DEEP CYCLE BATTERY HACK?! Fix $400 battery for $20?! (Part 3) 

I came across one of your videos by accident and now I have sat here for 4 hours watching one after another. I have seen many videos by other people on this off grid homesteading subject and I can tell you that yours beat the others hands down. We bought 10 acres in rural Arkansas 2 1/2 years ago so that I could start farming/homesteading but to my dismay I owned my own business (a florist) in another town 30 minutes away and my husband worked in the same town only 45 minutes away. I worked 6-7 days a week so therefore all my projects except chickens and ducks have been put on hold. We are paying for the land but our house we found an inexpensive doublewide that we were able to pay cash for so our house is paid for. Only owe about 35K on the land but it seemed that any extra money was going on gas, vehicle repairs and keeping a business alive. Dec 31 I closed my business and made the choice to try and live off of one income being supplemented by me working for other florists occasionally and selling eggs, veggies, and some of my other projects that I like to do with fibers. Your videos have inspired me to try harder to get to where I want to be. Thank you.

To remove sulfate from the battery plates you would add a basic solution. In theory the solution would netraulize pulling sulfate off the plates. Then dump the fluid out and rinse the plates a second time. THEN add the electrolyte.

I worked in a warehouse for 32 years running a Lectro electric forklift. Part of my job was caring for and charging the batteries each night. The forklift used 6 of those 6 volt deep cycle batteries for a total voltage of 36 volts. I don't remember the amperage the charger was rated for, but it was high. if the batteries were run way down during the day, it took 12 hours to fully recharge them. Something that use to happen a lot when i left early was nobody would charge the batteries and we would have to use the forklift the next day to load and unload stuff in the warehouse. Working them hard when they were not fully charged would make them get hot and give off gas which is very hard on them. He we were lucky, we could get two years use out of them. Most of the time we would get maybe 12 to 14 months out of them. A good brand of batteries is a must. A good way to tell the difference between a good battery and cheap one is the weight. Good battery heavy and a cheap one light. The price is not always a way to tell the difference. Also make sure the connections on the cables are good. A loose connection can melt the post off the battery. Also a spark near the battery fill caps can cause it to explode.

You need to flush the contaminants out... check the plates to make sure none are damaged or touching each other , refill with acid , and charge them up in REVERSE with a good charger like a CTEK to reverse the movement of ions and metals between the plates,, and of course mark the new polarity on the cases.

Great videos! One thing I would add, that sludge...... Batteries have a dead space below the plates, the sludge is lead sulphate that falls of the plates, when it fulls that dead space it touches on the bottom of the plates and shorts the plates together, this is what causes "self discharge". Try doing this: first, discharge the battery fully to get the sulphur into the plates. Then empty the acid. When the acid is out, take a hose pipe and wash the sludge ALL out by spraying the hose up inside the battery with it upside down, then you the same acid back. I have had success with this method. This is the main fault with dead batteries.

Living off the grid: You get to be the electrician, power company, lineman, plumber, water treatment operator, water utility, sanitation professional, carpenter...what an education for yourselves and all watching. Doing good, keep it up =)

Hay there guys, new to your channel and I have watched a few of your vedios. Interesting stuff you folks are trying. I am a retired US Marine, one of my jobs was a Fire Chief. So you probably know that I am way, way past Safety Sally. I grew up off grid so I know there is a great deal of dangerous activities you have to accomplish. You have a beautiful female person their and for a guy your not to ugly, so I say this with much concern for you. When you are handling batteries you must respect what you are doing. MSDSs are a real good place to start. Pouring battery acid is one of them dangerous things, you really need the proper Glasses, Face shield, apron, gloves and boots. While draining, filling, moving and connection you used the same gloves and after you finish the job you touched your face near your eys with thoes same work gloves and thats ok to do if your tired of looking at that beautiful female person you have there with you. One last thing, when your working with battery acid it is advisable to have a source of water for flushing any area splashed, and keep a clean container to make neutralizer because acid will burn you bad. Respectively Submitted.

hi guys I'm off grid too 2.8 kw with 12 1025ah battery. they are now 17 years old and the only thing I have done is top fluids up. the big difference is temps. I guess. I live in Australia in snowy mountains but your temps are much cooler than us. I run a normal house TV washing machine vacuum lights gas slash electric hot water. oh very much enjoying you guys . keep it coming

your videos are at the professional level of "this old house" .....but more fun. Keep it up!!!

