Well,
I read a lot of intelligent information on this post and some not intelligent information.
I think that what your problem is - is that instead of using your noggin, you want to buy something that will do your thinking for you.

If you have 4 batteries, and you connect it to a 10 amp charger, you will still place a 10 amp charge upon the batteries, but to the batteries, it will look more like a 2.5 amp charger - since it is dividing the current between them.

I have seen some cheap people in my life, but I will guess the OP takes the cake. If you think that a 10 amp charger is going to make your electric bill go up or down by regulating the power being applied to the battery at day vs night - you are only fooling yourself.

Until you understand a charge vs. a surface charge, you will never understand what events are taking place within the batteries.
I liked the analogy of someone using diodes to isolate each battery.
But a even better solution is to use those batteries as a battery bank, say on a transistor radio - police scanner would be a good example.

If you charge the batteries nearly full charge and you use those batteries for a couple of days or even a week at a time, you will create a cycle, which will keep the batteries at optimum power - slow down the calcification on the battery plates and keep the one good battery from being killed by the one junk battery that doesn't store as much power.

The other thing is - if you are stupid enough to use a trolling motor with a deep cycle battery until you run it down to nothing, then you ought to be willing to replace those batteries every 4 years, because even though they say deep cycle - you are squeezing the life out of them when you discharge them beyond 10.5 volts DC.

Your battery charger is not a power generating station - it doesn't work like 3 mile island. It will create a charge sufficient enough to recharge a battery to the point of where it is useable again and then it will reduce the amount of current, so it does not over heat the plates in the battery.
The fold back on the charger is sufficient enough to protect the batteries, but once the VOM - and this is the missing link in your hardware - once the VOM shows 13.7 volts - the battery holds as much power as it can possibly hold... Like a cup of water, what happens when you over fill it? The excess product spills out.

Batteries by nature are dirty.
The dirt, acid etc on the battery creates a discharge because the current flows out of the battery through the dielectric to ground.
The other thing I didn't read is what you placed the batterys on?
Wood is prefered, but some rubber mats might not be bad either, as long as they are thick enough and kept clean.
A heavy truck mud flap would probably work well.

The missing link in this post is to advise you not to connect the batteries either in series or in parrellel, but to PURCHASE a BATTERY TENDER...
This takes all the guess work out of keeping your batteries charged.

Even if you watch a couple of episodes of American Chopper, eventually you will see someone go to the battery rack and pull out a fresh battery from the rack. How do you think they keep those batteries charged?
Do you think that they use a mindless battery charger? Or do you think that they use a Battery Tender or some other commercial battery charger?

Do the math - if they build a dozen motorcycles a week, how many batteries does that add up to at the end of the year?

Oh look, Tuuk is back again.

Hi Channel Jumper

Sorry for such a late reply, once again you had no understanding of my
question.

Your answer, while long and interesting was either a duplication of answers
already given or had nothing to do with my question.

But thanks anyway, nice try again, I will take the other's advice again this
time.

My batteries are fine, I can charge them in parrellel if I like, but
remember they must be equals.
Do the math you say Channel?? lol,,, And another reason why your answer
lacks logic is that you don't understand I live in an area that has a 50%
discount on electrical consumption for 12 hours during the evening and early
morning. So that is why I talked about night time charging. i know, I know,,
nickles and dimes, but after a few weeks of 10 or 15 amp charging, or 1000
or 2000 watts at .08c per kwh it sure adds up at the end of the month. Its
all a state of mind. Do you turn your light out when you leave a room?

Your estimate Channel Jumper of 4 years for deep cycle batteries I can
correct for you, my last deep cycle batteries lasted 8 or 9 years and I ran
them down every fishing time by the downrigger balls up and down 30 tims a
trip along with all the electronics and radio, lights, phones, 2m rig, vhf
marine radio, etc etc. And I kept them stored somtimes in basement,
sometimes left in boat, most times stored in garage for winter season
without charge. So where did you get your "4 year life" from? Your own
experience? Maybe I should give you some advice.


