Winter battery storage

[airshot]

When batteries sit for long periods of time without cycling the plates buildup with crud, to much crud makes the plates short out or loose capacity. A maintainer prevents the crud buildup and adds life and longer power draw to the battery by cycling it every so often.

 

[monzster]

I have lead acid batteries for both of my boats. Each has 2 batteries run Parallel. I use a Viking 4 amp Fully Automatic Controlled Charger Maintainers from Harbor Freight on each boat and have never had an issue. It is made for different types of batteries. I do check the fluid levels and specs using a hydrometer on the batteries twice a year and load test them before my fishing season starts. The boats stay outside under covers but in my area the temps only drop to the 20s in the winter. During the winter months I do check the charger display just to make sure there are no issues. Unfortunately I dont have anywhere to store 4 batteries inside.

 

[LaqueRatt]

A battery will normally lose only @5% per mo. Batteries many times sit for months before they're first sold. You guys know how to read date codes right? I've seen year old batts on the shelf at Walmart. So a 6 mo winter nap shouldn't do any harm. As long as there isn't a draw on it.

As for gunk inside the battery, that happens inevitably. No matter what. The good news is you can filter out the gunk and return the battery to nearly new level of performance. Hate to admit it, but get so bored at times I like to mess with old batteries and almost always can get em working well again. Drain, flush with bicarb, shake, clear flush, charge with epsom salts. Charge, discharge, overcharge, trickle awhile, drain dead. Do it a few times. Drain. Fill back up with filtered saved electrolyte and pretty much good as new again. Not sure how well this works on trolling batteries. I suspect these refurbs have diminished reserve, but don't know. Works great for cranking types.

 

[airshot]

A battery will normally lose only @5% per mo. Batteries many times sit for months before they're first sold. You guys know how to read date codes right? I've seen year old batts on the shelf at Walmart. So a 6 mo winter nap shouldn't do any harm. As long as there isn't a draw on it.

As for gunk inside the battery, that happens inevitably. No matter what. The good news is you can filter out the gunk and return the battery to nearly new level of performance. Hate to admit it, but get so bored at times I like to mess with old batteries and almost always can get em working well again. Drain, flush with bicarb, shake, clear flush, charge with epsom salts. Charge, discharge, overcharge, trickle awhile, drain dead. Do it a few times. Drain. Fill back up with filtered saved electrolyte and pretty much good as new again. Not sure how well this works on trolling batteries. I suspect these refurbs have diminished reserve, but don't know. Works great for cranking types.

A maintainer is much less work and trouble and can be used on a variety of batteries....some folks enjoy doing things the hard way...and that is fine. After 73 years I have learned to work smarter, not harder.

 

[LDUBS]

When batteries sit for long periods of time without cycling the plates buildup with crud, to much crud makes the plates short out or loose capacity. A maintainer prevents the crud buildup and adds life and longer power draw to the battery by cycling it every so often.

I have a fancy digital charger for my AGM trolling motor battery that is supposed to do a maintenance cycle. It is all magic wizardry to me. I just plug it in and trust it is doing whatever it is supposed to do. Haha.

 

[LaqueRatt]

I've said it before and I'm saying it again. Those maintainers/tricklechargers eventually fail and when they do they generally take the battery out too. I'd rather depend on myself than a cheap buggy device. My point is you need to do nothing. If you do nothing, only good will come out of it. The only thing you want to try to avoid is having the battery freeze solid. Which sometimes spells the end. What I do with the old batteries really has nothing to do with maintaining them. What I do is restore them to service and it's not that hard! Basically you clean them out. Think of it like an oil change.

 

[airshot]

Never saw one fail in my 20 plus years of using them,....cleaning out a battery is no fun, when a maintainer will do that for ya....work smarter not harder !!

 

[LaqueRatt]

You must live right. I still say you're wasting your time, but hey, whatever make you sleep good at night, eh? To be the devil's advocate here, if your charger failed, would you even know it unless it cooked the battery, which has happened to me.

