No green lights, are the batteries dying?

Otter

Otter

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Three house batteries, one has a good green light, the other two are black :(

Completely sealed, absolutely no way to check water levels, four years old and I'm not happy with how long they're holding a strong charge. We work them hard in the summer, they have a benign winter.

1. Does the gradual loss of a green light mean anything?
2. What's the simplest way to check their health?

Any replacement will have a way of checking and topping up levels.

Thanks.
 
If you are refering to the magic eye indicators, they are at best a wild guess.

Best (only) way to fully check is to drain to manufacturer's recommended min voltage, charge to full then discharge to min thorugh a known heavy load. Monitor charge rate against voltage.
 
Lazy Kipper said:
Three house batteries, one has a good green light, the other two are black :(

Completely sealed, absolutely no way to check water levels, four years old and I'm not happy with how long they're holding a strong charge. We work them hard in the summer, they have a benign winter.

1. Does the gradual loss of a green light mean anything?
2. What's the simplest way to check their health?

Any replacement will have a way of checking and topping up levels.

Thanks.
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Simplest thing to do is to individually charge them "fully" and check the voltages after standing idle for 12 hours. If you cannot get them charged to give around 12.7 volts they are probably coming to the end of their lives.

Then monitor the rate at which the volts fall. A good new battery will fall relatively slowly, an old one will fall more quickly at first then more slowly but if serviceable should take many days , preferably a few weeks, to fall below 12.5.

It is only a rough indication but something you can do yourself, without specialist equipment, if you have a digital voltmeter.


I have only one battery , in one of the cars, with a magic eye. The battery is 11 years old, still starts the car Ok and appears to hold a good charge when tested as above ....... but the magic eye is now clear, neither green nor black. I beleive that means the electrolyte level is low but it is sealed so nothing can be done except to anticipate its failure . Black I think means low state of charge. The magic eye only looks at one cell anyway.
 
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In my experience, sealed batteries can continue to give good service for ages after the green indicator disappears.
 
We presume that OP has batteries with little coloured balls that appear depending on SG of electrolyte. As said this is not a very useful guide to battery charge state. Actual voltage is far more useful.
I would also presume that OP has all 3 batteries hard wired in parallel. So if OP has any concerns about one battery it must be segregated from the others. Try charging and using just the one suspect battery. If it has poor capacity or inability to start the engine alone. then it will be obvious. Use each of the other 2 batteries in isolation to compare performance. Batteries are fine in parallel until one gets tired or bad. It will mess up the charging and pull the other batteries down so isolation for testing is vital.
Batteries are rated in amp hours capacity. If you cna get 50% of the rated amp hours while holding above 11.5v from a previously fully charged battery it can be considered good. Even less than 50% might be worth persevering with until it gets worse. good luck olewill
 
Hadenough said:
None of them are sealed. Just pry the cap off and treat them as ordinary batteries.
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Actually, some don't have caps you can prise off. I once investigated a battery on which the green indicator had gone black, and the only way to get in to it was to cut a hole in the top. I was surprised to find that there was still a good reserve of electrolyte over the top of the plates.
 
Lazy Kipper said:
Three house batteries, one has a good green light, the other two are black :(

Completely sealed, absolutely no way to check water levels, four years old and I'm not happy with how long they're holding a strong charge. We work them hard in the summer, they have a benign winter.

1. Does the gradual loss of a green light mean anything?
2. What's the simplest way to check their health?

Any replacement will have a way of checking and topping up levels.

Thanks.
Click to expand...

I recently bought this drop tester:
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/251802057773?_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK:MEBIDX:IT

You may find others cheaper. Lots of youtube videos to show how these work (just tells you the capacity of the battery under load and you compare it with the label printed on side of battery)
 
Disconnect and separate the batteries, fully charge individually, leave the batteries for a week, check the voltage after a week; if the voltage is below 12.6 it means that they can not hold their charge and therefore they are getting old.
 
I had the same problem with my 1 year old batteries. I phoned the tech department at the manufacturer who told me the green indicators are very prone to failure. They cause a lot of unnecessary angst and are being removed from future batteries. They said If the battery is charging to 12.7v and holding then it is fine. It is and it seems to be ok despite no green light. Suggest you test as above and forget the green eyed monster
 
They are worked hard in summer with the solar panels putting in less than the fridge & iPads use, often four nights at anchor. The Ctrek charger takes them up to 15v on bulk charging. They're completely sealed, nothing to prise up or take off. I'll disconnect them and check the voltage the next w/e.
 
Lazy Kipper said:
Three house batteries, one has a good green light, the other two are black :(

Completely sealed, absolutely no way to check water levels, four years old and I'm not happy with how long they're holding a strong charge. We work them hard in the summer, they have a benign winter.

1. Does the gradual loss of a green light mean anything?
2. What's the simplest way to check their health?
My Numax are leisure "sealed" however if you get a pair of thin nosed pliers you can use them to undo the magic eye and give it a clean, likewise the cell caps can be undone and the cells topped up with distilled water.
S
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Some batteries do seem to keep going usefully for a very long time after the usual rules suggest that they should be dead. The problem is that when they DO die they tend to do so suddenly. Only solution I can think of is to keep new charged spares onboard ready to swap if necessary.
 
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