The particles that came out may actually be lead particles. The lead will come off the plates. If you get too much lead particles, it can create a lead bridge between the plates (a short). This can reduce the effectiveness of the batteries. Dumping out the batteries may have removed a lot of those lead particles and eliminated a bridge that may have formed at the bottom of the batteries.

can you hinge the front cover of your battery box to pull those batteries out easier?

Very happy to see you let the Safety Sallies get to you! We *do* have your best interests at heart, and we all learn from each other! Keep making the awesome videos!!

Because there are only two battery terminals form the charger, it reads the whole battery bank as a whole. So i think you were right to (try to, but didn't) separate the two batteries you are trying to recover. The charger runs its three stage cycle based on constant current until the battery hits peak voltage (which for a weak battery will happen almost immediately), then stage two topping change when the current flattens out (does not change), goes into stage tree float mode (constant voltage to keep the batteries topped off and prevent self discharge). You said in another video you need an old fashioned charger, and i think you are right, as the three stage charger in the battery box is not working much different than the one you were using separately, except in the battery box the weak batteries stop the charger from seeing the true state of all the batteries, so it stops early.. in a bank the batteries need to be as similar as possible as they are charged on average, not based on each batteries unique state. i think the goal is to condition the weak batteries, so they look like the others, electrically speaking. unbalanced batteries have higher internal resistance, and will suck up some of the charging power (like having an extra load on your batteries when charging)

I love how everyone is an expert on .....everything! Try for yourself within your budget and your time frame, either way it will be a lesson learned, and all of your viewers can learn or think to themselves, I tried it and it does not work. So many critics!!!! Keep doing whatever it is that motivates you to make videos.

"Watch out ladies! Touch it and get burned". LMAO! I laughed so hard at that. Love your videos by the way. A truly informative adventure in homesteading and off-grid living.

You really showed how adults handle simple mistakes or really just lack of info. Good on you for noticing the heat evidence and getting the good result. Really you and Alyssa are total rock stars and I have a blast watching y’all geeter done.

Batteries banks 101, First off your 12 volt battery bank can isolate any two of your series six volt batteries by removing the series connections of the other batteries between the other pairs. You only need remove one bolt from the center series connecting cable to disabled any unwanted pair of batteries from your if load/charging circuit. If you need to prevent stiff battery cable from temporarily reconnecting slip the cable into the mouth of small medicine or beverage plastic bottle or inside a short piece of plastic tubing or something similar. No need to remove the outside parallel connections of any your batteries, unless you need to remove the batteries from you enclosure. Secondly if you're gonna try of serious reconditioning, several things you need to know. Your little battery each load checker has more than sufficient to help you determine the conditions are yourbatteries. The two main culprits that the grade lead acid batteries is sulfated plates, and the sediment that accumulates of the cells in the bottom older batteries. The simplest way to remove sulfated plates is to use a little higher voltage than normal battery chargers with your individual six volt cells with the old electrolyte still in the batteries, putting distilled water in the batteries to try and remove sulfate from the plates will probably not work very well as old electrolyte. Because the disttilledl water does not conduct electricity very well. Pure distilled water should actually be in non-conductor or an insulator. At any rate to remove the sulfated plates with battery charger, requires you to remove the batteries cell you're going to have increased your battery charge for at least 7.5 volts then slowly up to eight or nine volts repeatedly for short periods of time. This will cause sulfated plates and electrolyte solution to actually heat up the sulfate crystals deposit on the plates to return to the sulfate back into electrolyte solution. During this higher voltage charging a lot of additional hydrogen and oxygen bubbles will be released, so this needs to be done in a well ventilated area away from any ignition sources. You'll need to have your distilled water kept handy for topping off the cells to replace the water that is electrolytized during this process. You will also need to monitor the batteries to make sure they don't get too hot. They do make special chargers to help maintain car batteries, but those large deep cycle may need a special charger. I don't think so, I think if you can find a six or eight volt charger that put out at least 15 amp. If this doesn't work and there's probably too much sentiment accumulated in the bottom of one or more of the cells in the battery. You will need to carefully drain the battery electrolytes then rinse any remaining sentiment out with first with cold water and then very hot water, possibly repeatedly until there's no sentiment coming out of the the batteries cells. This rinse water may still need electrolyte acid to be diluted and or neutralized. At this point you can again retry the procedure to desulfate to plates on the battery again, you may be able to recycle some or most of the old electrolyte drained out of the cells by letting the sediment settle to the bottom. Again make sure the electrolyte levels keep the batteries cell plates covered to remove any of the sulfated deposits on the plates, so again keep the disttilled water handy.

