"Mark" wrote in news:1156831412.903466.125420
@b28g2000cwb.googlegroups.com:

Sulfation which drops to the bottom of the battery case does not
decrease battery capacity. There's space at the bottom of the battery
for just that reason. The battery's service life is decreased;
ultimately enough crud will drop to the bottom of the battery to short
it out.



This is just not true because the capacity of a lead-acid battery is
caused by the acid charge in that battery. "Discharged" means, quite
simply, that we've run out of acid to eat the lead. Lead Sulphate that
drops out of suspension and cannot be recovered from the bottom of the
battery USES UP the acid charge, making that acid charge unrecoverable.
As it sulphates (or sulfates, I gotta go look that up some time) more and
more the "fully charged" specific gravity, the measure of the acid
intensity in the electrolyte, will fail to come up to 1.260-1.280 of a
new battery. The sulfated (sulphated??) battery will run OUT of acid on
discharge faster. You've lost capacity.

"Dead Cell" isn't really dead. It's just that its acid load has been
converted "mostly" to lead sulfate and can no longer be charged.

Now, before we get to the plates-have-been-holed-and-warped state, you
can ADJUST the acid load on a FULLY CHARGED battery back up to recover
the lost acid to sulfation. VERY SLOWLY adding sulphuric acid to the
electrolyte, agitating or simply waiting for a day, then adding more as
you continue to test specific gravity with your TEMPERATURE COMPENSATED
real hydrometer, can recover a low capacity cell you haven't let go too
far. (This sorta happens when some IDIOT drops an aspirin tablet, 2-
(acetyloxy)benzoic acid, into the poor battery he's trying to destroy.)
He gets a momentary boost in voltage and thinks he's fixed it. He
hasn't.

It's this sulfation problem of lead acid batteries the manufacturers
depend on to produce a steady stream of sales to the same people, over
and over. Sales have gone up since we convinced them a gelcell or AGM
battery that CANNOT precipitate its crystals is worth $300. When these
stationary-electrolyte batteries sulfate, the sulfate crystals stay in
place. Of course, great for manufacturers, there isn't going to be any
smartass adjusting the gravity to save it if we seal it all up and make
it "maintenance free", now, is there?

--
There's amazing intelligence in the Universe.
You can tell because none of them ever called Earth.

"Mark" wrote in news:1156831412.903466.125420
@b28g2000cwb.googlegroups.com:

Have you actually done that? 1.5 amp charger charging a 500AH bank or
larger.

I'm guessing a 500AH bank would need at least a 5 amp charger to bring
it up to 14.2 volts and a fully charged state. A 1.5 amp charger might
bring it up to something like 80% charged before it can't up the
voltage above 13.2 volts or so, and just floats the partially charged
bank. Could be wrong though, anybody wanna chime in here with
firsthand experience?

I do agree a 1.5 amp charger will float a fully charged 500AH bank,
that's 36 amps a day, more than the natural discharge loss of the bank.
But will it charge it up from a deeply discharged state?


No, actually it was only 330AH of golf cart 16H batteries.

All this is quite moot on a "working boat" sitting in a slip. The 1.5A
charger is NEVER going to recharge or even keep charged a boat that has
LOADS running all the time, like bilge pumps cycling on and off to keep
the dripping packing glands from flooding it. I don't recommend it for
that.

What I DO recommend the little brick for is any boat that's shut off
sitting on a trailer or in a dry stack or put up for the winter. The
battery is disconnected from all loads and only needs a VERY slow
recharge, like my little brick creates, over long storage periods, longer
than a week.

It's not for charging the boat battery at the slip between uses. What IS
really nice about it is you can go off for 3 months and come back to
batteries that are REALLY hotly charged, so slowly, and NOT have to add
water to them, at all! Charging this slow rarely makes a bubble of
hydrogen. I've never seen electrolyte drop at all from the 75AH deep
cycle driving my dink's electric outboard to the 330AH beasts in my shop.

At $30 a charger, if you have two banks of house batteries, use two
little bricks, not one, on separated battery banks, eliminating the
cross-discharging that always goes on in parallel. (You won't hurt them
if you screw up and put them in parallel...been there, done that. Then,
you'd have a 3A, stepped-charge charger as one of them will always have a
little different trip point than the other, shutting one down first.

This morning, the 1.5A brick charger is recharging some utility gelcells
for me....from 2.2AH to 12AH...I have laying around the shop. When it
starts charging a small 12V gelcell like these, the "charged" LED
immediately comes on after 5-10 seconds, and starts blinking on and off
as 1.5A is WAY too much charging current for a 2.2AH gelcell. The "on
time" (when the LED is off) and the "off time" (when the LED is on)
exchange time lengths as the little batteries charge up. Eventually, the
LED stays on for many minutes and occasionally winks off, immediately
coming back on because the little battery is fully charged. It's easy to
see when the charge cycle is completed, and forgetting it for a day seems
to make no difference at all.

--
There's amazing intelligence in the Universe.
You can tell because none of them ever called Earth.

As you suggested Larry I was able to get the totally dead battery to
take a charge using an old fashioned, not fully automatic charger.
Thanks for the suggestion!

Also, I picked up one of those 1.5A bricks you suggested. The one I
found was a Schumacher Model WM-1562A. About $15. Similar to the one
you suggested except it's rectangular, and has a 6/12V switch. The
switch is useless to me, but oh well. All the other features are
exactly as you mentioned.
Thanks again!

(Floating Mind) wrote in news:4579-44FDAD37-284
@storefull-3111.bay.webtv.net:

As you suggested Larry I was able to get the totally dead battery to
take a charge using an old fashioned, not fully automatic charger.
Thanks for the suggestion!

Great! Works quite often. I wonder how many recoverable batteries got
trashed because of the computerized battery chargers....and what the
motivation is making them the way they are.....sales?

Also, I picked up one of those 1.5A bricks you suggested. The one I
found was a Schumacher Model WM-1562A. About $15. Similar to the one
you suggested except it's rectangular, and has a 6/12V switch. The
switch is useless to me, but oh well. All the other features are
exactly as you mentioned.
Thanks again!



I found it on Ebay. The dealer wanted $42 so you did well...(c;

It's much larger than mine....but does the same thing.

Glad it worked out for you. Hope the battery will stay up WITHOUT the
charger hooked to it, now. Leave the battery sitting without the charger
for a full week then let's see if it will take a load like it should.
That'll be the key...




--
There's amazing intelligence in the Universe.
You can tell because none of them ever called Earth.