lead acid battery issue

It is bad practice to run them into the ground. I am sure you know that.

No. It is a really bad idea to run any of them to totally flat.

Towards the end the weakest cell in the series chain gets wrecked by the others and will never properly recover. Deep discharge will tolerate a bit more cyclic abuse over its nominal Ah capacity though. Car batteries are really only happy delivering very high output currents for shortish periods of time. Run them flat into the ground and you are asking for trouble with predictable results.

As someone else said protection circuits are offered to drop the load when the battery voltage is getting too low and there is a risk of not being able to start the engine.

That or a low charge indicator flashing led to warn or impending doom.

Reply to
Martin Brown
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Or a PV panel and/or a Rutland Windcharger, if it's too far away from the mains.

That's guaranteed to kill any type of Pb-acid battery IME. NiFe, NiCd and NiMH don't suffer that way, provided you don't allow individual cells to become reverse-charged.

Reply to
Andy Wade

Any half decent boat doesn't use the engine battery for general "house" electricals. But such a device is still a good idea with deep discharge batteries.

As for Mr Lamb's battery it's dead, it's not worth the faffing about trying to resurect and even if it can be brought back it will still be unreliable. Weigh it in.

Reply to
Dave Liquorice

In message , Gary writes

What! You expect a horse person to spend money on something not directly attached to their pet?

I think I will pass on the groups comments about fully discharging *car* batteries and make sure my battery is returned before this happens. Now, if I only knew the current drawn by the energizer....

regards

Reply to
Tim Lamb

If it's just for general use, The Lidl ones which come up several times a year are excellent. Cost about 13 quid. Will charge a car battery overnight. Change to a maintenance charge after charging too - so can be left on indefinitely. Small and light enough to fit in a large pocket.

Reply to
Dave Plowman (News)

If it will actually produce an output to a totally flat battery - many modern units won't.

Reply to
Dave Plowman (News)

That means I have to keep an eye on Lidl, then find out where the nearest on is, then get there before they run out. I'm not sure I can be faffed.

Reply to
Huge

There are similar ones - probably from the same factory but with cosmetic differences - available easily on Ebay etc, but at about x3 the price.

I also have a Halfords one bought earlier which claims to have an 11 amp output, but seems to take as long to charge a battery as the Lidl one - and takes up lots more space. So saying, it works ok.

I've got one of the Lidl ones fitted permanently to the SD1 in the spare wheel well, with an external waterproof mains socket. At that price it makes some sense.

Reply to
Dave Plowman (News)

The only difference between deep discharge and standard is that standard will survive going to half flat only but deliver more starting current for a car. deep discharge go to about 75%-80% discharge without damage but cant do starter motor currents so well.

In the end the real solution is to disconnect the battery when the voltage gets low.

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

Is there much difference between the sealed lead acid battery Yausa type and the open one's like leisure batts and car batts?...

Reply to
tony sayer

CostCo normally have something very similar in stock.

Reply to
Dave Liquorice

Yes exactly. There are two reasons.

  1. I use seven such batteries in my motorhome and occasionally some of them are fully discharged. I don't like this to happen but sometimes it does, accidentally.

  1. A friend of mine has a mobile display unit for his fountain control valves. I rigged up a battery/charger/inverter arrangement for him, to power the pumps. Several times the battery has become very deeply discharged. Recently he did a demo somewhere in the Middle East and didn't get a chance to recharge the battery until he got home, but the battery survived.

Bill

Reply to
Bill Wright

I dunno mate. They all; work for a while and then dont.

I must take my stock down the recycling centre sometime.

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

What do you want to use it for?

Bill

Reply to
Bill Wright

We used standard car batteries to supply the power to sound etc equipment on a soap opera backlot. 5-6 days a week. Two batteries used alternately and charged each night. They never got more than half discharged. Both were fine for more than 2 years. A much cheaper solution than pro Ni-Cads etc for this purpose where size and weight didn't much matter.

The point being that car batteries can be an economical solution - provided they're never run even close to flat.

Reply to
Dave Plowman (News)

Charge car batteries? :o)

Completely flat ones. I have battery conditioners on the rarely used vehicles.

Like for example when my Disco ate its alternator & I had to charge the battery up every day until I could get it fixed. The conditioners won't supply enough current.

Reply to
Huge

I'd not call APC chargers that intelligent as they routinely overcharged their batteries in the late 1990's, whether they knew nothing about the chemistry of the cells they were using or they did know about them and did it deliberately I don't know.

Reply to
The Other Mike

Yes, lots. There are big variations in battery construction and chemistry depending on their intended use, the vast majority of which won't be obvious or even visible to end users. (and Yuasa type means nothing really as they make a huge range of batteries)

Reply to
The Other Mike

Many car batteries are called 'sealed' but this isn't correct. A genuine SLA uses a paste rather than liquid electrolyte. And are far less tolerant of being overcharged.

Yuasa BTW make all sorts of batteries. Recently bought one for a scooter, and it arrived dry with a container of acid which you had to fill it with.

Reply to
Dave Plowman (News)

I used a Rutland windcharger for years with an electric fence, but they're not cheap and a fair bit of hassle to install - a PV panel would probably be the best bet. Having said that, electric fences don't draw too much current - and if the batteries are swopped over every week or so and then recharged they should be fine.

Reply to
Farmer Giles

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