I noticed that where your inverter is installed that it looks like you have some internet equipment that uses those little wall power converters. Take a look at the output of the wall power supplies and see what voltage they output. You may be able to cut those converters off add a fuse inline and power them off you're batteries directly. This is rather than taking DC making AC and then plugging in something to just make that AC power back into low voltage DC. I did this with the router in out 5th wheel camper. The router uses 12VDC at less than 1amp. Our inverter requires way more than that to just be on. There for saving a lot of energy by cutting out the "middle man" and going straight to the source.

To desulfidate a battery requires a low charge rate for an extended time. You can get a constant current charger from the aviation industry if you set it to 1 amp the voltage will rise to whatever is needed to push 1 amp into the battery. As the sulfate burns off the voltage will fall. Also the self discharge is related to internal shorting probably from buildup reaching the bottom of the plates.

The black sludge in the old acid is lead from the surface of the plates detached by hard use, it's loss permanently reduces the capacity of the battery. It's also likely that the two worst batteries are the ones where the connections were applied in their last home. The batteries at the connector end always die first and kill the rest of the batteries. Best that the connectors to charger and load are applied to the diagonal opposite ends of the bank + at one end and - at the other end. Have you tried living off just six batteries? Six batteries and some added solar should do you well, add a wind turbine at the top of the hill and you should be well off for power.

hi guys average normal mum here I watch all your videos no matter what I can't wait to watch how you property develops. keep up the good work

You motivated me to try and recondition 3 (out of 8 total) solar batteries (golf cart) that are 4 years old and just failed. I 'saved' one of them with one bad cell. One was completely shot. One i tried flushing completely, used a pressure hose to get the crud out of it, then refilled with acid. Still one dead cell and would not charge at all since it had an internal dead short. One thought, on the 'saved' battery i only drained and refilled the one bad cell, not all 3. it saved a bit of work. So, bottom line, the 'saved battery life projection is uncertain, and after spending the time effort and money to attempt reconditioning, I'm going to buy new replacement batteries when they fail. Thanks for the video. it was a worthwhile exercise to attempt.

I've been accumulating golf cart batteries. The previous administration maintenance group thought they would be needing a ton since the cart that they maintain for him got used more then aver before at U.S. Air Force Andrews Officers Golf Club Course . The new guy does not play golf there and probably never will. So they are being excess-ed. I snagged them all for pennies on the dollar. Winning!

Electricity is like water, it flows down hill, towards the point of lowest potential. This is why a battery at lower voltage will 'steal' power from a battery at higher voltage when in parrallel. So, you need to disconnect all of the + to + and - to - cables, wait at least 4 hours, and then test voltage on each battery. While you're at it, hook each 12V series pair to the charger and try to ballance it as a 12V series pair before you hook the 4 pairs together in parallel. I'm sure you're learning a lot, keep up the good work! Don't afraid to make mistakes!

I know nothing of batteries, either. But you both are making this fun and watchable. Thanks!

I just a regular old Grandma and love to watch your videos.

snow scoop makes a good snow sled everything needs a double purpose smart use of what u already have you guys a good at thinking on the fly respect

dumb question , at what temperature do lead batteries stop accepting a charge and sort of hibernate and lose voltage sitting ? very excellent reconditioning you batteries videos , my friend tells me they have to bring batteries from the truck inside at night when it gets below 0* F , they go down to - 50* F for a week in January/February , if they do not use a garage they have had the truck die driving due to lack of charging voltage , guess i was wondering if you were heating the battery condo or not ,

I've never heard any success stories with used batteries. I know you enjoy the challenge of trying to solve problems yourself, but I think a new bank should be at the top of the list for things to upgrade on your property, just after the water management, in my opinion. Batteries will work well for many years if maintained but abuse them and, as you have proven is this series, they are very hard to recover.

