Battery Storage Scenario

SweetLou wrote:
If I store new fully charged batteries in my shop for 6 mo through winter where the shop could be as cold as 10-15 degrees, would they be all right for next season? Or, should I use my harbor Freight battery maintainers to keep them up? They are cheap and there would be no one around to check them for the 6 months

Just curious, why would you buy new batteries in the fall if you are not going to use them all winter? Just wait and buy new batteries in the spring.

If I were going to hook my $100+ battery to a charger/maintainer ..... it wouldn't be a $10 Harbor Freight version.

You can get several different brands of decent quality for around $30. I have this one I use on my motorcycle that cost $50 Charger/Maintainer

Those $10 Harbor freight models will not charge a battery if it is under 9 volts. The extra money for the one I linked will charge a battery from dead. It brought both of my batteries on my diesel truck back overnight when I killed them by leaving the switch on.

The 10-15 degrees would be a small, make that tiny, percentage of the total time. Although not mandatory a temperature compensated maintenance charger would pay for itself by extending battery life.

Is there a good reason not to use a trickle charger? Maybe I am missing something. I keep my batteries on one of those BatteryMinder Plus things -- supposedly, they pulse and keep the battery from sulphating. But I have also heard that this is a hoax and accomplishes nothing more than an ordinary trickle charger would do.

As long as they are fully charged they will be fine whether in your shop, garage, or on your rig. Our RV is parked in our side yard always connected to shore power, we keep it simple and just leave our batteries in place all year long, harsh winters and blazing summers have little effect on our fully charged batteries.

The cooler the temperature the less self discharge.

I would place a maintainer on the jars for 24 hours once per month.

If it's a flooded cell battery and it's fully charged when put in storage, there is no reason to trickle charge it. It will hole most of it's charge over the winter. I do that all the time with my farm tractors. I leave the start batteries in them but break the negative side with a knife switch. They start fine in the spring and it gets cold here.

What people don't realize is it's HOT weather that destroys a battery, not cold weather but the reason batteries fail in cold weather is because the battery was already compromised that summer but when it's cold, it takes appreciably more cold cranking amps to turn the engine and the compromised battery cannot supply them.