New Batteries for a Battery Killer?

[mrsmelly]

2 minutes ago, ditchcrawler said:

I was discussing buying second hand boats and excessive engine hours when I said I would be more worried about one with a few hours over its life. Someone posted there boat was 3 years old done 4000 hours and had been serviced 3 times as the manual said oil and filter change every 250 hour or annually, so he did it annually.

Berlimey!! mine done evry 2/3 months its a no brainer. £4.12 pence for a filter and £ 7.84 for 5 liters of oil at black friday prices and a doddle to do.

[WotEver]

4 minutes ago, ditchcrawler said:

Someone posted there boat was 3 years old done 4000 hours and had been serviced 3 times as the manual said oil and filter change every 250 hour or annually, so he did it annually

 

[MtB]

17 minutes ago, Alan de Enfield said:

If you want to minimise your recharging to 'zero' you can do (and just replace the batteries more frequently).

The old 'guidance' of "charge your batteries 3 hours every day and 8 hours on a weekend" probably holds more true than many would accept.

 

My advice is to charge for 24 hours each day, and 48 hours at weekends. Then you should be ok! 

[Alan de Enfield]

1 minute ago, Mike the Boilerman said:

 

My advice is to charge for 24 hours each day, and 48 hours at weekends. Then you should be ok! 

I bet there are thousands that do just that - coming off the 'life-line' for just a couple of weeks in the Summer.

[rusty69]

3 minutes ago, Mike the Boilerman said:

 

My advice is to charge for 24 hours each day, and 48 hours at weekends. Then you should be ok! 

8 days a week!

[Alan de Enfield]

1 minute ago, rusty69 said:

8 days a week!

No - the 8th day is a 'day of rest'

[WotEver]

1 minute ago, rusty69 said:

8 days a week!

 

[tomsk]

You do come across as being a bit hysterical over your batteries Mike.

They are consumables and should be regarded as such.

Whether you want to consume them every few months or years is entirely up to your use or abuse of them and your charging regime.

Surely you have got to grips with this by now?

Edited March 5, 2017 by tomsk

[WotEver]

It's a song to him from Mike's batteries. 

[cereal tiller]

3 minutes ago, Alan de Enfield said:

No - the 8th day is a 'day of rest'

MtB has overcharged his Batteries by then so the 8 th Day is a Black Sabbath?

[MtB]

12 minutes ago, tomsk said:

You do come across as being a bit hysterical over your batteries Mike.

They are consumables and should be regarded as such.

Whether you want to consume them every few months or years is entirely up to your use or abuse of them and your charging regime.

Surely you have got to grips with this by now?

Well I thought I had, which is why I splashed out on a decent set.

Three months later, having looked after them in accordance with the advice on this forum they are farked. 

Why is it hysterical to tell people about it and try to figure out how/why it happened? Isn't that what forums are for? 

[rusty69]

4 minutes ago, Mike the Boilerman said:

advice on this forum 

Never take any advice from a bunch of strangers on an internet forum, thats my advice

[MtB]

I'll take it. Thanks!!

[Alan de Enfield]

"When a well-packaged web of lies has been sold gradually to the masses over many years,

the truth will seem utterly preposterous and its speaker a raving lunatic". Dresden James

[tomsk]

4 minutes ago, Mike the Boilerman said:

Well I thought I had, which is why I splashed out on a decent set.

Three months later, having looked after them in accordance with the advice on this forum they are farked. 

Why is it hysterical to tell people about it and try to figure out how/why it happened? Isn't that what forums are for? 

It was not intended as a criticism, more as an observation.

I have been following almost all the battery threads on here for getting on for a decade now and have reached the simple conclusion that you can throw as much money, theory and knowledge at the problem as you like and as much time as you have spare trying to achieve the 'perfect' charging/discharging regime but ultimately eventually your batteries will end up borked.

It is a fascinating subject though.

