Deep cycle charger

[JHZR2]

The 8A charge will decrease down to 2A or less when it gets to the point where the battery wants less current.

I would look at open circuit voltage with a voltmeter to determine what the state of charge is. If you are just slightly depleted, the 4A setting may be OK. Id only use the 2A for maintenance, to be sure that the battery is topped up.

 

[Digital2k2]

This little thing gets pretty warm on the 8amp setting. Pretty much expected that of the charger, though it also gets warm enough at the inline fuse. Cut the charge in half to 4 amps and the fuse felt a lot cooler.
Since this is in a relatively small box I figure it's best to keep the heat down as much as possible. Especially during these hot summer days.

Besides the fuse getting hot, I like everything else about this charger. Definitely can't hear any noise coming from it either =D

 

[Digital2k2]

Well it worked good for a while... Now after a couple hours to a couple days it's changing from Flooded to GEL. At first it only seemed to do it with the clamps, but now it's doing it with the rings tightened down real good under the wing nuts.

I can hear the battery bubbling when it happens (could have been hours or days it's been left on the GEL setting before I caught it) so it must overcharge it in the GEL setting.

Not sure if I want to take advantage of the one year money back deal or try to get them to fix it. I'm going to call them tomorrow if I get the chance.

 

[JHZR2]

Someplace I read that you want a little boiling of the electrolyte to help prevent sulfudation or something along those lines...

 

[Digital2k2]

I called today and was told that in a couple weeks they should have new chips in to correct the problem. They'll mail it out and let me install it.

JHZR2: You gotta be right about that. They told me the GEL setting keeps the battery at a lower voltage than the Flooded setting.

 

[wrcsixeight]

I've used the 12248 battery minder often. I also have a amp hour counter/ battery monitor. The charger is silent. It has no fan. It makes diagonal wavy lines on Analog TV channel 6, but electrical noise does not really count. The amps taper as the battery reaches higher states of charge.



If a Flooded lead acid battery combines the terms RV/Trolling/Marine/Deep cycle, it is a dual purpose battery, which is just a starting battery which is slightly more tolerant of deeper discharges that a true starting battery. A true deep Cycle battery is constructed differently with thicker less porous plates of slightly different chemistry.

I have a pair of Crown 115 a/h deep cycle batteries.
Crown says to charge them at 20 amps each upto 14.5 volts.

Good luck finding the recommended charging rates for the Everstart.

I have a schumacher 25 amp "smart" charger. When my 2 batteries are low, I use every charging source I have in an attempt to give them the 40 Amps Crown recommends.

I can tell that when I give them close to the 40 amp mark by combining chargers, they are much happier the next time I discharge them compared to when I just let the Batteryminder on 8 amps take 5 times as long to top them off.

Lots of guys over on RV forums are eyeballing older school chargers. When they measure the specific gravity of the cells after using a 3 stage smart charger, they find that it is turning off too quickly, well before the battery is fully charged. If they use the older manual chargers, which might take the battery as high as 16 volts, given enough time, that the temperature compensated specific gravity readings when taken by an accurate hydrometer show that the 16 volts in needed to overcome the internal resistance of the battery , and squeeze all the amps possible into it.

There is a school of thought that you cannot really fully charge a Lead Acid battery unless you can take the voltage above 14.4. The batteryminder does this, but some other low amperage ones will never be able to achieve 14.4 volts, and thus never fully charge a battery, especially a bigger one, and it dies an early death due to chronic undercharging and the sulfation that that causes.

 

[Digital2k2]

Originally Posted By: wrcsixeight

There is a school of thought that you cannot really fully charge a Lead Acid battery unless you can take the voltage above 14.4. The batteryminder does this, but some other low amperage ones will never be able to achieve 14.4 volts, and thus never fully charge a battery, especially a bigger one, and it dies an early death due to chronic undercharging and the sulfation that that causes.


Going by that school of thought you'd never get it completely charged with the batteryminder... Tech support told me the Flooded setting keeps the battery at 13.7 volts. Though maybe the early death due to sulfation would be avoided with this charger since it puts that constant desulfation frequency through the battery?

Today I installed the new chip... Had to take 6 screws out of the bottom of the charger to open it up. Removing the old chip was a pain, it was in there really good.

I'll update as the days go by... Hopefully this new chip will take care of the issue.

 

[wrcsixeight]

I think you misunderstood the tech. The Batteryminder12248 has always taken my batteries to at least 14.2, IIRC. It's been 6 months since I borrowed that charger. After a few hours around this voltage then it drops back to float mode and holds 13.6/7.

Sorry to hear yours was not working properly. Hopefully you got it fixed

 

[Digital2k2]

Just re-read your post and completely missed the part where you said "The batteryminder does this" when I typed that reply.

Less than 23 hours in (I took the boat out early yesterday in the 25 degree weather) the charger is working like it should. Sometimes with the old chip it'd work alright for a few days before switching to GEL, so after a week I'll know for sure if it took care of the problem.

 

[Digital2k2]

I checked it the other day and it's back to GEL. When the chip came it was out of the bubble wrapping in the box, so it was probably shook around a good amount. Not sure if that would cause it to work incorrectly or if it's something else.


A little off subject but what would you guys say about an AGM car battery reading 12 volts after it's been driven a mile? It goes down to 11.3 volts with the headlights on.