Battery Maintainers

My neighborhood homeowners association (a rural fly-in community) owns three water wells that supply the 36 lots with water. While one is powered by EMC and the other two by GA Power, we still have concerns about keeping the water on, so we have a generator on one well. I installed a battery maintainer on the generator, and it sat peacefully in the well house until the battery suddenly decided to go "south" with a dead cell. The maintainer, seeing a low battery kicked into high gear and tried to top it off. End result was lots of battery fumes in a well house (well sealed and insulated one).

After installing a new battery, I also installed a lamp timer, like you use to turn lights on and off while you are on vacation. The maintainer is powered only for 30 mins a day, enough to top the battery if needed, but not enough to fry it in event of a failure. I put in an ON key in the timer and 30 mins later on the dial, an OFF key and thats it

I even keep one of these timers on the cord of my small 4 amp charger in my shop. I'm forgetful and sometimes put a battery on charge and if I don't get to the shop for a couple of days, there could be a problem.

I set the timer on and it runs for 24 hours till it hits the OFF key in the timer wheel and it stays off till I get to it (just don't install any ON keys in this case)

Charles

From bike (scooter) shops, can get a "battery tender", which puts out a trickle charge, which is the best kind've charge, and it shuts itself down, then restarts as needed. But, as far as I know, are only available for 12VDC type batteries, and go for about $60. Whatever you decide to go with, make sure automatically shuts itself down, or will spoil your battery, and end up with boiled over electrolyte all over the place. Good luck.

Mark