Well. That makes sense. So maybe my initial reasoning was wrong that the last cable attach will spark, and you want that spark away from the battery, so that would have to be the negative cable.
However, you also said that the DISCHARGED battery is the one with all the hydrogen, so that means that you want to put the donor battery cable on last (because that's where the spark will be and the donor battery is presumed to have less hydrogen outgassing).
But then you made a good point that if you put the positive on first, then anything any negative touches by accident, will spark where it touched.
So now we have one good reason to put the negative on last and specifically the negative on the DONOR car on last by one line of reasoning, and by another line of reasoning, we have the positive going on last, presumably also on the donor car because it's going to spark.
Which is the correct line of reasoning?
(A) Put the negative on the donor car last because that spark is least likely to ignite hydrogen gases from the discharged battery or (B) Put the positive on the donor car last because you have less chance of accidentally shorting the circuit & the donor has less outgassing
Think those costs are off with two different sources and sizes.
Google sez this:
"However, in general, distilled water is more expensive than deionized water. This is because it takes more time and energy to produce distilled water, and it also requires special equipment that not all companies have."
When I worked in the lab we had a distilled water line to every bench but it was replaced by deionized water to save cost.
Been decades since I had a car battery that needed water but I am hearing it is better to put distilled or demineralized water in your car radiator if needed as minerals are bad there too.
Oh yeah, I think they say to do that too, but I've never worried about that. And I've gotten tired of standing there holding my battery cables waiting for someone to offer me a jump, so I bought what is no longer sold, Battery Buddy. It was great. When the car voltage got low, it disconnected the battery and all you had to do was open the hood, push a big red button, and the car woulds start. The first one lasted iirc 12 years, but I had planned ahead and bought another, tthat came in an unlabeled brown box. It lasted only a year or two. I think it came from their stack of likely defective ones, that say in a corner until the company folded. (a lot of assumptions here, but I coudlnt' find any more for sale.)
Finally I found Priority Start, 4 or 5 times the price, but it has a motor, so all I have to do is sit in the driver's seat and put my foot on the brake and it reconnects the battery. I've had it 3 or 4 years and I've used it twice and it's great. It seems to be made mostly for commerical trucking fleets, so they would lose money if the truck doesn't start, and they tolerate the higher price.
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I had a lot of trouble connecting the Toyota battery cable to this thing. Toyota's seem pretty good but their battery connectors leave a lot to be desired. Or some related problem.
The car radio forgets most of what it wants knew, and the engine timing information is forgotten I guess, although I've never noticed a change in how the car runs, at least not for more than 5 minutes. Newer cars might forget even more, but at least I wasn't late to my doctor's appointment.
I don't see any reason to doubt what the poobahs say.
The point is to first connect the positive lead to the battery positive, and then the negative lead AWAY FROM THE BATTERY by connecting to the engine metal. In that order for safety.
After the engine starts, then disconnect the negative lead that is AWAY FROM THE BATTERY so any spark created at the disconnect point is unlikely to cause the battery to explode if hydrogen gas was created. Perhaps you left the jumpers connected for a few minutes while charging the battery which leads to more hydrogen gas which makes a spark more and more likely/dangerous as time goes on...
Distilled water is good enough for being devoid of "almost" all impurities except some ions. Distilled water is still quite conductive if you test a glass of distilled water with a multimeter.
Deionized water for home use is done with a canister of resin beads inline with your water pipe. The water is passed through the canister that can capture most, but not all the ions. Since the resin beads has charges that can capture only ionized particles in the water, other impurities in the water that have no electrical charges will not be captured.
Therefore, as I have explained before, the highest grade of pure water is deionized water made from distilled water.
Theoretically pure H2O does not conduct electricity, but in reality only deionized water made from distilled water can approached that theoretical state of being purely dielectric.
There is also C: Put the positive on the recipient car last because you have less chance of accidentally shorting the circuit & there is no hydrogen there.
Of A and B, they might both be logoical but B is more important. Shorting the donor battery, even at the other car, is going to cause a lot more trouble, cause a lot more damage, than hydrogen gases. That's why B is recommended.