Put the battery box inside your cabin so it can benefit from the heat from the wood stove. Vent them outside of course. Love your videos! Going off-grid myself this spring. In a yurt! With heated floor from compost! Sorry getting away from the point due to excitement! Did I say I love the videos?

I've been in your situation. Sometimes batteries have partially shorted plates from all the gunk at the bottom or from freezing and will not hold a charge. Don't be afraid to "overcharge" these batteries. There's no such thing in your situation. As long as there's water, the most that will happen is you will have electrolysis generating hydrogen and oxygen. You need to equalize with visible bubbling to get the acid circulating so you get a uniform specific gravity. Bubbling is a good thing. Sometimes you just have to remove a weak battery from service and get a new one for quality of life. Two more panels would help too.

Looks good. You do know to measure each battery, you have to disconnect every battery and then measure one by one other wise you are measureing a parallel system :-) Disconect all the batteries and then measure them one by one and see wich one is the bad one (Low voltage) Disconnect that battery from the other and see if it gets better on the bank. otherwise your one battery is draging then bank down. Thx for sharing. Regards.

Nerdy scientist bike joke...loved it! Next time you try this, try rinsing the battery completely with clear distilled water before refilling with electrolyte. That dark sediment in the bucket after the first battery was the cause of the issues, and you need to get rid of it.

Hi guys, I made it to this video. Started on the oldest to now. Just took me 4 weekend to get here lol TY for your journey to off griding. Waiting for the next. One thing I'm hoping for is you make your kitchen cabnets in your home from YOUR trees and mill. See ya later

Great video. It has helped a great deal. I have the same problems. Still trying to work them out. Keeps you young. Keep busy. The wife still talking to me.

I'm liking your videos. I'd suggest you put a couple of wrenches on a nail that fit your battery cable bolts so you don't have to mess around with those adjustable wrenches. It will save you time.

make sure the sediment in the battery is not tutching the plates as this will couse it to discharge. Have a look at the old electralite you removed from battery 1. It had a lot of muck in it (sediment) that will cause it to discharg. I love you both, How did you find Malisa? A real woman and a gem. Also as an after thought have a look for 12 Volts Lead Acid Battery Desulfator Assembled Kit. They work but slowly. All the best. keep at it.

In a situation your facing you need an old school non electronic battery charger to push the batteries back into spec and then allow the inverter charger back in the system to maintain the system. Those electronic smart chargers don't charge batteries very well because the firmware is partly impatiently put together.

Glad to be along for the journey and I get that there is a huge value in education but at what point does the value of your time as well as other costs, ( generator gas, gas to run into town) out way the 'savings' and validate the purchase of new batteries?

safety Sally's lol. great series. my advice is get ALL big projects done before introducing kids in the mix. they have a way of sidelining everything else.

Batteries are 2 volts per cell, you can hookup two 6volt batteries in series and charge them as a 12volt. The big charger that you look at at NAPA will work by putting on 60 amps and the hold position on the timer. But keep eye on them not too over charge. Keep up good work.

Need to get a good battery charger to help those sulfated batteries come back to life. I have a Battery Minder battery charger and it has the ability to desulfate the battery at the end of a charge. The one I have is a model 2012 and I love it! If I bought another one it would be a model 12248. Enjoy your channel and nothing warms my heart more than a woman that jumps in there to help.

hi guys the sediment in the bottom of your batteries causes drain from the battery. the sediment piles up in the bottom until it reaches the bottom of the plates and shorts out the plates. you could refill with old acid with sediment removed until what comes out is pretty clean then refill with new acid

does your charge controller have a temp monitor for the battery temp? if not, you'll have to do some research on it. batteries have different voltage at lower temps. if your charge controller isn't compensating for the battery temperature, it will flip into absorption and float to soon. our charge controller choice was based on the ability to program it to the specific batteries'parameters and the temp monitor to make the appropriate changes for temp automatically after programming it. also, we can connect the controller to our wifi and monitor charge state, absorbtion, float, equalize, and see real time solar array voltage and wattage being produced and going into the battery. Tristar MPPT 60 through Morningstar Solar.

You can mix baking soda with water in a small glass and use a toothbrush or whatever to apply the baking soda to neutralize the acid Much neater although it will leave a harmless residue.

