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Battery self destructs while it sleeps..

B

Bedraggled

Jan 1, 1970
0
A 95 A/hr marine battery purchased at Costco[KIRKLAND brand]
three years ago dies mysteriously.
Water level has never been low.
Has been kept charged...every couple of months, gets
topped off with fresh electrons..

It has never had to endure more than (maybe) a 20%
depth of discharge cycle. Has been used (twice?) to jump
start neighbors cars...but mostly is just loafs in the
"emergency power" locker, to run a few watts of lights
when the grid power goes away.

I try to use it this week...voltage check indicates 10.5V..oops..
needs a charging!

Charge for several hours, voltage not coming up.
Further investigation shows that one of the cells seems
to be shorted to the Negative terminal.

?wtf? This pig has never had to work hard in its three year life.
The charger is not capable of pushing more than 6 amps...and that
should be quite safe for a 95 Amp/hr battery. The loads it has seen
have been absurdly light compared to it's assumed capability..(30-50 watts
max for an hour or so...nothing more).

and NOW it self destructed?..how?..Are Costco/KIRKLAND batteries really
this fragile?..or maybe I am hanging out with Mr Murphy too often...
[the sequency of events that would cause a sleeping battery to short one of
its terminals to "ground"/neg terminal is a mystery...

*sigh

it's voodoo...that's what it is...voodoo.
 
P

philo

Jan 1, 1970
0
Bedraggled said:
A 95 A/hr marine battery purchased at Costco[KIRKLAND brand]
three years ago dies mysteriously.
Water level has never been low.
Has been kept charged...every couple of months, gets
topped off with fresh electrons..

It has never had to endure more than (maybe) a 20%
depth of discharge cycle. Has been used (twice?) to jump
start neighbors cars...but mostly is just loafs in the
"emergency power" locker, to run a few watts of lights
when the grid power goes away.

I try to use it this week...voltage check indicates 10.5V..oops..
needs a charging!

Charge for several hours, voltage not coming up.
Further investigation shows that one of the cells seems
to be shorted to the Negative terminal.

?wtf? This pig has never had to work hard in its three year life.
The charger is not capable of pushing more than 6 amps...and that
should be quite safe for a 95 Amp/hr battery. The loads it has seen
have been absurdly light compared to it's assumed capability..(30-50 watts
max for an hour or so...nothing more).

and NOW it self destructed?..how?..Are Costco/KIRKLAND batteries really
this fragile?..or maybe I am hanging out with Mr Murphy too often...
[the sequency of events that would cause a sleeping battery to short one
of
its terminals to "ground"/neg terminal is a mystery...

*sigh

it's voodoo...that's what it is...voodoo.


a voltage of 10.5 on a battery that has not been discharged
definately looks like a bad cell...
well that's how it goes sometimes
 
G

Gymmy Bob

Jan 1, 1970
0
If a lead acid battery's charge becomes depleted too long, it loses it's
electrolyte's acidic level and the lead plates begin to dissolve.
 
D

Dave

Jan 1, 1970
0
I sometimes tell people that batteries are a bit like the human body- they
still age with the best of care and they can get a number of "diseases" even
though you look after them. Three years might be pretty average if it is
an 'economy' type battery.

Dave
www.rpc.com.au


A 95 A/hr marine battery purchased at Costco[KIRKLAND brand]
three years ago dies mysteriously.
Water level has never been low.
Has been kept charged...every couple of months, gets
topped off with fresh electrons..

I'm not familiar with that battery but some questions come to mind:

What does "topped off with fresh electrons" mean?

How did you determine the state of charge of this battery?

How often did you equalize? And what settings did you use for this?

In between the times you "topped off with fresh electrons" what float
voltage did you maintain on the battery?


