Should I charge in my small basement garage?

Should I charge in my small basement garage?
In our climate in Seattle, people are putting heat pump hot water heaters in their garage, as they dry the air and use the waste heat.
We installed 5KW of PV a year ago, which we know will be minimal for charging a car also, but watching the wi-fi readout has shown us where the power goes, and are someday changing out the old resistance hot water heater.
Somewhere in these many pages I have read about 15% charging losses and I am wondering if I can use that heat, or if I risk cooking a Leafs battery in a semi-insulated (its cold in the winter, never warm) single car garage space.

Some junks gotta go, but we were really looking forward to a grease/exhaust free garage for a dry, pre-heated Leaf., we will likely mount the charger to run under the garage door for charging outside if charging heat looks like trouble.

I would charge in the garage when outside is wet or too hot. And there is heat generated by the charging system that connects to the motor, the inverter and the charger. I believe the later models of the LEAF have combined the inverter and charger functions but still those are water cooled and of course the water passes through an air cooled radiator which will heat the garage. I think the heat pump water heater makes sense to recover some of that waste heat from the electrical charging.

Charging in a closed garage is safe. Charging won't heat the garage enough to notice.

If you are paranoid, you might want to have a heat alarm in your garage. These are getting to be standard safety measures in many houses now. A heat alarm is like a smoke detector, but it responds to heat rather than smoke, so it will detect a fire but not be tripped by car exhaust. You can get them for roughly $25 at a hardware store or on ebay. They install as easily as a smoke alarm.

I bought the BRK HD6135FB, because it was compatible with the other smoke alarms in my house, and also because it has a "change of heat" function. The change of heat function means that it trips if there is heat in the garage, and also trips if the temperature in the garage rises quickly, so in theory, it would alert you to a fire in the winter as quickly as it would alert you to a fire in the summer:

http://www.amazon.com/BRK-Brands-HD6135FB-Hardwire-Battery/dp/B000Q6LXW2" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Bob

Take a pic and let us know how it works out.

I think it's a good idea. The heat generated charging a Leaf (even the 6kW ones) @L2 is insignificant; the ambient (outside) temps seem to have more of an affect on the battery than anything self-generated (again, @L2).

eleafchero said:

Somewhere in these many pages I have read about 15% charging losses and I am wondering if I can use that heat, or if I risk cooking a Leafs battery in a semi-insulated (its cold in the winter, never warm) single car garage space.

Click to expand...

Iirc, that loss number is for L1 charging and it improves quite a bit with Level 2, in large part due to reduced running time for the coolant pump.