 

[mrsmelly]

5 minutes ago, Alan de Enfield said:

"When a well-packaged web of lies has been sold gradually to the masses over many years,

the truth will seem utterly preposterous and its speaker a raving lunatic". Dresden James

Thats what happened with the Eu until sense prevailed in the end  ooh sorry wrong thread 

[GUMPY]

AFAICR the guidence has always been and will always be to keep the batteries as close to 100% as possible.

If this means recharging every day then so be it.

However it has been said many times that the most economic way when using a generator taking into account fuel use etc is to discharge down to somewhere close to 50% then recharge as much as you can. It takes much longer to charge from 85%>100% than from 50%>85% hence more fuel use for less %.

When I was working and I had the genset I used to run at lunchtime for an hour and in the evening for 2hrs every day as I didn't get home until 6 and 2hrs wasn't enough.

[cuthound]

Just now, Loddon said:

AFAICR the guidence has always been and will always be to keep the batteries as close to 100% as possible.

If this means recharging every day then so be it.

However it has been said many times that the most economic way when using a generator taking into account fuel use etc is to discharge down to somewhere close to 50% then recharge as much as you can. It takes much longer to charge from 85%>100% than from 50%>85% hence more fuel use for less %.

When I was working and I had the genset I used to run at lunchtime for an hour and in the evening for 2hrs every day as I didn't get home until 6 and 2hrs wasn't enough.

Absolutely  correct.

The charge at 50% is a compromise to get the longest life using the least amount of energy without spending most waking hours charging.

[MtB]

My own personal experience of charging weekly to close to 100% and about monthly to definitely 100% leads to farked batteries in short order.

My conclusion is that charging frequently should be given more weight than it has been on here in the past. Daily or on alternate days. This seems to only obvious difference between what I have been doing and what other people on here do, whose batteries seem to last for months on end before needing replacement.

I'm now of the view that charging frequently is more important than charging to 100%.

Edited March 5, 2017 by Mike the Boilerman

[smileypete]

5 hours ago, Richard10002 said:

Some may know, or have deduced, that I spend 3 or 4 nights a week on board, off grid, with a Honda Eu20i genny, charging through a Sterling Pure Sine Wave inverter charger, 2500/80/12, (i.e. an 80A 12v charger).

When I got the boat in Sept 2011 it needed new batteries, so I bought cheap shop branded 110Ah from Advanced battery Supplies in Stockport for £210.

By Dec 2012 it was clear that they were dying a death and, in April 2013 i bought 3 x Varta Hobby Leisure 110Ah, on the basis that they were a bit heavier, a better brand, and had a good write up amongst caravanners and boaters.

By Dec 2014 it was clear they were dying a death so, in May 2015 I bit the bullet and bought 4 x Trojan T105s for £400, for obvious reasons.

Anyway, like MtB, I find that, despite knowing a fair amount about batteries, how they work, and how they should be charged, it is now clear that they have died a death - they seem to have a total capacity of about 150Ah as of this morning and, despite charging to 2% tail current, hours of equalising, for a couple of months, they have just got worse.

My charging regime has tended to be on board Wednesday, use for a couple of days at about 100Ah per day, charge at 15V on Friday until current is around 4Ah. Use until Sunday, then charge at 15V until current around 4Ah, then equalise once a month for 3 or 4 hours at 15.5V. The equalising has been weekly for the past couple of months.

I've got a NASA BM2 monitor, and a Smartguage, and I charge well beyond the point where the Smartguage says 100%, and generally start charging when it says 50%. Thus, despite doing everything that seems to correlate to good battery practice, I kill batteries in a bit less than 2 years.

So, by deduction, it seems that whatever batteries I buy, I get a couple of years out of them, and that's it. I'm not prepared to pay current Trojan prices, so could either try the Varta Hobby again, for about £330 for 3 x 110Ah, Numax CXV31MF for about £240 for 3 x 110Ah, or this shop brand 28.5kg 110Ah from Advanced Battery Supplies, at £225 for 3:

https://advancedbatterysupplies.co.uk/product/abs-110-ampere/

given my history, I'm tempted by the heavy unbranded job, but am leaning towards ManBats Numax Brand, (which could be a generic battery with a Numax sticker?).

