissa
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In Norcal when it threatens to dip a little below freezing we cover small citrus trees with blankets and put a 100W incandescent bulb underneath.
I haven't tried it, but I think if one were to use an oversize cover and a trouble light on the floor underneath, the bike might stay plenty warm. The temperature could be tuned by varying the wattage (40W, 60W, 75W, 100W), with the 100W costing $0.10 to $0.20 per night.
You had better start hording those incandescent bulbs. I believe I heard recently that they will no longer be produced or sold in the U.S.
I still think a cheap electric blanket is the way to go. They are inexpensive and don't take much power to operate.
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Well the electric blanket didn't work out. The highest setting is over 100 degrees (starts at 85F) and it didn't even get it up 5 degrees over ambient in a 40 degree garage. The battery temp didn't even budge (I used an infrared thermometer to testing). It might be because these electric blankets are highly efficient these days and can't handle the cold. Something tells me one from the 1970's would work better.
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Well, there's also application. If the electric blanket isn't working, then it's not surrounding the right parts. That's why engine block heaters glue directly onto the metal. So the heat transfers to what you want warmed.
If the blanket is not around the bike - like, under and around - the heat will just travel up and away. You might need to add another blanket or cover on the outside. So like the electric blanket around the battery on the bottom and pinned to a fluffy blanket around the top. You want to lower the amount of convection; it'll take your to the cold room instead of the bike.
Also, what you want heated is the battery temp sensor, not the outer casing. Check via bluetooth using the mobile app.
Good luck!
-Crissa
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Everything you said would be true if the blanket actually got warm in a cold garage. It doesn't.
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A heater produces only so much heat, and the cold garage absorbs it. The colder, the more absorption (sort of).
If the heat passed through the battery first, you'll raise it by a few degrees, like you saw.
If you want it warmer, add more insulation or more heat. Just because it didn't work on its own, doesn't mean it wouldn't work with the bike under a -20F sleeping bag.
-Crissa
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Layers, always add laters.