Confusion on battery charging

MEXICOWANDERER wrote:
UNTIL your batteries have been brought back to life yes it's going to take a few hours to fully charge the batteries. You are stuffing those amps into INCREASED capacity :)

Once your batteries have been mini conditioned correctly you do NOT have to do this each charge cycle. I would do it every 14th cycle and then it will not be the same time-eater as it is now. It will take 1/4 to 1/5th the time normally but you are not treating your batteries normal deep cycle duty. So they will recover much faster. Shallow cycles and occasional 100% charging is battery heaven for the Lifeline.

But fail to recover to 100% charged for a year or three no matter if the batteries get discharged 20% then you enter the syndrome you are experiencing. I would do as Lifeline suggests and set the Megawatt for 14.40 volts. It can chop an hour or two of recovery charge time versus 14.3 volts. And 14.5 volts does almost nothing except throw calculations off.

When you get back to public power I would leave the Megawatt at 14.40 volts for a full three hours. Calcium/calcium is very overcharge resistant. I have left my Lifelines on for 12 hours and they gained 3F at 32c. They are one heck of a good battery.

This makes some sense to me. Maybe I fell behind in achieving full charge over the past couple of weeks. The batteries are new as of a few months ago and have only been used for the past month. Before that they sat a couple of months with a 13.3v float. Maybe even new unused batteries need a jolt at 14.3. I left them on float until I started to travel since I was afraid of overcharging with no use and a daily 14.3 cycle.

I may have electric hookup tomorrow that should get them charged and then they can bake at 14.3 with the solar. After that things might be downhill. I am traveling to the Olympic peninsula with lots of clouds and fog.