battery maintainers

MSS3020

Well-known Member
I use about 7 battery maintainers in the winter. What catches fire on these things.. the plug in or the box that has the light on it between the plug and battery?? I have never had any problems and try to place the connectors in a metal bucket or at least if caught fire they would drop to a dirt floor.. Any thoughts??
 
Dunno. Never had one catch fire. When mine go bad, they just stop working. The light goes out. I think they're designed to do that rather than catch your barn on fire.
 
had one for four years no problems til i forgot and left it in the rain its dead but it did not catch fire and it was plugged in to the house and on a battery but there is always that first time
 
I don't trust them. I have left some on for several days and they didn't seem to shut theirselves off and the batteries were loosing water. I have tried both Harbor Freight and a Craftsman. I do like the craftsman for charging things back up. It will do 6 & 12 volt has lights that show the progression of charging. It has a cooling fan that I thought was to shut off in maintain mode,but it seems to keep running and also seems to overcharge them ?
 
Mike,I think you are talking about one of those 'Smart' chargers.I dont trust em either.They just dont work right.Ive owned 2,worthless POS.Went back to the old 'manual' chargers.Lots better,they work!
 
First thought it to get rid of the charger you have and any that are just like it.

Putting anything you think may catch on fire in a metal bucket is not a bad idea. Make a cord with a GFCI. The GFCI should trip is anything goes wrong and shorts to the bucket. May put a ground wire on the metal bucket. Perhaps a metal cover on the bucket and place the bucket on bricks.

What kind of maintainer are you using?

I have my mom's old electric wheelchair, with Ni-CD batteries. They discharge on their own. So I have a mechanical timer that turns the charger on for 30 minutes/day. Seems to keep them up.

I also use a timer on my dewalt charger. One hour is more than enough to charger a battery. That way I'm not cooking the battery.

It could be your battery causing the problem too. Try a timer and a smart charger. Juice the battery for 30 minutes or so a day.

Personally, I don't leave a trickle charger on 24/7.

I purchased a batteryminder 12248. Directions say to charge the battery and then let it sit for a few weeks or more. I rotate batteryminder to different batteries.

Santa is bringing me a battery conductivity meter. Hope to get it soon. This will tell me where the battery is in it's life cycle.

George
 

I had a little charger, I think that it came with a tool or something, that quit charging. I opened it up and the little circuit board was half burned.
 
I have used Battery Tenders by Deltran for years and never had anything catch fire or melt. They sometimes stay connected for a month and commonly for a week. Majority of batteries are at or near full charge at time the minder is hooked up.
Maybe you should tell use what brand and how many you know of catching fire so we can be cautious with them.
 
I have three of the charger/maintainer units. The ones I have are Peak brand like the antifreeze. I know they just put their name on them.

I have one on in each machinery shed 24/7, over the winter months. They are four years old. I have a index card by the walk door of each shed. That card has a list of all the major machinery in the shed. I mark when the charger/maintainer was on each piece. I move the charger/maintainer every week to a difference piece of equipment. Like the combine, the JD 4960 tractor and other things that are used seasonally. I have never had any issue with any of them. I also have had way fewer battery problems since I started using them. They only charge 2 or 4 amps.

I do have one of the small "smart" chargers. I use it on the TMR wagon. I put it on every Saturday morning and take it off Saturday evening. That thing I do not trust as it will over charge the battery.

As far as worrying about them being a fire hazard. I bet that I can walk around your place and find many things that are more of a fire hazard. If you have them on a circuit breaker with a good grounded cord I would say you would be very safe.
 
Our volunteer fire department with eight trucks used to have a continuing battery problem. There are times that certain trucks would not be needed for a month at a time, and then would go to five fires in a weekend. We tried trickle chargers, starting the trucks once a week and letting them run for thirty minutes (that didn't work out well at all...), putting them on a timer coming on once a day for an hour, and several other methods to try and keep the batteries from going south. Didn't seem to matter what we did, a battery would last a year and would have to be replaced. We finally ran onto some chargers that turn off completely once the battery is charged to a certain level. They have a timer circuit that "checks" the charge every ten minutes or so, if it needs charging it comes on and brings it back up and shuts off again. We have been using these on all of our trucks with pretty good success. Battery life is still shorter than normal but normal is different in this situation. We now get about 3 to 5 years out of our batteries.

These chargers are made by Schauer, we leave them plugged in 24/7 and rarely have a surprise. We can tell when we have a problem ahead of time by watching the activity on the meter on the charger. I won't make this longer to explain that part.

I don't know if they make a six volt version or not, easy enough to find out.
 

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