Can you put a DC clamp meter around the each of the battery cables, It will very quickly tell you where all the current is going and if they two batterys your working on are takening current

Where you guys live, are you required to dump any of your excess electricity "back onto the Grid"? As we have been looking at solar options that would run our homestead most contractors are telling us we HAVE to dump everything extra back onto the grid.

good on you for the safety glasses.. ive been cringing during the whole series.. i was in auto shop during high school and a friend pulled the caps off a battery still in the car.. the decided to pull the battery.. he got if most of the way out of the car, but then it slipped and fell back down into the battery holder...shooting battery acid out of the open ports and into his eyes... He was blinded for 3 days..even though he used an eye wash station within a minute after getting splashed... BATTERY ACID---BAD STUFF...

try desulphating each battery individually, then see what it does. I'm off grid too and the sulphation is really impactful

I was told once from a guy that worked at Interstate Battery, that if you drop the battery from about 8 to 10 inches onto a hard surface. That the impact will knock the deposits on the battery plates loose and you can flush the battery from there instead of going through the process of desulfation. My first reaction was, What!? but I tried it and it worked. I also flushed the battery with new acid twice and each time I emptied the battery more sediment came out. I saved 4 batteries this way. It's not as good as doing it the proper way but it may work for you. I went on to get 4 more years out of 2 of the batteries. I have no idea how old they were when I got them. Good luck!

Safety glasses, or chemical protection safety glasses, are good but full face shield is even better (coming from a person who had the top of a battery blow off in my face while jumping). Got lucky, not a single drop of acid landed on me. Never found the top of the battery...

Is your battery box heated in any way? I know that cold weather is really hard on batteries. So they may not be in as bad of shape as you think they are. I have seen people use heating pads made for seedlings trays that use very little power. You may want to also try and vent a 3 or 4-inch pipe from your cabin area where you wood heater is, and run it into the battery box using a small 12 fan (like from a computer) to blow heat into the battery box, that may help. Good luck!

You do need to isolate batteries when measuring. Otherwise you are measuring an average voltage to all the batteries measured in series/parallel. Great videos!

Left over acid and dirty batteries can cause a discharge. Test this by putting one voltmeter lead on the positive or negative post of the battery and the other lead on the battery case. You will see voltage if your battery case is dirty. Clean battery case and retest. i always clean my batteries with automotive brake and parts cleaner in a aerosol can. I'm a automotive technician. Granted this is probably not your problem but this is good maintance practice.

There is a device call a megapulse, which in testing by the CSIRO (a government backed lab in Australia) found that they maintain and repair lead batteries. My own experience proves this out I've not replaced the battery in my car for over 10 years and tests as new on a crank amp test. The cell must not be damaged ie not have cell warping.

Also, I once saw a Biker reconditioning his battery at a truck stop once. That sedament in the bucket tends to pack itself on the floor of the cells. I'd try about 2 cups of watter in each cell then shake, rinse and repeat if necessary.

I was SHOCKED at Alysa's nerd joke! It affected me SO much that I had a difficult time retyping it to some friends of mine. THANKS FOR THE GREAT HUMOR.

One importent tip. When working inside of the battery box, use insulated tools!!!

Hey I recently moved from SouthEastern Idaho. Just outside Idaho falls is an awesome military outlet . A couple of months before we moved I went over to help them set up a couple of verticle windmills. I couldn't figure out why he needed 6 guys as well as his backhoe ! Now his verticle windmill was made from plastic 55 gal drums ! unlike most windmills that need to be like 15-20 feet up in the air. My friend hadd his pad to mount his with the bottom just about my eye level so 6 . We had it hooked to the backhoe and lifted it upand it took all of us ti keep it from soinning and it took us an hour to get it set in place ! Now we put it on a platform by the huge flag so if there was wind you would know it. Well to finish the story the windmill would spin enought that a big guy like me couldn't stop it even when the flag was deooped. So If you want something to look into look into those on youtube land .... Good luck Oh have you tried the charger in your rv to charge from ?????? It could work ! I have one from an old rv and that is my battery charger that is the go to tool ! good luck and have a awesome day !

Hang in there Jessie, you''ll get it soon.

Watched the whole series, looks very frustrating. I hope you guys are able to figure it out in the near future! Stay Strong!

Loooove the science joke. Thumb up for that.

