Battery chargers

[pessimist]

I managed to completely discharge one of our car batteries. We have an all singing all dancing multi stage charger which claims to raise dead batteries. It wanted nothing to do with our dead battery. I seemed to remember reading somewhere that the modern 'puter controlled chargers expect some residual charge in the battery or they won't work. Connected up an old five quid simple charger for an hour or two and then reconnected the whizzo sixty quid job. WSQJ then obliged, "reconditioned" and charged the battery.

A question or two -

Why wouldn't the whizzo charger work with a dead battery?

If this can be solved by charging with a cheapo simple charger why doesn't the whizzo charger have a suitable program.

Most importantly, will the built in multi program Sterling charger on the boat suffer from the same problem if I'm dumb enough to completely flatten the batteries?

Confused of Exmoor

 

[sarabande]

1 wizzo charger checks the battery voltage when connected up, and says to itself "Ooops! 0.00001 volts. It's not a 12v battery that I can work with, so I won't play." And sulks.

2 Some wizzo chargers do have a program that does a Lazarus on dead/v low batteries. I think they call it "soft start" ?

3 Dunno, sorry. But on a big boat I would have something like the Optima Red Top, or one of those Racing Car batteries, with a set of jump leads, to act as a standby 'initiating' battery to connect up to a dead bank and allow the Sterling or engine to get to work.


Do you leave both start and domestic batteries active and connected when you leave SS ? Or is one isolated ?

 

[RichardS]

I managed to completely discharge one of our car batteries. We have an all singing all dancing multi stage charger which claims to raise dead batteries. It wanted nothing to do with our dead battery. I seemed to remember reading somewhere that the modern 'puter controlled chargers expect some residual charge in the battery or they won't work. Connected up an old five quid simple charger for an hour or two and then reconnected the whizzo sixty quid job. WSQJ then obliged, "reconditioned" and charged the battery.

A question or two -

Why wouldn't the whizzo charger work with a dead battery?

If this can be solved by charging with a cheapo simple charger why doesn't the whizzo charger have a suitable program.

Most importantly, will the built in multi program Sterling charger on the boat suffer from the same problem if I'm dumb enough to completely flatten the batteries?

Confused of Exmoor

My CTEK charger - non marine - is able to switch to pure charge mode and function non-intelligently. Whether it would cope with a fully discharged battery on the normal intelligent setting I know not as I haven't had to do that.

Richard

 

[ghostlymoron]

My Aldi Ctec charger wont resurrect a completelly dead battery although the instruction book says it will. I have to put it on the 'stupid' charger for a couple of hours first.

 

[pessimist]

1 wizzo charger checks the battery voltage when connected up, and says to itself "Ooops! 0.00001 volts. It's not a 12v battery that I can work with, so I won't play." And sulks.

2 Some wizzo chargers do have a program that does a Lazarus on dead/v low batteries. I think they call it "soft start" ?

3 Dunno, sorry. But on a big boat I would have something like the Optima Red Top, or one of those Racing Car batteries, with a set of jump leads, to act as a standby 'initiating' battery to connect up to a dead bank and allow the Sterling or engine to get to work.


Do you leave both start and domestic batteries active and connected when you leave SS ? Or is one isolated ?

Thanks, that all makes sense. The start battery is isolated and off when we leave the boat so the situation shouldn't occur. Shouldn't have flattened the car battery though.......

 

[pessimist]

My Aldi Ctec charger wont resurrect a completelly dead battery although the instruction book says it will. I have to put it on the 'stupid' charger for a couple of hours first.

Sounds exactly the same.

 

[VicMallows]

Most importantly, will the built in multi program Sterling charger on the boat suffer from the same problem if I'm dumb enough to completely flatten the batteries?

If you mean the 'ProReg B' (AR12V) then in my experience NO ... it will not suffer from the problem. It is so dumb that it merely boosts the charge voltage to 14.4v or 14.8v (depending on how you have set the dip switches) for 1 hour from when it is switched on. (Maybe I am missing a subtlety ... but I certainly have not discovered it).

 

[VicS]

If you mean the 'ProReg B' (AR12V) .

Thats an alternator regulator not a battery charger. I guess the OP is referring to a "Pro Charge" of some description

 

[Plevier]

If it was a really crude old cheapo then with negligible starting current it may have gone to 20V or more and pushed that first bit of charge in. Your posh regulated one would never go that high.