12-09-2019, 08:50 PM
Late 2007, I was where you are. I wanted something just for the times I did have AC to plug into. The 3 years previously I had been spending a lot of time remote camping inf Baja and very occassionally parking a few hours and rarely overnight at a friends house in town. I had a 2/12 amp metal cased NON automatic schumacher and ,unknowingly at that time, rarely got more than 7 amps from it. I'd had 230 Ah of house battery, plug in for 3 hours and the maximum I could return into them was 21 Amphours. I had no ammeter, all I knew is that I plugged in a charger for hours, yet it did not seem to help very much and voltage when I checked it was still disappointly low and the inverter alarm would come on way sooner than expected.
So in 2007,still confused by what an RV converter was, I bought the highly recognizable name schumacher sc2500a 'intelli'charger with upto 25 amps available.
NOw I still have this charger, it still works, I still use it.
But there are times when it is nearly useless, as I can't get it to seek and hold absorption voltage. it and many many smart chargers, will decide to drop to float voltage, where little to no charging occurs very prematurely.
It is a shame when one can plug in, yet they can't get their charger to actually charge the batteries. Its like putting quarters into a gas station tire filling aircompressor, yet never having the tire pressure increase, yet deciding more quarters and more time is needed, or worse that while the tire still looks underinflated, the machine made a bunch of noise for a while, and consumed a bunch of quarters therefore the tire must be inflated properly, rather than realizing the piece of shit is simply not working and finding an alternate solution.
So with the schumacher and an Ammeter/ amphour counter and still disappointed in its ability to recharge my 345Ah battery bank, I learned to load the bank, drag its voltage down below 12.6v with headlamps and other loads, then restart the charger. Sometimes this works, sometimes it just shuts off/reverts to float in a minute or 3. I had an amp hour counting battery monitor at this point and I could see I was still 25 or more AH from full, but the charger refused to hold any voltage over 13.6v( AGM setting float voltage) and the batteries might be accepting 1.3 amps when at 14.7v they would be taking 8 amps or more.
Often I would go check on it just to find it shut off completely, and the batteries were nowhere near fully charged. Unplug it from AC and DC, replug in both, restart it, and 5 minutes later, same thing. either it was in float shining its green light, or it would shut itself off as the fridge compressor shutting off or starting up would make it thing there is an issue with the battery. I'd even shut the fridge off to get it to try and continue charging, with little success.
Just last night I had my Meanwell power supply on the workbench installing a new ammeter and ideal Diode and voltmeter into it and was using the schumacher to charge my 55% battery as it was cloudy/rainy all day. I had to go run some errands and when I came back, with the battery still accepting 20+ alternator amps at 14,6v when I parked for the night, I tried restarting the schumacher and within 2 minutes it reverted to float. A battery which can still accept 20+ amps is nowhere near full, but the schumacher refused to even try. it just kept reverting to float voltage. I turned on my lights and fans and dragged battery voltage below 12.6v, restarted the charger on the 12 amp setting. it went for about 5 minutes, and reverted to float. I tried 3 times to get it to seek and hold 14.4+ volts and it refused.
I said F this and went back in the workshop to Finish the meanwell, just leaving the schumacher charging the battery accepting 2 amps at 13.5v. When I finished the meanwell a while later I came in and looked at my battery monitor which was still saying 16Ah from full, the schumacher stuck in float feeding 1.9 amps. When I plugged in the meanwell and set it to 14.7v and plugged it into the battery 13 amps were required to bring it to 14.7v, and it took 3 more hours before amps tapered to the 0.5 range where it could be considered fully charged. So that whole time I was in the workshop with schumacher in float, almost no actual charging occurred and I was only able to reach full when I returned with the meanwell power supply and let it rip at 14.7v for several more hours.
So basically if I had left the schumacher on overnight at 13.6v, full charge would not occur until mid/late morning the solar was able to bring the voltage higher and amps tapered at Absv to the prerequisite 0.5 amps.
Most automatic garage chargers are going to do this same exact thing. Not only will they refuse to fully charge the battery, they will refuse to even get it close when there are loads on the battery, or there is a surface charge voltage from having just driven the vehicle.
So for your intended use, the garage charger will likely not be able to do what you want it to do, or do only a fraction of what you hoped for. It could just be a lesson in frustration if you have to go back in and keep restarting the charger, and they will only restart once you load it to drop the voltage below 12.8 or 12.6v or somewhere in that range. So you have to load the battery, unplug the charger from AC and DC, the plug it back in hook it to the battery start it, then remove the load. Then you walk away, come back in two hours and see it is in float, providing little to no charging current or perhaps shut off completely flashing an error sign, and know the batteries are nowhere near full. You have AC grid power available to charge your depleted softly sulfated batteries, you have a charger, and yet you cannot get the charger to do the job you bought it for.
I don't know about you, but futility enrages me, and these so called smart chargers are some of the best teachers of futility I have come across in this lifestyle.
The solution for me was removing the 'smart' and Automatic.
Even the PD9245, while an excellent charger/ converter,will only hold absorption for so long before reverting to lower voltages. Pressing the button once will have it seek 14.4v for 4 more hours, but I would much rather set my power supply to 14.4v and just check the ammeter every few hours. I am also happy to not be limited to 3 voltages, not able to influence them if the battery is way outside the 77f range where all manufacturers make their recommendations. Say a 77f battery spec's a absorption voltage at 14.7, well if the battery is 27f that voltage should be raised upto 15.3v or so. If it is 99f outside that should be lowered to 14.25 or so.
So in a few years, when your batteries seem to have lost capacity/no longer hold a charge, whats the plan, just replace them? Try and get your smart charging source to do what it never could from Day one? which is fully charge them? That would be even more futile.
