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Bones007 -
Thanks for the thoughts.
The heat tape that I am using has a built-in thermostat. You can see where there is a thick spot where the black tape becomes an orange cord. The thicker spot has the built-in thermostat in it.
I did talk about a heat-spreader plate with the guys. The thing is that this heat tape just does NOT get hot enough to actually make any hot spots. We tried some energy calculations, and found that just the heat tape by itself, in a perfect energy transfer, would take an entire week to raise the battery temperature 20 degrees.
No, this is only going to be something to help a little bit. I have another section of heat tape I am going to wrap around the sides of the batteries. Still, that's only 180 watts of electricity total!
Insulation is mandatory for this to work at all!
The talk of a heat spreader was for if I used the waterbed mattress heater I had. That would have been as much to protect the heater as to spread the heat. I went to a potluck farm party in a pole barn a couple weeks ago, and brought the waterbed heater to keep my casserole warm. Somebody else set a crockpot on the heater, and the pointly little feet wrecked the heater!
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