Question How to heat wire using battery power?
I am looking to use wire or something that is bendable to heat up and melt snow off of something. I need this to run off of battery power and to warm up to around 100 degrees and quickly. I am not great with electronics like this so anyone who could help would be great. Thanks for the response. How hot does heat tape get (degrees) and how quickly (seconds, minutes)? Also is there a way that you can run it off a battery instead of plugging it in. It would only be on for a few minutes.

Best Answer The problem is that to generate heat you need power. Electrical power is Voltage times Current. So to get 120 watts of power, with a 120 volts AC requires 1 Amp, to get 120 watts of power with a 12 volt battery requires 10 Amps. The next problem is that with DC power you get a significant voltage drop over the connecting wires and the higher the current the higher the voltage drop, and the more loss. If you are looking to heat something to 100 degress very quickly then you need not hundreds of watts but thousands of watts, especially if the temperature is below freezing. If I am trying to start my car in the winter I need to draw around 60 Amps from the 12 volt battery or about 720 watts. It does not take very long to drain a battery if the car does not start quickly. On a really cold day if the battery has set out all night about 10 minutes. I assume that you are talking Fahrenheit and not Celsius in temperature. You would have to check with a supplier to find out how long a heat tape will take to melt snow. Normally we are talking a period measured in portions of hours or hours depending upon the temperature and the depth of the snow. If the snow is too deep, then the wire will melt snow and form a cave with the snow above the wire. Depending upon the surface that the wire is on, you may have difficulties heating it up to 100 degrees at spots while others are at a temperature below freezing. A shingle roof may handle it, but some plastics or metals may eventually fail. If you can wait until a sunny day to melt the snow there are passive solar methods to melt snow, maybe you should investigate them. Also to melt snow, you do not need 100 degrees, even heating to 40 degrees Fahrenheit will melt snow slowly. I would suspect that if you had an inverter that changes DC to AC with a sufficient number of batteries in parallel that you could run the heat tape for a while to melt snow off of a small object, but then you have to charge the batteries. You could also consider getting a small gas generator to provide power to the heat tape. Good luck.

Question I want to use a truck camper in New York for the winter. Is there something to keep the water lines from freez?
Can the lines be wrapped with blankets that are 12 volt heated?

Best Answer As in you want to live in one up here? With temps going down to -20F? Best to drain the lines and put in the RV antifreez and go dry. IF you can get to the lines and put heat tape on them and then wrap them in the insulation used for home pipes and plug it into a power outlet you may be ok but I would not bet on it. If your just looking for use for deer camp then the RV antifreeze would help for the out going lines and a holding tank.