--ron
 
T

Tim Mackinlay

Jan 1, 1970
0
Bedraggled said:
A 95 A/hr marine battery purchased at Costco[KIRKLAND brand]
three years ago dies mysteriously.
Water level has never been low.
Has been kept charged...every couple of months, gets
topped off with fresh electrons..
Snip...
I bought 5 of these Kirkland brand batteries and ended up returning
all of them. They self discharged right away. Charged them up to 100%,
wait an hour or so and they were down to 70% Could not figure what
was wrong (I mean, new batteries right?)
So, returned them and bought a Trojan 105 amp/hr instead.

Tim
 
B

Bob S

Jan 1, 1970
0
Has been kept charged...every couple of months, gets
topped off with fresh electrons..

Has it been equalized every couple months? If not, the elecrolyte
stratifies, causing the acid to concentrate at the bottom and eat away
at the plates. Not sure if this would cause a shorted cell, but it
seems possible.

Being a cheaper battery, not indended for really deep cycles, they
don't usually leave a lot of room below the plates for sludge
build-up. Once the sludge touches the plates, your battery will short
out.
 
B

Bedraggled

Jan 1, 1970
0
ummm..."equalizing charge"?...
....*thumbs thru big book of battery info...

.....
.....
D'OH!

[ok, need to schedule equalizing charge next time around the block.]


....had the idea that an equalizing charge was more of a "get the max
performance" out
of your battery bank sort of thing...

dont really have a battery bank, just a big 12 V marine battery.
long as the voltage at the terminals was around ummm...12 volts..
I just let it be.

a few hours on the charger every ...3-4 months...or so...

maybe it needed more attention.

was not aware that the plates would self destruct while just sitting quietly
in a charged state.




*back to the chalkboard, Wilbur...we'll get this thing off the ground
someday...
 
B

Bedraggled

Jan 1, 1970
0
Ron Rosenfeld said:
ummm..."equalizing charge"?...
...*thumbs thru big book of battery info...

....
....
D'OH!

[ok, need to schedule equalizing charge next time around the block.]


...had the idea that an equalizing charge was more of a "get the max
performance" out
of your battery bank sort of thing...

dont really have a battery bank, just a big 12 V marine battery.

Well, you can consider that a "bank". It's actually six 2V cells wired in
series.

long as the voltage at the terminals was around ummm...12 volts..
I just let it be.

For most flooded lead acid batteries, at 77°F, at "rest" for three or more
hours, 12V would represent only a 40% state of charge.

Most accurate method to check state of charge is to measure specific
gravity with a "real" hydrometer (not one of those things with the floating
balls you buy in an auto store).
a few hours on the charger every ...3-4 months...or so...

maybe it needed more attention.

Yup. Cause of death no longer a mystery. :-(

was not aware that the plates would self destruct while just sitting quietly
in a charged state.

It sounds as if they may not have been fully charged, which makes the
self-destruction worse.


--ron




****************************************************************************
**************************

OMG! I killed it!..

....coroner report: battery cause of death: benign neglect

Rats.

oh well. at least I only tore up a cheap battery during this "learn by
wrecking" process...
...am not torturing "real" [deep cycle] batteries thru lack of knowledge.

*yes, it is a small battery bank after all, even if it is only "one box".
had not thought of it that way...
*remembers the bank of batteries I was living with on the submarine.
now THAT was a bank...Gould TLX 98B cells, IIRC..126 of them..about
1100 pounds each....[amazing what kind of trivia gets burned into the brain
during
qualification...]

*slaps self with herring "snap out of it, lad.."

*puts "real hydrometer" on the short list of things to acquire prior to next
attempt.

thanks for the clues

*chants mantra: "anything worth doing, is worth doing badly" ..(at first,
anyway..)
 
G

Gymmy Bob

Jan 1, 1970
0
Geeez. Our batteries running our electrical utility stations last about 10
years before replacement. They only act as standby types though.
 
M

m II

Jan 1, 1970
0
Ron said:
It is no more useful to look at the average lifetime of unspecified lead
acid batteries than it is to look at the average inhabitant of the US. The
average inhabitant, among other things, weighs 170 lbs; is 5'7" tall, and
has one mammary gland and one testicle!

Not really. Sometimes it's the other way around.





mike
 
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