I'm going to do something on Thursday, and it would be good to have some opinions to put in the decision making pot

Couple of questions:

1) When doing a full charge, do ALL the cells bubble moderately well at the end of charge?

2) What are the SGs reading.

I'd expect the answers may be 'no' and 'all over the place'. I often don't get satisfactory answers to these type of questions.

Batts must be charged at the manufacturers temperature compensated charge voltage, people fail to appreciate that in winter with batts on a cold counter, this could be rather high and much higher than they expect!

Also narrowboats are essentially a stationary application, so if the acid stratifies the only way to get it mixed is by electrolyte gassing during charge.

All the answers are in a few paragraphs of The Battery FAQ, but people never pay attention to it.

I think it's quite easy to recover sulphated batts, but there's no easy cheap off-the-shelf way of doing it, and it does take time. I suspect the Trojans are barely broken in, but rather sulphated.

Edited March 5, 2017 by smileypete

[dmr]

1 hour ago, Mike the Boilerman said:

Well yes, that's what I thought too. So only having the chance to recharge at weekends I thought getting a battery back big enough to last two weeks would be fine. But it wasn't. It's down to about 40% of new capacity after three months now. 

"Preferable to charge on a regular basis" simply isn't true. It's mandatory to charge every 24 hours while the battery is in use.

#

I don't think this is true, but first, there are no rigid rules, just some fairly flexible concepts, and this 50% deadline has got totally out of hand on this forum. A few discharges to 49% is no problem, and a few down to 20% is probably ok too, and certainly is with Trojans.

I suggest that if you have a big bank or a low demand then recharging once every few days is fine, but the longer you leave it the more effort is needed to shift the slight sulphation. Trojan actually suggest a little tickle (finishing charge) at about 15.5v (I think) on every charge, a sort of mini equalise, so just charging to 100% on tail current is probably not quite enough, especially if you keep doing this. With a lot of solar I reckon just one or two equalisations should get through the winter.

I suspect the ops batteries have failed due to a total lack of equalisation over the winter, and all will be well now he has learned this stuff. He might prefer to go back to cheapos, but would also be OK with new Trojans now he knows how to equalise. Trojans have got a bit costly of late.

..............Dave

[mrsmelly]

38 minutes ago, Mike the Boilerman said:

My own personal experience of charging weekly to close to 100% and about monthly to definitely 100% leads to farked batteries in short order.

My conclusion is that charging frequently should be given more weight than it has been on here in the past. Daily or on alternate days. This seems to only obvious difference between what I have been doing and what other people on here do, whose batteries seem to last for months on end before needing replacement.

I'm now of the view that charging frequently is more important than charging to 100%.

I am in complete agreement especialy with the last line.

[Keeping Up]

Indeed the nice technical people at Varta advised me that I should take my batteries out and shake them vigorously at least once a month. When I said that wasn't feasible they said the best alternative was to wind up the volts and bubble the guts out of them.

[AndrewIC]

5 hours ago, Richard10002 said:

in April 2013 i bought 3 x Varta Hobby Leisure 110Ah ... use for a couple of days at about 100Ah per day,

So on your figures, your nominal bank capacity, at new, was ~330Ah, and you are discharging them by ~200Ah, so to about 39%, twice a week, every week, so in 2 years you're getting ~700 such cycles out of a set. Am I missing something, because that sounds pretty good?

[cuthound]

35 minutes ago, Keeping Up said:

Indeed the nice technical people at Varta advised me that I should take my batteries out and shake them vigorously at least once a month. When I said that wasn't feasible they said the best alternative was to wind up the volts and bubble the guts out of them.

That advice is to prevent stratification, a "problem" that affects stationary batteries (but not one I ever saw in a 41 year career working closely with batteries). It is not really an issue on a boat because the occasional rocking, normal charging and vibration from the engine will stir the electrolyte up.