Battery backup placement: inside vs outside the panel, am I the only one doing it wrong?

I've been seeing more installs lately where guys put the backup battery right next to the main board, but I was taught to mount it on the panel door or in a separate enclosure. Last Tuesday I had a service call in Cleveland where a flooded basement killed a battery that was sitting on the floor of the can, and the customer lost protection for two days. Keeping it out of the way adds maybe 15 minutes to the install, but I think it's worth it. What do you all do with yours, and have any of you had a battery failure from heat or moisture inside the cabinet?

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victor_perry9021d ago

Gotta disagree with you on this one. I've been mounting batteries inside the cabinet for years, right up top, and I've never had a heat or moisture problem that wasn't already caused by something else like a bad seal or a leak. The door mount idea sounds good in theory, but I've seen those wires get pinched or pulled when guys close the panel without checking the slack. Plus, if the customer ever swaps out the panel, a door-mounted battery is a bigger headache. I'd rather spend the extra 15 minutes putting it on a shelf inside, away from the floor, than risk a door hinge failure down the road. That Cleveland flood is a real bummer, but the real fix there is a higher panel or a battery that's not on the floor, not moving it outside the can.