What happened?

[ferndaleflyer]

Walked by my DP yesterday and noticed something dripping from the battery compartment. Opened the compartment and found that one of the house batteries had exploded. Thats right exploded, pieces and acid all over the compartment. The others were fine and power to the house had not been interrupted, everything worked. I am 80 years old and have never seen anything like this in an RV, car, boat, or any other vehicle that had a battery. Looked to me like it could have easily caused a fire. We had not used the motor home since March and hardly a day goes by I don't check on it. It has been hooked to shore power the whole time. What happened?

[pianotuna]

Hi,

What converter do you have?

[theoldwizard1]

Lead acid batteries, including AGM, can explode if that are short circuited or run very low on water.

Rare, but it does happen.

[wa8yxm]

Batteries have a few failure modes
Shorted cell
Open cell
High resistance (sulfation causes this)
Boil dry

Now if you have one battery (Two six volt in series = one big 12 volt) unless you have a really really big charger/converter failed is failed for the most part.

But if you have series/parallel (example)

-6V+-^6+=12 volt
-6V+-^6+=12 volt

Or 12 volts in parallel
If one fails Shorted. especially if it's 2 cells. the other can push enough current that BOOM (or to be more precise POP)

[ferndaleflyer]

I give up. After about 6 hours Harris returned my call and claims they don't sell this far South. Yet I bought them at a farm supply store in Danville, VA. Guess I'll get a Wal Mart replacement for now.

[MEXICOWANDERER]

Doesn't take that much space to blow up a battery. Electrolicizing water yields HYDROGEN AND PURE OXYGEN.

[bobsallyh]

You might want to check and see what voltage your converter is putting out.

[ReneeG]

We kept our water levels up too.

[2oldman]

Try something different, like AGM.

[ferndaleflyer]

Good point Larry but I keep them full of water and the others are full. But no way of telling as the one that exploded has all 4 sides and the top blown away. Must have been some kind of spark to start this mess. Now I can't find a dealer that sells Harris professional batteries. Their web site lists none and so far they have not returned my call.

[larry_cad]

Have you been watching the water level in the cells? If the water dries up, and the charger continues to try to charge the dry cells,it's possible to create an arc which can explode hydrogen gas.

[ReneeG]

We have a fifth wheel with four 6v deep cycle batteries. We noticed two weeks ago that there was a strong Sulphur smell inside the unit, strong enough to set off the CO detector. When we opened the front compartment where the batteries are stored, it was stronger smelling! Hubby took out the batteries and two were bulging and others were leaking. They were all the same age, over 7 years! We replaced them all and all the smell went away. It's possible they could've exploded which I read online.

[missnmountains]

That happened to us on a car battery. South Florida is very hard on batteries. I am pretty sure that the cells shorted out.

Ken