Winter battery maintenance

kenb · Posted: October 13, 2008, 1:45 pm Post subject: Winter battery maintenance

Hi Guys,

I'm getting things ready for winter over here, so I'm getting my batteries ready for charging during the colder months. I'm going to be using my brand new 1.5 amp battery charger/maintainer to do this in an unheated garage, but I lost the box and instructions for it during a garage cleanout back in the summer, so I have a couple of questions about this procedure.

1) Do you just plug one of these units in and leave it on charge all winter? On the front it says that it's an Automatic 1.5 amp Charger/Maintainer with Float-Mode Monitoring, which sounds pretty good to me, but I thought I'd ask around a little bit to be sure.

2) Can I also wire up my lawn tractor battery in parallel at the same time? Aside from it being somewhat larger in size and capacity, I can't think of any reason it shouldn't work.....but I've been wrong before. Smile

Ken

jayel · Posted: October 13, 2008, 2:03 pm Post subject: Re: Winter battery maintenance

yes just leave it plugged in, yes you can parallel the batteries, however if you do so they will need to be on the charger at all times otherwise the batteries will suffer damage

"If a mismatched pair of batteries is connected in parallel and then
allowed to sit, they will pass current back and forth in an effort to
ballance charge. If one battery is weaker than the other, it will attempt
to drain the stronger battery. Eventually, one battery will short and the
other will then dump all remaining charge into the shorted cell - resulting
in two dead batteries or worse, a fire or battery explosion."

you can take the lawn mower battery off if you're going to use it (snow plow or whatever) but don't leave your different size batteries set tied together without the charger on them

kenb · Posted: October 14, 2008, 2:27 pm Post subject: Re: Winter battery maintenance

jayel,

I appreciate the advice, especially regarding the potential problems with having a twin battery hook-up. After reading your reply I initially thought that it would be no problem, but then it crossed my mind that a simple power failure could leave me vulnerable to damaging one or both of the batteries. I tend to have frequent power outages out here in farm country, so I think I'll play it safe and charge them one at a time and swap them back and forth every week or two.

Thanks jayel,

Ken

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