With those glasses on you look like your from "Dexter's Lab"! lol

Been there done that trying to figure out these kinda problems. Though its pretty rough having to do it with a malfunctioning inverter charger, and below zero temperatures! Oy, thanks for the update, I hope you get it sorted out, and get some useful information from the testing. Thanks for the hard work and the great videos! :)

ok, you can as a last resort, use jumper cables from your truck to the battery bank. your alternator will put out at least 40+ amps at 12v... I'm saying your charger is junk... try it and your batteries will be fully charged no question. btw, have the truck running around 1200 rpm.

I've been saving batteries with a cheap deflator/charger from eBay. others have done treats and restored old batteries to original specs.

No matter how you slice it, as a battery goes through charge / discharge cycles and ages, plate material is lost (the sludge you found from the bottom of the cells). The battery effectively becomes smaller. Nothing you can add to the electrolyte can fix that. All products that claim otherwise are merely snake oil. I would highly recommend a forklift battery, after you have settled on the system voltage that you want (12, 24, or 48), higher the better. This way you do not have series parallel cell arrangements, which can cause confusion when attempting to troubleshoot, as you've discovered. Take very good care of it, and it will take very good care of you. You know, except for the diaper part. :) Love your videos, BTW. Oh, another thing adding more solar panels would be a very good thing. You want your battery to reach a full charge on a regular basis, and it would be nice to be able to do that without too much generator run time.

What voltage is your system? I'm full Outback FP1 48 volt system with 16 cg2 6 volts from Costco going on three years. 9 to 12 300 watt panels. I watched your video and wonder how you wired up the batteries? I lucked and bumped into a top notice solar guy who helped me.

Any chance of putting the batteries in a more sheltered area? During the winter of 1968 in Great Falls Mt. the hight temperature for, the 10-day stretch was -10 below zero so your cold snap is not too bad. It all depends on what you're used to. Hang in there, watching the video of the crystal clear stars at night was worth all the cold temperatures you've had, don't you think?

Any timeline yet on the house building project? It doesn't look like pleasant living for you both as yet. If nothing else, it might keep you warm!!The vids are fun though.

What's the voltage capability or your Honda Generator AC or DC.??? ... What's your battery config. trying to achieve.??? ... is it 12v DC.???

Prob. sulfation. EDTA to clean the plates assuming they are not internal shorted at all. Before I try to replace electrolyte I always add EDTA tot he old fluid first and drain and recharge the battery with the old liquid and EDTA before I drain and refill this get's rid of a lot of the sulfation build up on the plates which usually is the cause of internal shorts!

I told you on other videos you need to clean the plates good little vinegar and baking soda and then rise the battery real good. then ad one half teaspoon of Epsom salt in each battery cell fresh battery acid give me the slow charge. works every time cleaning the cells is the most important thing rising out the baking soda is very important as it will neutralize your new acid where you rinse with vinegar and water.

Bono wants his glasses back!!!

To do the distilled water charging - could you not use jumper cables from a running vehicle? Just a thought.

has desulfation been done to these batteries? i saw an ad for north 40 selling an old style charger that would do a high amp charge for a 6v battery.

Brother After you guys work out the bugs. There will not be as much work on solar.Thanks for taking us with you guys.

We love your show, and sure would like you to have power from the solar panels and batteries. It could be that the batteries are way to COLD. I wish we had the hills you have to cut out a underground battery storage system That would keep the batteries warm in the winter and cool in the summer. Your battery box is vented well but your going to fight this tell they warm up. I also think after you add the heat desulfate plates of the two bad batteries.

HEY!! I'm a stay at home mom and I've watched all three on the batteries so far!! LOL

Hey, I'm a nerdy stay at home mom! And this is interesting to me! Love your videos guys! Did you chose your specific land because of zoning issues? I live in Indiana and I'm finding it hard to be "off grid".

you can check individual cell voltage by putting one probe on the batter post and another into the open hole so post to first hole should give you single cell voltage and so on

I think it is time to make the call and pull the plug on the life support for those batteries. Just take the 2 you've had problems out of the system and run on the other 6 'good' ones. It could also be the case that the total amp-hour rating of the battery bank is more than the inverter-charger can handle adequately.

Take your time and design the ultimate battery box.. Then build it as time allows.. Get a notebook for ideas.. Keep everything regarding electrical power in one section. Water in another, House ideas in another, etc..