Example for you. I have 12V lighting in my shed. That battery sits there all the time. Prob over 100 degs on a hot summer day and 0 in the winter isn't that uncommon. I charge it when I think about it. It sits for months at a time with no charge and those lights almost always burn brightly. Batteries are pretty rugged actually. It seems they can develop a memory though, just like your cordless tools sometimes do. So, you have to discharge them completely and then charge the living snots out of them at times to keep them working well. And is sure doesn't hurt to clean all the particulate out of them, which I suspect causes minor shorting which is what leads to diminishing power retention. Most of this is just my theories, but regardless, the results speak for themselves.

As for cleaning them out, it's just maintenance. Up to you what level of maintenance you care to do. I will tell you this though. When your battery gets weak and you start thinking about replacing it, it's worth your while to service it. Batteries aren't cheap these days!

OK, I'll shut up now. You guys do what you want, but keep in mind there is a lot more to having a healthy battery than keeping it fully charged, which arguably leads to them becoming weak. No battery does well if it's kept completely charged all the time.

 

[airshot]

You still don't understand how a maintainer works, yet you keep tellng people how bad they are.....the examples you give are the perfect reasons to use one ! Your stories have been a big boost for the sales of maintainers, I hope Battery Tender and other mfgrs send you a check !

 

[WeeHooker]

FWIW, I've been using a 20W solar panel with controller ( purchased off Amazon for $50)for all 3 of my boats as I don't have access to 120V shore power where I keep them. I just leave it plugged into the boat year round. It will charge my batteries after a day of use within 2-3 days and keeps them topped off all the time. I've been doing this for about 3 years now and it seems to be working well.

 

[jethro]

I used to pull all my batteries (my boat has 5 of them, 3 group 31's and two group 27's) and bring them inside the garage, but I don't bother anymore. It's way too much work. Now I just disconnect the starting and house battery because I've had my bilge pump stick on and kill the battery. I will occasionally drag a cord across the driveway and plug in the on board charger. Maybe 2 or 3 times a winter. Hasn't seemed to hurt my batteries at all and it gets pretty cold here in Central NH.

 

[LaqueRatt]

You pretty much hit the nail on the head. Disconnecting the cables is prob the only thing you really need to do. To ensure the battery doesn't get pulled down so low that it freezes. I used to think freezing killed batteries until I recently brought one back to life that sat for two years dead in my shed.

Just a note to my fellow old-timers. Don't get so set in your ways that you don't continue to learn. I thought I knew a lot about batteries, but once I started rejuvenating them for fun, I had to rethink everything I thought I knew!

My current research indicates that batteries fail due to contaminated electrolyte and build up of crud on the plates inside. Sodium bicarb cleans all the crap out and straining the electrolyte gets rid of the rest. Repeated charge cycles along with complete draining in between slowly restores cranking amperage to specs.

It's harder to measure reserve capacity so that's the only thing I'm not sure about. Since this is THE most important aspect of a trolling battery I'm not so sure it's worthwhile to give one a tune up, but hey, it costs next nothing to try. So if somebody wants to give it a go and post results I'd be curious to hear how it works out.

 

[airshot]

I used to pull all my batteries (my boat has 5 of them, 3 group 31's and two group 27's) and bring them inside the garage, but I don't bother anymore. It's way too much work. Now I just disconnect the starting and house battery because I've had my bilge pump stick on and kill the battery. I will occasionally drag a cord across the driveway and plug in the on board charger. Maybe 2 or 3 times a winter. Hasn't seemed to hurt my batteries at all and it gets pretty cold here in Central NH.

I did that as well for many years with good sucess !! Allow the batteries to drop a little then charge them back up helps to reduce the buildup on the plates. This is what they call cycling the battery, which you can do manually or let the maintainer do it for you. Just don't let the battery get to low, or just plain forget like I did and freeze a good battery. Now I let my maintainer remember for me as my memory is not as trustworthy as it used to be.

 

[thill]

A lot of the new chargers have a "descaling" mode, where it pulses the electric current rather than just feeding a steady current. This "tapping" is supposed to knock the scale off the plates.

FWIW, mine has brought back a number of "bad" batteries back to life, and they went on for several years later. Others, nothing would fix. Touching plates, I suspect.

IF you have a charger with this feature, hook up a bad battery and let it go for a couple of days and see if it works.

 

[airshot]

A lot of the new chargers have a "descaling" mode, where it pulses the electric current rather than just feeding a steady current. This "tapping" is supposed to knock the scale off the plates.

