Larry wrote:
[snip]
I remoted the charger's AC plug to under the trailer hitch to make
connecting it as easy an painless as possible. The batteries went from
lasting a year and a half to five and a half years, same batteries, same
manufacturer....lots less unrecoverable sulphation.

Boats that have a little charger plugged into the dock and water their
batteries with DISTILLED ONLY get that gravity back up after the abuse of
dreaming you're going to charge them at 50A for 30 minutes on the engine
at sea. Same effect....charging happens very SLOWLY OVER TIME.

That's a very good thought, Larry. And I suspect you are right about
it, that you can make the batteries last longer by plugging them into
shore power. You could probably make them last longer by having them
hooked to a wind generator and/or solar panel too since they would be
getting constant recharge current and would spend their lives more
charged than more discharged. As far as I am concerned that only makes
more of a case for using really cheap ass batteries from a mega-store
... because those AGM batteries are 4.5 times as expensive for the same
number of amp hours, so if you can get 5 years, or 8 years, or whatever
out of a lead-acid deep cycle, you're looking at 20 years, or 30 years
that you'd have to get out of AGM's to get the same cost/benefit.

I would be interested in anyone's experience with using batteries that
you can remove the plates from, has anyone used any like that ? I
assume they exist. The idea being to take the plates out every few
years and get some kind of a solvent, or I don't know .. a toothbrush I
guess, and scrub the plates clean. I'm sure they wouldn't advertise
that "feature" since it would no doubt get environmentalist feathers
ruffled if people did that out in their driveway or something. I'd
like to know about it though. Sure, it might take off a little plating
material, but who cares if the plates are thick ? I wish I had the
problem of using deep cycle batteries so long that the plating material
wears thin, that would be a dream come true.