Might Have Just Goosed My Batteries

matthewriches

matthewriches

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www.matthewriches.co.uk
I have 5x 110A leisure batteries down below. Somehow my 40A Sterling charger had been turn off at the fused spur. Came in this morning after a night shift and found my batteries down to 3V :disgust: :disgust: :disgust:

I am now trying to charge them but do we think they're gonners? :confused:
 
I have found the charger from Halfords exclent at recovering batteries, my motor bikes and sinclair C5 suffer from low usage during winter, this charger has resuscitated many battery types saving me a fortune :).

Alan
 
r
matthewriches said:
I have 5x 110A leisure batteries down below. Somehow my 40A Sterling charger had been turn off at the fused spur. Came in this morning after a night shift and found my batteries down to 3V :disgust: :disgust: :disgust:

I am now trying to charge them but do we think they're gonners? :confused:
Click to expand...
A fancy charger will probably not start the charge because of the low volts. You need an old fashioned transformer type charger to get them going, then when you have a bit in let the Sterling take over.
Or, put another fully charged battery in the circuit quickly and temporarily to fool the Sterling in to starting to charge.
Stu
 
I did similar recently to my port / domestic 110ah. Left the fridge in, but forgot to plug in the shore power.

It was a week later I noticed but the battery has recovered just fine. I charged it for 3 days the isolated it and check the voltage over the next 3 days. No noticeable difference to the unaffected stbd engine only battery.
 
skipper_stu said:
r
A fancy charger will probably not start the charge because of the low volts. You need an old fashioned transformer type charger to get them going, then when you have a bit in let the Sterling take over.
Or, put another fully charged battery in the circuit quickly and temporarily to fool the Sterling in to starting to charge.
Stu
Click to expand...

I had tried to charge my bike batts with older type of charger, also the mainntainer types sold in ALDI and LIDLE. All I got was clicking from bike batts

My son (a taxi driver, gods gift to knowing and complaining about everything) had the Halfords one, iirc about £29.99. And recommended it. Sceptical like you, it don't even look much, i was amazed it worked on a battery i had replaced and intended for the refuse depot.

Then i tried it on pile of several others festering in the back if the garage considered 'dead' batteries, it recharged all but one, an ancient car battery left by previous house owner.

think i can live with one failure at an average of £70 each, for an outlay of £29.00., but you might not be so lucky.

Anyway, up to you ;).

Just checked, Site no longer list it - bummer!
 
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Happy Dayz said:
I had tried to charge my bike batts with older type of charger, also the mainntainer types sold in ALDI and LIDLE. All I got was clicking from bike batts

My son (a taxi driver, gods gift to knowing and complaining about everything) had the Halfords one, iirc about £29.99. And recommended it. Sceptical like you, it don't even look much, i was amazed it worked on a battery i had replaced and intended for the refuse depot.

Then i tried it on pile of several others festering in the back if the garage considered 'dead' batteries, it recharged all but one, an ancient car battery left by previous house owner.

think i can live with one failure at an average of £70 each, for an outlay of £29.00., but you might not be so lucky.

Anyway, up to you ;).

Just checked, Site no longer list it - bummer!
Click to expand...

An Optimate will do what you're talking about, loads on Ebay.

When i bought my first one i did the same as you, charged a stack of "dead" batteries up and they almost all recovered.
 
For some reason many people on this forum think that flattening a battery kills it. That is rarely the case in my experience. I've had a few bike and jetski batteries die over winter, until i bought an Optimate charger. But i've had a substantial amount of car batteries go flat with lack of use. So flat the ignition lights won't even light up. In almost every case they charge up and work fine. Sometimes i've had to put the Optimate on for a couple of days to recover them. Very, very occasionally one dies, usually a very old looking battery.

Not saying it doesn't shorten battery life, but it isn't usually immediately terminal. I'll bet Matt's charge up fine.
 
My current car was left for three months on a smart charger while we were away. Unfortunately, the charger was so smart that it defaulted to 6v after a power cut and this left the battery flat. That was five years ago and it's still going strong, so there is plenty of hope yet.
 
I have an optimate but no go, will trickle charge but not recover seriously flat batts.

(Halfords unit might be on the RAC label?).

Alan
(I have a silverwing 600 and yam XVS 1100a)

Alan
 
I left my boat to overwinter, with all loads disconnected - as I thought - but battery still connected, and no charger connected. I assumed that this would be OK. In the spring the battery was flat, meter showed 3v . :eek: There was an unknown - to me - current drain of about 0.3A from the Ardic heater control switch which had to be not just OFF, but set in a particular way which I now can't recall.

I connected up a car battery charger, and it charged OK, and is still going strong 9 years later.
 
matthewriches said:
The only things on would have been the wifi router, external wifi antenna, and 2x fridges.
Click to expand...

That's a very watts-rich afterthought, Mr Riches ;)

As PaulRainbow suggested, it's a not a once-a-millenium event for a battery to go dead flat. Half this forum must have experienced it on old bangers at some time in their lives. True, it's not the best way to treat them. But usually, they're recoverable.

If the whole bank doesn't come back, I'd suggest charging them individually. It may be that you've terminated one, but probably not the lot.
 
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