Got this brainstorm and a couple ???'s (batteries)

Been cleaning up and gettin inspired... At todays count, I have 7 6 volt solar fence chargers and 8 12 volt car battery ones along with a collection of batteries... Figured that was as good a place as any to start, so set up a shelf and consolidated everything in one place. Electricity in that corner and it's in a good spot for yard tools also so will set up all my chargers in a little charging station that'll consist of everything mounted on as big of piece of plywood as necessary, and hung on the wall with a shelf for charged batteries..
Questions concerning the batteries are a couple...

1) on the 6 volt batteries for the solar chargers (GEL)... Some are older than others, some are new... Most have been sitting around with little or no charge.... Think they'll recover? I have a slow charger, but it's 12 volt, can I just hook two in series and charge them like that (since there is several, can I get away with all in series/parallel as long as I keep it at twos?

2) for the 12 volt car batteries (and the 6v in series to make 12v), can I set up 2 bars with several cables/clamps..1 pos and 1 neg, hook up the charger to the end and charge multiple batteries?

3) Then..... If/When all is charged, will one of the solar battery maintainers be able to hook up to my "BAR" and keep em all alive over winter? If so, think just one of the normal ones are OK, or do I need something bigger??

That's enough for now..

Thanks, Dave

In my experience with multiple battery setups in trucks, if all batteries are in the same condition, age, charge, plate condition, etc, they will charge equally. However when one goes bad it will most often cause problems with the others. I think that you will have erratic charging trying to do a multiple charge setup.

15 fence chargers? How big of outfit do you run? I
think you should sell some of them and buy cattle
with the money. Fence chargers won't make you a
dime.

(quoted from post at 15:41:39 05/13/12) 15 fence chargers? How big of outfit do you run? I
think you should sell some of them and buy cattle
with the money. Fence chargers won't make you a
dime.

Click to expand...

Bunch of small pastures and then a couple spares.....

That's classic, Cowman. He's running 17 sections, 143 miles of fence. Takes a lot of chargers. When he rides the fence line, he has to take 2 weeks vacation from his guvment job, and takes a chuck wagon.

But seriously, Dave2- Just get a 6 volt charger, and do one at a time. Yes, you can put 2 in series. But it will only work if the batteries are in the same condition, and the chances of that, after they've all been sitting around for years, is slim to none. If one is bad, the other will overcharge, and you'll probably ruin it, too. But on the bright side, if you're lucky, it won't explode.

When you start trying to simultaneously charge batteries of different age, different condition, perhaps different sizes it just dont work near as well as if allllllllll batteries are same age, type, design, brand but Im NOT saying hey dont try it, no harm in that. Trouble with multiple batteries is the weak suck off the strong.

Also before you hook up multiple batteries in paralell best take a look here:

http://www.smartgauge.co.uk/batt_con.html

John T
Paralell Battery Connection

Yeah, them batteries is kinda like socialists. You would think that hooking the up in series would solve all your problems, but in reality, you end up with a shelf full of dead batteries, sayin if only we had been charged better!

Sounds good on paper, but if the batteries are different sizes, they mess on each other real bad.

You'd need to rig in diodes to prevent them from backfeeding one to the other; and then you run into problems with the common rails unless you have kinda fancy monitor watching each battery for full charge seperate from the others....

--->Paul

What would be wrong in matching them with a hydrometer. If the specific gravity is the same ,why can't you then charge those together.??

Thanks Folks....
Just one of them thoughts that came to me....

Let me tell ya bout battery booms.

So I was a kid out of highschool and took a job at Harley Davidson golfcars. I had already aced about 8 classroom credit years worth of autoshop, and wasn't novice in any way.

I had one responsibility to gather all the junk batteries set them up in piles of 6X6=36v series charging. There were maybe 3 or 4 of these groups all bubbling away at full load on a ton of dead crap.

The boss came by said I was all wrong because I was condemning to many batteries. He called the second boss over to the charging bench to show me how it needs to be done. I stood back 10-15' and behind them as they struck the arc and it all went kablewie!! fired or laid off how can ya tell

here's another
#2
my old ford pickup was missing the battery hold down. It fell over on the exhaust manifold and melted a hole in the case draining most of the fluid from a cell or two. Being angry I wrestled the cable clamp hard enough to short internally and blow that gas filled bomb sky high. I kept my eyes closed and felt my way to a faucet for wash down

#3
Out in woods, needing a battery, there was one at the shed. Put it on a charger, it was low on water and full of gas when I sparked it across the terminals to see if it had charged. It did not have the loudness of the explosion but took the sides and top right off that sucker. Washdown was not and option fortunately the acids were pretty weak in that one.

There was a 4th but it escapes me now.

Nowadays I call a dead horse a dead horse and quick kicking em right away.

Hey go poke that bloated cow and strike a match!

These 6v gel batteries have to be watched when they are new.They will die on the shelf and never take a charge.If you do try to charge them 3/4 amp is the top rate.Same goes for the 12v.