First time to 50% SOC

MEXICOWANDERER wrote:

If you do your recharging in your driveway or RV park overnight, a slower rate is easier on the batteries. The question is "Where Is The Break Even Point?" I suspect in your case you may have an acceptable setup. Going camping for an extended period would jumble this all around however.

When I top charge a single 29, I start at around 12.65 and it takes 4 - 5 hours at 2-amperes to reach 15.0 volts. For the first half hour the amperage is in the 6 - 8 amp range.

I'm not much into acceptable. :) Should I throw in another charger even though I'm doing this on shore power or is 55 amps ok for that?

BFL13 wrote:
I didn't see in the OP whether the Iota stayed at 55 amps for a long time before going into Absorption.

The Iota blurb says it will go straight to Absorption (what they call their 14.2v level) but do 55amps at first at that 14.2. My 7355 will too but at 13.8v instead of 14.2 whoopee-do! :)

So just because it did 55a does not mean it was in bulk. You want to know if battery voltage ever got up past 14.2v. It looks like the OP did not get back to see what was happening and it could have done either, where it was at 14 by the time he got back to it?

It was 38 amps when I checked (@ 14V). Was about 4 hrs or so when I checked. I really don't know if it climbed into boost or not. I should've checked more often but I didn't have time to do that.

smkettner wrote:
I suggested to wait more than a week to check specific gravity to allow IOTA at least one destratification cycle before you worry about the finish charge. I think you will find that the batteries are fine with just the IOTA. Or the data point would be interesting if finish charge still seems needed.

14.7V won't finish charge these. At least not in a reasonable amount of time. 15V @ 8 amps on the HF manual gets it done in about 2 hrs, sometimes 3 AFTER the converter (old Paramode) or my portable reaches their respective "full". The BD's EQ setting takes longer than the HF manual but it uses a lower amp rate (4A). I do typically leave the batts on the converter for a week before I do any finishing charges just to see if they get them up to baseline SG but the converter (Paramode) only seemed to accomplish that if I kept SOC above 85%. I don't know if the Iota would do it at 85% SOC or not.

EDIT: MEX, if we ever do more than a weekend of camping, I'll probably get at least one of those adjustable voltage Powermax 100 amp converters that BFL has.