Charging ?
Is it okay to charge my trailer battery with a plain old car battery charger? I've never messed with a deep cycle battery before... Thanks.
Forum Discussion
My idea of hand's off charging is to start the generator, twist the timer dial then do other things. No blinking lights, no buttons to press again and again.
It doesn't take a triple-digit IQ to periodically check for cell bubbling. the first few times when recharging the amount of dial time and the first appearance of initial bubbling in a wet battery. When you see bubbling the battery is charged. But the battery needs REGULATED voltage to make any sense out of it. You could put too high a voltage setting the potentiometer voltage. This is why I play devil's advocate and selected 14.4 volts for everything.
Saturated charging is when a SANE finish voltage is selected (14.40) and the charger then achieved 14.40 within its ability. Obviously, a 40 amp charger can't do this immediately with one charger and it can not power a 150 amp grade Meanwell with a 2,000 watt generator. That's not fair and it's a failure of suppled AC power not saturated power. Saturated power is the key to saving time and money and frankly listening to a rattling generator is not one of my favorite activities.
With saturated or non saturated charging, there are no totally unscientific and absurd drops in voltage after X minutes of charging. The instant the voltage drops without acheiving saturated voltage YOU LOSE. Charging time increases radically and even worse some idiot designed smart chargers drop even further making an absurd 12 hour recharge a 30 hour ordeal. Batteries that are forced into 13.2 volts when they could be at 14.4 volts lengthen charging hours needed x 10 are ridiculous. An insult to human intelligence.
The human brain can vector time versus ESTIMATED hours of charge needed about ten trillion times more accurate than a nineteen cent Indonesian IC. Your frontal lobes learn. Einstein, said it best: To do things over and over and expect a different outcome is the definitionof insanity.
"How low was the battery voltage this morning?"
"12.22"
"That's lower than yesterday"
"Better add another half hour to the timer -- twist it further"
This is how you learn and it's a quick process. Anything but difficult. It takes a few samples and you are educated -- let's take an extreme. The batteries are overcharged dramatically, six hours instread of 2. The result? Try NO DAMAGE. Easier than baking a cake.
My battery bank? YAWN!
A hard night. Hurricane. Batteries are down to 24.2 volts
YAWN
Twist timer for four hours.
Then walk off.
That was sooooooooo hard.
The 710 amps initial charge of course sags to 130 but time's up charger stops generator burps and the "heart stopping drama" ends.
By the time I return to the generator it's cooled down so I shut it off.
Yawn.
Top Charging merely requires adding a half hour to the timer.
Or I could add some mentally challenging drama to the day -- play checkers.
9read
It doesn't take a triple-digit IQ to periodically check for cell bubbling. the first few times when recharging the amount of dial time and the first appearance of initial bubbling in a wet battery. When you see bubbling the battery is charged. But the battery needs REGULATED voltage to make any sense out of it. You could put too high a voltage setting the potentiometer voltage. This is why I play devil's advocate and selected 14.4 volts for everything.
Saturated charging is when a SANE finish voltage is selected (14.40) and the charger then achieved 14.40 within its ability. Obviously, a 40 amp charger can't do this immediately with one charger and it can not power a 150 amp grade Meanwell with a 2,000 watt generator. That's not fair and it's a failure of suppled AC power not saturated power. Saturated power is the key to saving time and money and frankly listening to a rattling generator is not one of my favorite activities.
With saturated or non saturated charging, there are no totally unscientific and absurd drops in voltage after X minutes of charging. The instant the voltage drops without acheiving saturated voltage YOU LOSE. Charging time increases radically and even worse some idiot designed smart chargers drop even further making an absurd 12 hour recharge a 30 hour ordeal. Batteries that are forced into 13.2 volts when they could be at 14.4 volts lengthen charging hours needed x 10 are ridiculous. An insult to human intelligence.
The human brain can vector time versus ESTIMATED hours of charge needed about ten trillion times more accurate than a nineteen cent Indonesian IC. Your frontal lobes learn. Einstein, said it best: To do things over and over and expect a different outcome is the definitionof insanity.
"How low was the battery voltage this morning?"
"12.22"
"That's lower than yesterday"
"Better add another half hour to the timer -- twist it further"
This is how you learn and it's a quick process. Anything but difficult. It takes a few samples and you are educated -- let's take an extreme. The batteries are overcharged dramatically, six hours instread of 2. The result? Try NO DAMAGE. Easier than baking a cake.
My battery bank? YAWN!
A hard night. Hurricane. Batteries are down to 24.2 volts
YAWN
Twist timer for four hours.
Then walk off.
That was sooooooooo hard.
The 710 amps initial charge of course sags to 130 but time's up charger stops generator burps and the "heart stopping drama" ends.
By the time I return to the generator it's cooled down so I shut it off.
Yawn.
Top Charging merely requires adding a half hour to the timer.
Or I could add some mentally challenging drama to the day -- play checkers.
9read