Thanks for all the advice everyone,,,,I appreciate every word of it.

73s





"Channel Jumper" wrote in message
...

Well,
I read a lot of intelligent information on this post and some not
intelligent information.
I think that what your problem is - is that instead of using your
noggin, you want to buy something that will do your thinking for you.

If you have 4 batteries, and you connect it to a 10 amp charger, you
will still place a 10 amp charge upon the batteries, but to the
batteries, it will look more like a 2.5 amp charger - since it is
dividing the current between them.

I have seen some cheap people in my life, but I will guess the OP takes
the cake. If you think that a 10 amp charger is going to make your
electric bill go up or down by regulating the power being applied to the
battery at day vs night - you are only fooling yourself.

Until you understand a charge vs. a surface charge, you will never
understand what events are taking place within the batteries.
I liked the analogy of someone using diodes to isolate each battery.
But a even better solution is to use those batteries as a battery bank,
say on a transistor radio - police scanner would be a good example.

If you charge the batteries nearly full charge and you use those
batteries for a couple of days or even a week at a time, you will create
a cycle, which will keep the batteries at optimum power - slow down the
calcification on the battery plates and keep the one good battery from
being killed by the one junk battery that doesn't store as much power.

The other thing is - if you are stupid enough to use a trolling motor
with a deep cycle battery until you run it down to nothing, then you
ought to be willing to replace those batteries every 4 years, because
even though they say deep cycle - you are squeezing the life out of them
when you discharge them beyond 10.5 volts DC.

Your battery charger is not a power generating station - it doesn't work
like 3 mile island. It will create a charge sufficient enough to
recharge a battery to the point of where it is useable again and then it
will reduce the amount of current, so it does not over heat the plates
in the battery.
The fold back on the charger is sufficient enough to protect the
batteries, but once the VOM - and this is the missing link in your
hardware - once the VOM shows 13.7 volts - the battery holds as much
power as it can possibly hold... Like a cup of water, what happens when
you over fill it? The excess product spills out.

Batteries by nature are dirty.
The dirt, acid etc on the battery creates a discharge because the
current flows out of the battery through the dielectric to ground.
The other thing I didn't read is what you placed the batterys on?
Wood is prefered, but some rubber mats might not be bad either, as long
as they are thick enough and kept clean.
A heavy truck mud flap would probably work well.

The missing link in this post is to advise you not to connect the
batteries either in series or in parrellel, but to PURCHASE a BATTERY
TENDER...
This takes all the guess work out of keeping your batteries charged.

Even if you watch a couple of episodes of American Chopper, eventually
you will see someone go to the battery rack and pull out a fresh battery
from the rack. How do you think they keep those batteries charged?
Do you think that they use a mindless battery charger? Or do you think
that they use a Battery Tender or some other commercial battery
charger?

Do the math - if they build a dozen motorcycles a week, how many
batteries does that add up to at the end of the year?




--
Channel Jumper

You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make em drink!

I had a neighbor once that didn't want to wear out his light bulbs, so he used a flashlight when he went from room to room.

Light bulbs were 4/$1.00

Flashlight batteries were $.50 each.

The amount of power a battery charger uses is insignificant - anyone so anal to think you will save money on your electric bill by not using a couple of watts of power during peak times is crazy.

No I do not shut off the lights when I go from room to room.
Most of my lights are florescent - a gift of working for a company that did retail remodeling of Lowes stores.

The difference between leaving the light on vs turning it on and off and ruining the bulbs - if the period of time is less then 15 minutes - you do not save anything by turning the lights on and off.

Wow, that is an odd neighborhood.

Costs of each kwh decreases by 50% (half) in my neck of the woods at evening
time till morning light. 12 hours. So we do save money using high electrical
consumers at night. It is not minimual, not to me anyway.

I was wondering why you only get 4 years out of your deep cycle batteries,
when I get at least 8 and you are giving me advice? I think you are just
jumping at the chance to fling some mud at someone who is less knowledgable
as yourself in electrical situations.