Usually the guy helping me is also putting the cables on his car, but I still look at them before I finish my car. For various reason, I've had many dead batteries. Once a pretty girl stopped to give my car battery a jump.
Yes it does. First, set any thoughts of sparks causing an explosion aside. That's a *very* low probability occurrence as compared to the real reason. Unfortunately, a lot of people focus on the sparks issue and don't mention the real reason. And please note that the real reason also involves sparks.
The real reason has been mentioned earlier, but apparently needs to be repeated, maybe with more detail, so here goes. The real reason: there is a huge area of metal in the engine compartment, the car bumpers and fenders (if metal) etc. It is very easy to inadvertently touch the bare end of a jumper cable to that bare metal. If the negative jumper cable is connected first, and you're connecting the positive cable to the bad battery, you'll get a short circuit with that inadvertent touch, powerful sparks, a possible tack weld of the jumper cable, and a very bad day. (Possible fire, burns, dead battery, ruined cables, etc.)
If you connect the positive jumper first, the end of the cable CANNOT cause a short when it touches ANY bare metal in the car receiving the jump.
The proper procedure:
1 Put the cars close together but NOT touching.
2 Stretch the cable out so the bare positive end is away from the car with the good battery.
3 Connect the positive cable to the positive of the good battery
4 Connect the other end of the positive cable to the positive of the bad battery.
5 Connect the negative cable to the good battery
6 Connect the other end to the other car battery negative, or to the other car engine compartment metal where you can get a good solid mechanical clamping spot.
7 When finished do the above in reverse order
The above recognizes - and mitigates - the possibility of sparks, but focuses on the real potential hazard: short circuit. I wish all this talk of exploding hydrogen gas had never appeared, because it hides the extremely more probable event of a short circuit, which, of itself, creates a more powerful spark than connecting (or disconnecting) a jumper cable to a battery.
OK -an answer from a retired auto mechanic and former automotive technology instructor:
First of all - when removing/ installing a battery. ALWAYS remove the ground cable first. Why??? If you attempt to remove the live (usually positve) cable first and your wrench touches ground you have a high current short that can burn off the wrench, burn your hand, and / or blow up the battery. When removing the ground first there is virtually no chance of this happening - and after the ground cable is removed shorting from the love terminal to the car body produces no danger.
Same for replacing the battery - in reverse. No shoirt danger when installing the positive firstm and no danger when replacing the ground. There is a secondary reason that follows the first. When removing cables from a heavily discharged battery the battery will have "gassed" and there is an explosive mixture of hydrogen and oxygen in and around the battery - just WAITING for a small spark to set it off
Now, when BOOSTING a battery this secondary reason also comes into play. You have been cranking the engine with the feaf battery - so it has gassed. This means you do NOT want a spark at the battery - so yuu connect the ref cable to the dead battery FIRST, then you connect the black cable to a good engine ground, away from the battery. - you have NO fanger of spark at the battery. DO keep the free ends of the cables separate!!! Then connect the red cable to the live (boosting) bsttery positive terminal - and rinally connect the black cable to a good engine ground. Again - NO chance of a spark at the battery.
When you crank the boosted engine it draws power from the booster battery - and it CAN gas too. Now you disconnect the ground from the booster - no chance of spark at the battery, then the red power cable. I generally clip the red cable clip to the body of the cable about a foot or so from the end to prevent the possibility od the enfs shorting - THEN disconnect the cables from the boosted car. Make a habit of removing the black wire first even though in THIS case there is no chance of a spark.
Black off first, black on last - ALWAYS - is the SAFE way.
Now, for battery liquid.
Either de-ionized or distilled water is acceptable. If your tap water (not softened with an ion exchange (salt) softener) hardness is less than 50 PPM (That is about 3 grains of hardness) you can use your tap water - The minerals in hard water precipitate out and damage the battery. This is not much of an issue today because the VAST majority of automotivr batteries are sealed maintenance free with catalytic caps that recombine the gasses, as well as a calcium alloy in the lead that reduces offgassing (compared to straight lead or lead/antimony). Newer lead "coctails" are coming out over the years to reduce the swelling of the positive plate in calcium batteries -and better separators (woven glass instead of cellulose) also help.