FWIW, mine has brought back a number of "bad" batteries back to life, and they went on for several years later. Others, nothing would fix. Touching plates, I suspect.

IF you have a charger with this feature, hook up a bad battery and let it go for a couple of days and see if it works.

I have had them bring back very weak batteries but never a totally dead one. That descaling mode is part of a maintainers operation. Depending on the brand, they have different terms for the job they do. I would never trust a battery that came back from the dead in my vehicle or my boat, but I have had them sit on my garage shelf to use when an emergency arrises, especially a jump start when my grandkids leave their lights on !

 

[LaqueRatt]

Pretty sure the only way to remove sulfur build up on the plates is with baking soda. Cycling does slowly bring them back up to where they should be, but not sure it'll do a lot if you don't clean the gunk out. This is like trying to avoid changing your oil. You want your engine or battery to last you gotta change the fluid. Some use new electrolyte which can be purchased at the auto parts, but I re-use it after filtering.

 

[airshot]

Pretty sure the only way to remove sulfur build up on the plates is with baking soda. Cycling does slowly bring them back up to where they should be, but not sure it'll do a lot if you don't clean the gunk out. This is like trying to avoid changing your oil. You want your engine or battery to last you gotta change the fluid. Some use new electrolyte which can be purchased at the auto parts, but I re-use it after filtering.

Can't say for sure as I have never even tried that, years back my son tried a recycled battery but it lasted only 6 months. A friend is an engineer at our local battery mfgr plant, according to him rejuvinating is dangerous, and rarely works for ant type of long term, but I can't say for sure as I have no direct experience. I can only attest to the added service my maintainers have given my batteries.

 

[LaqueRatt]

Long ago in another life I managed, actually helped launch a very successful battery business. We sold 100s a day and I got stuck with the task of finding an outlet for all the trade ins. So I built a mega-charging bench which would charge 150-200 at a time. I soon learned some interesting stuff. Like Globe Union batteries were by far MUCH better than Exides and Generals which were the only other major manufacturers.

These 3 basically made almost all the batteries. Even though there were 100s of labels! The exception is GM which back then made their own. These AC Delcos were every bit as good as the GU batts, but were sealed which made a lot of them stop working when the fluid got low. Now if you wanted to drill them and cap them, they could be returned to service almost every time.

The batteries we marketed as reconditioned were nothing more than the ones that took a charge overnight and held it for a week. These I took to car lots where I sat up a little wire rack. Each week I'd come by and bill them for missing units. I'd also take out a fair amount of "factory seconds," which were merely customer returns of new batts that went dead on them. Very rarely were they bad, but usually the were scuffed and didn't look new so they got sold at a discounted price with a limited warranty.

Most amazing thing I found working there was that a full 60% of the exchanges were not bad at all. Some were weak, but most took a good charge. The weak ones, especially the GU batts (Die Hard, Interstate, Ford, Mopar) I'd install in cars with small engines. Reserving the ones with a lot of grunt for luxury and performance cars.

Getting paid to mess with batts gave me a lot of opportunities to experiment. I never did any flushing and refilling or cycling though. Just charge, check, resell. Re-poured broken posts. Plastic welded cracked cases. Batts out of sunk boats go new electrolyte and out the door they went.

After seeing a bunch of crap online, people selling their "secret" methods decided to see what some crappy old GUs I had sitting around would do if I cleaned out the gunk and cycled them. I still cannot believe the results. One 8 year old tractor battery, yep those cheap little 25 buck ones, popped right back to life and honestly it worked better than when it was new. Load testing at 300CA, only rated for 275.

OK I'll shaddup now. Probably more than anyone ever wanted to know.....LOL

 

[Keith Kirchoff01]

I had 2 lead acid batteries that I took out every winter an put in heater building those batteries lasted 7 years.i have not done that since because I fish all year but I never get that much life out of batteries leaving them out

 

[LaqueRatt]

Same brand? It can make a HUGE difference. As long as they don't go flat and freeze if anything the cold should slow down chemical breakdown. If you really want those batteries to last get the crap out of them. I suspect all the crud floating around inside may be most of the reason batteries get weak with age. No expert really, just reporting the results off my experimentation. I could well have some of this wrong!