battery watering systems [RE-wrenches]

[Darryl Thayer]

HI all 
We need a battery expert here, I am not one.  Is it
not possible to have electrical conduction through the
liquid to the different cells to discharge the
potenical difference between cells?  I think of a
battery fire I experianced that was acid flowing over
the top of the batteries and contacting the next
battery,causing Flash over.  
Daryl

--- Brad Bassett <bsbassett at earthlink.net> wrote:
> 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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