I have gone through a few new cars but they never told me and I never asked.
There is normally no keypad on a car stereo so it must be some special sequence of pushing those buttons on the face plate to enter the code.
I guess if you have one installed in an aftermarket place they will give you the box that the stereo comes in, and the code instruction might be on a sticker in the box.
I remember decades ago thieves would bust your car window to rip out the car stereo (worth a thousand buck in the old days) but after they used this anti-theft scheme nobody steals car stereo anymore.
I got the idea from this newsgroup something like a decade or so ago.
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They had fitted a typical garden hose attachment instead of that one.
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I tried it but it was too heavy, especially with the ball valve attached.
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It was heavier than the diverter valve was designed to handle so I switched to this instead, which gets its water volume control from the main valve.
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I know what you're thinking and I'm sure it's used for that, but for me, it's all about keeping it on the outside and making sure things are clean.
You'll never need toilet paper ever again and you'll be cleaner as a result. During Covid, I was wondering why anyone hoarded TP in the first place.
How does Covid make you need more TP?
Good point of view, where I live alone but it doesn't touch the body.
How did you know?
I used to use this but it was just too difficult to keep clean.
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Plus, the only thing getting bigger down there is my prostate, which is wreaking havoc with the drainage hydraulics, where I'll say no more.
Three of these a night tend to be simpler and work better on your side while in bed, with one more kept by the office computer because it's emptied more easily into the five gallon containment bucket (which is a re-used Costco 40 pound jug of soybean oil, or whatever size it is).
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It's really good for the environment NOT to make nitrogen fertilizer at a factory because the nitrogen in the NPK consumes inordinate amounts of heat.
For the environment, I collect the thicker stuff in one of these.
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The only problem with any of this is keeping things clean, but consider it a tradeoff as I never have to clean the toilets in the house ever again.
It feels good to give back to the soil, where I combine kitchen scraps, wood chips, and humanure in layers in a re-used Costco dichlor bucket with the cap held tightly as the bigger corvids fly around where I've kept it, I guess they're thinking a dead animal lives there or something. :)
I don't think I waste anything as I burn all paper in the fireplace along with the wood in the wood-burning stove, so it's only plastic that I have to place in the recycling bins about once every two months per bucket.
I'm not disagreeing with you as I said I didn't know from the start. I do know pool chemistry though - but not battery chemistry. At least not yet. But keep talking and I can learn from you which is a good thing.
I don't think I've had to add water to a car battery in years. I guess it's done though as the caps come off (two sets of three).
You got me there.
The pool chemistry is simple because pH doesn't matter for sanitation where I just pour liquid chlorine into the pool to maintain the chlorine level at least 7.5% of the cyanuric acid level. That's it for sanitation.
For saturation, there are a half dozen factors, only half of which do you have any amount of control over, the other half (like temperature) are out of your hands so it's a game of matching the saturation index with the expected temperatures combined with the dilution when it rains and the concentration when it evaporates and you have to fill with city water.
I would think battery chemistry has the same "type" of equilibrium constants (Pka is what we deal with in pool chemistry) though.
Drinking distilled water creates health problems from the lack of essential nutrients and causes dehydration. Drinking distilled water is never a bad idea because the body cannot absorb dissolved minerals from water into the tissue.Sep 29, 2022
What Is Distilled Water and Is It Safe to Drink?
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Distillation:
Advantages
Removes contaminants to a large extent Reusable Lower cost
Limitations
Some contaminants that have the same boiling point as water is vaporized with water can be carried into the condensate Careful maintenance is required to ensure purity Requires more heat / electrical energy to boil the water. Requires large space on the counter Slower process
Deionization:
Advantages
Effectively remove dissolved ions in the water. Able to regenerate resin beds Low-cost investment
Limitation
Do not remove particles or bacteria. Operating costs increase when used for the long term.
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