battery watering systems [RE-wrenches]

[Brad Bassett]

An ingenious solution. It's likely an improvement over other automatic 
watering methods, which I've heard occasionally cause the batteries to 
overflow, causing a nasty mess.

However, if I understand this correctly, it seems to me that there would 
be a possibility of the acid backing up into the water reservoir. This 
could conceivably happen if the battery became hot because of 
environmental temp change or heavy charging, causing expansion of the 
electrolyte. There is also the possibility that O and/or H from the 
charging could gather in the hose and break the suction. Since the 
system worked fine for many years maybe these are not great concerns, 
but the consequences are potentially a mess. Different setups or 
batteries could change the possibility for something wrong happening. 
Perhaps it would be adequate to cover the water reservoir and make sure 
it's acid proof and well protected from spills, or that spills are 
collected safely.

Just thoughts since you can't be too careful around batteries. 

Brad


Robert Warren wrote:
> 
> Marco,
>  One of the first off-grid systems I built maybe 14 or 15 years ago was 
> for a blind gentleman in Oregon, Charlie Weaver. I installed 12 or more 
> Trojan L-16s in a big insulated cabinet in his garage. Since he was 
> blind, he couldn't see the water levels or stick a finger into the acid 
> to check the levels, so he used his head. He rigged up a simple gravity 
> feed watering system with 1/4 inch plastic tubes coming from a 
> Tupperware container placed so that the top of the water in the 
> container was precisely at the top water level mark of the batteries. 
> The tubes went to holes he drilled in the caps, and extended down into 
> the battery so it touched the plates, and thus would never break suction 
> 
> as long as the top-off tank was always filled. A run-off tube near the 
> top drained off excess water if he overfilled the water container. I 
> went out to the site about 6 or 8 months after the intital installation, 
> 
> and everything was in tip-top condition, and I thought this was the 
> slickest thing I ever saw. He was also careful not to block off the 
> vapor ventiation through the cap.
> Robert Warren  
> 


Brad Bassett
Alternative Energy Engineering
Olympia, WA

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