Light bulbs, flashlights, horses to water, neighbors, again, you skirted
right around the question.

Thanks anyway,,,

73s







"Channel Jumper" wrote in message
...

You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make em drink!

I had a neighbor once that didn't want to wear out his light bulbs, so
he used a flashlight when he went from room to room.

Light bulbs were 4/$1.00

Flashlight batteries were $.50 each.

The amount of power a battery charger uses is insignificant - anyone so
anal to think you will save money on your electric bill by not using a
couple of watts of power during peak times is crazy.

No I do not shut off the lights when I go from room to room.
Most of my lights are florescent - a gift of working for a company that
did retail remodeling of Lowes stores.

The difference between leaving the light on vs turning it on and off and
ruining the bulbs - if the period of time is less then 15 minutes - you
do not save anything by turning the lights on and off.




--
Channel Jumper

You are a retard...

Sometimes a guy just has to cut a person loose when they just don't get it the first time...

On Thu, 17 Jan 2013 19:45:32 -0500, "Tom" wrote:

I was wondering why you only get 4 years out of your deep cycle batteries,
when I get at least 8 and you are giving me advice? I think you are just
jumping at the chance to fling some mud at someone who is less knowledgable
as yourself in electrical situations.

Our radio club is currently at 35 years for our batteries. Previously,
they were running a small telephone central office:
http://www.LearnByDestroying.com/k6bj/K6BJ%20Repeater/Batteries.jpg
By your logic, that makes me supremely knowledgable (about batteries
at least) and only one step below a battery god.

No compliments or praise for this feat of battery longevity please. I
prefer burnt offerings and ocassional human sacrifice.

Battery gods do not fling mud. We fling lightning bolts.

--
Jeff Liebermann
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

On 1/17/2013 6:45 PM, Tom wrote:

SNIP

I was wondering why you only get 4 years out of your deep cycle
batteries, when I get at least 8 and you are giving me advice? I think
you are just jumping at the chance to fling some mud at someone who is
less knowledgable as yourself in electrical situations.

Light bulbs, flashlights, horses to water, neighbors, again, you skirted
right around the question.

Thanks anyway,,,

73s

I buy used deep cycles at the 4 to 8 year point. But I buy really good
ones. The 200AH I currently have in my van (180 watts of panels with an
MPP charging system) are currently at 12.8 volts and haven't seen a
charge for 3 months. That is as good as it gets. One is 9 years old
and the other is 5.

They are 2 AGM UPS batteries. One is a 67AH that costs about $300 new,
and the other is 134AH that costs about $550 new. I got the 67 for free
from a damaged shipment - bent terminals due to poor shipper handling,
the receiver rejected the whole pallet, we got 12 of them for free. I
paid $100 for the 4 year old one. They are from the same manufacturer
and the same series.

You get what you pay for. Just make sure the guy that pays for it is a
business and that they regularly rotate out old batteries from their UPS's.

tom
K0TAR

On 1/20/2013 7:10 PM, tom wrote:

I buy used deep cycles at the 4 to 8 year point. But I buy really good
ones. The 200AH I currently have in my van (180 watts of panels with an
MPP charging system) are currently at 12.8 volts and haven't seen a
charge for 3 months. That is as good as it gets. One is 9 years old
and the other is 5.

They are 2 AGM UPS batteries. One is a 67AH that costs about $300 new,
and the other is 134AH that costs about $550 new. I got the 67 for free
from a damaged shipment - bent terminals due to poor shipper handling,
the receiver rejected the whole pallet, we got 12 of them for free. I
paid $100 for the 4 year old one. They are from the same manufacturer
and the same series.