I sell and work with batteries for a living the batteries you are using are find but you need a better maintaining system. I would also recommend you to purchase lifeline batteries in 4D or 8D size and you will have less batteries and less maintenance. But a 4 bank maintainer should do the job if you switch batteries if not a 10 bank battery tender. I highly recommend the 8D batteries they are 12v a piece so less work and less batteries 2 or 3 should accomplish your needs. Lifeline makes the best batteries in that size they are pricey but not More than your paying for interstate aka paying for the name. Lifeline has a 5 year warranty on batteries can't go wrong.

I wonder if you should call a spade a spade and go down and buy a couple 235amh batteries to hold you over. At least they'll be new and by guesstimation, they may be even in power drain given those other batteries might not be in the best shape. Good luck.

If you are trying to isolate bad battery, connect a DC wattmeter in between the test battery and the common power rails or busbar. You will be able to see how much power is being delivered or consumed at any point. Make sure the current rating is adequate. Cheers.

Bite bullet and buy new batteries. Use these until they die, then get new ones. " don't step over a dollar to pick up a dime" .

Hey, Enjoying your series so far. I would have to agree with 46 in the fact that buy new to make em last. Some tips, Get a load tester, automotive stores sell them for a fair price (6V Too). When testing batteries voltage or load testing, unhook your wires and do each battery individually. If left hooked up in series and measured it is very easy to catch a back-feed from another battery and confuse your reading. One bad battery in a bank can kill the whole bank by discharging them constantly. That will help you identify bad batteries, Im thinking you only have 1 bad tho by how its acting. I Don't have a ton of solar experience, but ive worked on many battery banks in rv's this is usually how i find the culprit. -B

Why don't you just install a heater into your big outside battery box connected to a thermostat and frost thermostat to control it You will always have the right temperature for your batteries. . Is the floor of it insulated. and you should double up on that insulation and insulate all the box including the lid No more frozen batteries

Glad to see the County Snowplow came by your place...

ya i dont know the science behind it but i have often seen bad batteries just go up to a full voltage right a way i guess a desulfator would be worth trying i have heard of capacitor charger that is supposed to help

Hi Pure Living for Life. I see someone saying to drop the battery to knock off sulfation. I expect the case would crack. Aspirin is a VERY temporary fix. Adding EDTA or Epsom Salts might work for a few months extra life. I wouldn't add chemicals to newish batteries, as they hasten plate corrosion & increase self discharge. Old wet 12v cells are best charged at 15.8 -16 volts for 3 -6 hours to remove sulfation. Stop when the S.G. of the acid remains constant, or if the battery gets too warm. Regards

I didn't look to see if anybody has recommended this or not but would connecting 2 of the 6 volt batteries in series to produce one 12 volt be a workaround for the charger/voltage/amperage issue? as I am not a engineer please confirm this workaround with someone in the know. Loving the posts.

Yes, just use the battery bank all together, everything in parallel will self-balance over weeks. Voltage works like water flow heights. If one battery reads higher voltage, then it is not stealing anything from the rest, that upper voltage will go down to the same as the rest, even if you neither charge nor load. Only very slow charging can equalize high capacity batteries in parallel. Real balance charging is only doable for series banks, in the case of 12v with 6v batteries, you only can balance 2 parts of 6V (with the appropriate balance charger). Anyway I don't think it is needed, you only need to check if you have the capacity and to use it. It is always better to wire in series, work with 48V (you loose less in the wires) maybe you have enough battery capacity, but you have nowhere enough panels to fill them in 2 or 3 sunny days. You will need the generator each morning until sun is up, if it is sunny every day. Use what you have, you will soon see that maybe more pannels would help.

To possibly keep the batteries from freezing that you run a lightbulb in your battery box. Don't know if it would work because I live in San Diego, California near the ocean.

hope you sorted this out and im no sparky but voltage does not mean ah it might be the corect volt but still be flat in ah terms.i would think li-ion would be a better road to go down.

Oh, as far as charging a 6 volt battery and the issue with being able to vary the charge rate, you do know the whole series parallel thing with batteries, right? Two 6 volt batteries in series is the same as a 12 volt battery, and you can use a 12 volt charger.

me too! I am a regular stay at home mom & I enjoy your videos! I don't want to miss your sense of humor! ;)

nice project

Not ture, we stay at home moms are watching! We love watching you guys! We do homeschool though😋 #motherof4