Managing Flooded Batteries Without Using Specific Gravity?

[MEXICOWANDERER]

http://homepages.mcs.vuw.ac.nz/~markm/preprints/SubBatteriesReport.pdf

[landyacht318]

One poster has consistently shared vast knowledge about the minutiae of achieving excellent battery life to those who are curious about achieving this, and has proven to be a vast and knowledgeable resource on this subject, and in a manner which provokes further thought and assumes an ability of the reader to connect some dots without handholding.

One other person advocates absolute faith in a particular product to do everything automatically, perfectly, or perhaps good enough or 'just fine' and scorns anybody whose curiosity and desires lay beyond faith.

Isn't religion was frowned upon on public forums?
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When something is amiss, who in their sane mind, would ignore the best diagnostic tool available?

Let me go consult my astrologist on this manner......

Do these same people shush others when pharmaceutical commercials interrupt what passes for the 'nightly news'?

[MEXICOWANDERER]

Ssshhhh.
Whatever you do
Don't say "tire gauge"...
The ramifications stagger the imagination...

[RJsfishin]

Hydrometers are obsolete. Pro battery tester do not use them anymore. W/ todays electronic testers they are no longer needed. You can't use them on AGM, and w/ experience you don't need them on lead acid. All you need is a good smart 3 stage converter/charger to keep your batteries in good condition.
But if you lack the experience of "knowing your batteries" and how they operate, then do whatever works for you. That's why they still make hydrometers, for those that don't know any other way.
It always just slays me how no one ever has a battery problem, until they get talked into buying a hydrometer. That should tell them something, but doesn't.
So in other words, if its lead acid, there is a problem, but if its an AGM there isn't. But keep listening to the "battery god", he'll keep you buyin hydros and battery cookers, and babysittin your batts, while I'm campin 🙂

[pnichols]

David: Aren't flooded batteries "fully charged" whenever they will only accept a very low current level (as read from an ammeter) while a temperature compensated 14.X volts is sitting on their terminals? :h

(You can define what good-enough "low current" to look for with respect to the AH capacity of any particular flooded battery bank being charged.)

I'm not sure that either a SG bulb, or equation, is needed if one can merely read an ammeter while applying the correct voltage verus temperature long enough.

[MEXICOWANDERER]

If one thing is sure the white paper is NOT gospel. I can take issue with points page by page. However, this is how reaction electrochemical analysis is converted to formula.

Permeability (porosity) of cured paste is a 90 page white paper, but if it is challenged using either aging or loss of antimony it becomes uselessly skewed.

Throw your hydrometer a second kiss.

[DutchmenSport]

Wow! This one is sure WAY over my head. I guess I'll just stick with a simple Wall Mart Marine battery and leave the math to someone else.

[MEXICOWANDERER]

This is precisely why "meter managing" is impossible. If flooded batteries were pure Pb (lead) it would be simpler. But they're not, and it isn't. To my great regret I understand the formulas even though many of them are hypothetical baseline. How can they be hypothetical? When plate alloy is changed or paste density is altered the factorials must be likewise adjusted. Then readjusted for aging.

Throw your hydrometer a kiss. Like playing high-stakes poker with your personal marked cards.

[12thgenusa]

I'll stick with the turkey baster and leave the calculus for someone else.