You get what you pay for. Just make sure the guy that pays for it is a
business and that they regularly rotate out old batteries from their UPS's.

tom
K0TAR


Here are links to those 2 batteries. The *-270 link is the closest
current battery to my 67AH. The *-475 is current.

http://www.unitedpb.com/documents/cd...s%2012-270.pdf
http://www.unitedpb.com/documents/cd...s%2012-475.pdf

tom
K0TAR

On Mon, 21 Jan 2013 20:38:32 +0000, Jim Higgins
wrote:

On Sat, 19 Jan 2013 21:57:51 -0800, Jeff Liebermann
wrote:

Our radio club is currently at 35 years for our batteries. Previously,
they were running a small telephone central office:
http://www.LearnByDestroying.com/k6bj/K6BJ%20Repeater/Batteries.jpg

They look like C&D type KCT-720.

Yep. That's the model.
http://www.cdtechno.com/product/vla/kct_kt.html
The originally came from the Aptos central office. My guess(tm) is
that they had about 6-8 years of operation at the CO before they were
donate to the local radio club (K6BJ). The original pile was for
48VDC or 24 cells. The others were distributed in groups of 6 cells
to other radio clubs operating emergency repeaters. One of the clubs
managed to partially ruin theirs with a poor quality charger. Ours
has done well mostly because of the quality charger (donated by West
Marine). It's a 40A West Marine by Statpower/Xantrex charger:
http://members.cruzio.com/~jeffl/k6bj/K6BJ%20Repeater/slides/40A%20battery%20charger.html
Another reason it has survived is because I refused to allow anyone to
run an "equalizing" charge. I'm a bit worried about temperature
tracking as the charger and batteries are essentially in separate
rooms. So far, no problems, but with the large thermal mass of the
batteries, they're unlikely to track the ambient temperature. The
charger does NOT have a remote temp sensor, and I don't want to mount
anything that might corrode in the battery box.

Incidentally, a real tragedy was this collection of fine cells:
http://802.11junk.com/jeffl/crud/battery-jv.jpg
They were in good shape, but because there were only 4 of them, we
would have needed to build a voltage booster to use them on 12VDC. We
tried really hard to find two more cells, and gave up after about 8
years of searching. So, they went to the lead recyclers. Bummer.

And they look to be in VERY good
condition. No appreciable swelling or plate distortion and no
appreciable sediment.

We take good care of them. The photo is from 2003 when we let things
slide a bit. Here's a better photo (showing the dried out electrolyte
accumulation) also from 2003:
http://802.11junk.com/jeffl/crud/k6bj-batteries-02.jpg
The club was lucky to find a ham locally that knows how to take care
of big telco batteries. Much of the power wiring, interconnect
straps, bolts, hardware, and washers were replaced after the picture
was taken. I was at the site yesterday and could have taken a current
picture. Maybe next week when I clean up my mess.

Looks like the positive post seals are leaking a bit and cleaning up
those areas (including removing and cleaning the connectors) and
applying those oil soaked felt washers you can get in most auto stores
would help a lot to prevent further corrosion of the connectors. Maybe
just clean selected positive posts that seem to be leaking the worst.

The battery box is excessively vented to the outside. That results in
condensation inside the battery box, which is where most of the dried
out puddles around the posts originated. Most of the acid came from
various individuals that just had to unscrew everything dripping
battery acid from the caps. That has been mostly cleaned up. There
was a slight leak on one of the posts (I forgot which one), but I just
smeared some grease around the post to keep it from spreading.

I don't recall if we put greased felt washers on the wire end
terminal. I think it's likely, but I'm not sure. I'll add it to the
next preventive maintenance exercise.

For sure keep the covers dry.

We try, but the condensation doesn't make it easy. A few boxes of
baking soda and rice soak up much of the moisture.

If they were made before early 1978 I may have been the Process
Engineer in the plant where they were made.

I would guess(tm) that they were delivered to the CO in about 1982. No
clue when they were actually made. We had the documentation and
maintenance history on the batteries, but that disappeared in a
misguided shack "cleanup". Argh.

Thanks for the info. Please send me an email (address below) as I may
want to bother you with battery maintenance questions in the future. I
consider those batteries irreplaceable and the #1 asset of the radio
club.



--
Jeff Liebermann
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558