Only then buy a charging source capable of holding a constant voltage for as long as required? What if you'd bought this charging source instead, initially?........Well its likely the batteries would still be performing well.
So many people freak out at the thought of a manual charger, Yet compared to using my schumacher it is 1/20th the effort and can actually fully charge the battery back to its full remaining capacity and thus allow it to retain its capacity for much longer.
So often 'plug and play/automatic' is aim gun at foot, then shoot, then call the gun a piece of shit or yell at your foot for being in the way.
Most Anybody who has bought the gun, not yet shot themselves in the foot, will say the gun is great, i have one therefore you should too, but they will not tell you 6 months after you bought the samr gun they then shot themself in the foot. Few are honest with themselves, much less strangers.
Amazon ratings given by the ignorant, should be ignored. There might be a few actual reviews by someone who knows the product, but they tend to be longer with some tech talk and are often ignored by those who only read reviews favorable to their desires for inexpensive as possible but expect 'works just as good' as the more expensive options.
This guy says this is the cheapest and works 'just fine', whooohoo! place order.
Regarding the trolling motor battery users, used actually trolling. They are charging a battery not with the trolling motor still running on and off. They have ZERO idea the actual state of charge of the battery, they do not know about surface charge voltage retention, not what a hydrometer is, all they know is the battery either lasts or it does not. when new they last all day, a few weeks later they do not.
My sister's ex was one of these, and boy was he proud of his Schumacher similar to the one I own and know to be a lying incapable piece of shit, but kept complaining about the batteries, and the warranty not being honored more than once. He is one of those who is simply smarter than anybody in the room in his own mind, and would not listen to me that the Schumacher he was so proud of, was failing to fully recharge the battery that it was not even getting it close and this was prematurely reducing the capacity of the batteries. His logic was that when the battery was new it could power the boa all day and now not even half the day, It was the battery not the charger, in his mind.
What to do in this situation?. Prove him wrong while teaching, with absolute irrefutable proof.
After the next fishing session, rowing back to the dock, we put his dead as a doornail battery onhis charger. Dip the hydrometer when it flashed the green light and all cells were 1.220 or less, deep in the red on the hydrometer.
I'm like:
'see this green area, 1.265 or higher, this is where it should be, if the relatively newish battery( which it was) was fully charged.'
I wound up restarting that charger time and again, a dozen times and forcing him to watch the hydrometer float, testing the specific gravity each time it quit, and basically never got any cell to rise over 1.250. I'd even rigged up an old sealed beam headlight as a 7 amp load in order to be able to restart the charger more quickly. Once he acknowledged that his charger even after restarting a dozen times was unable to get the specific gravity above 1.250, I then got my Meanwell power supply, set it to 14.7v and the battery was taking 5 amps. 12 hours later it was taking 1.2 amps, and 5 of cells were 1.270, one was lagging 0.005 behind. Well into the green.
This was irrefutable proof. it was so incredibly obvious, that there was no ability to argue and boy was he pissed off at being proven wrong. I then raised voltage to 15.5v and once amps tapered to less than 4 , raised voltage upto 16.2v, and all cells in about 15 more minutes read 1.280 or higher and I stopped charging completely. 12 hours later resting voltage was 12.97v and SG read 1.285 on all but one cell which was still 1.280.
We used the battery that day, and it outperformed the Newer larger marine battery he had bought 3 weeks earlier. When we were done we checked the specific gravity and it was 1.190, and put the schumacher back on it, and when it flashed the green light, 1.225. We had just established that when fully charged specific gravity was 1.280, and the schumacher refused to bring it over 1.225.
He was then online, furiously reading reviews on Automatic chargers, what about this one, what about that one as my temper got shorter and shorter. I was like buy it then!!! I'll leave you my hydrometer and you can see how good or how bad it is. Because its impossible to guess as to how it will perform based on the stickers or reviews! He cursed at me, i returned the curses and a few more and he walked away.
I pulled up the 55$( at that time) 33 amp Megawatt power supply online, bookmarked it, and closed the lid on the laptop and said nothing more on the subject.
When it arrived I cut off the cord on an old power strip, and told him to buy the cheapest drug store jumper cables he could find, but he already had some in his truck. They were perhaps 10 gauge. I cut them in half, wired up the power supply set it to 14.8v and said to run it for 8 hours after each day fishing. That was 2015 or so and every time I go back there, I hear about that megawatt power supply/charger and how awesome it is and how everybody wants to borrow it. If Florida had any hills there would be minstrels up in them writing and singing songs about the Megawatt power supply that 'magically' restores trolling motor batteries. My sister has a new boyfriend now, yet when i meet some of her friend's boyfriends they are like , hey you are the guy you set up that small ugly silver rectangular battery charger.... Dude!!!, I borrowed that thing and it saved my battery...
All it is doing is actually fully charging them, something no automatic battery charger can do.
So when i see these threads about which automatic battery charger is best, I am like the best one is one that is not automatic as automatic chargers are designed to never overcharge a battery, not to actually fully charge one( depsite teh marketing claiming exactly that), and only get it enough charged that it can start a car. For 99% this is more than good enough.
But those 99% are totally ignorant when it comes to electricity, much less charging lead acid batteries.
Makes me want to make a sexy plastic box with a green light and market as the answer to every human ill/angst on the planet.
Whatever charger you get, you should get a ammeter, and a hydrometer, but there is NO arguing Ignorance is indeed Bliss, at least until it gets too expensive.
Be wary of reviews, reviewers, and remember product marketing in this day and age is nothing but lies mistruths, deception, manipulation, and amoral douchebaggery, but that seems to be par for the course.
So in 2007,still confused by what an RV converter was, I bought the highly recognizable name schumacher sc2500a 'intelli'charger with upto 25 amps available.
NOw I still have this charger, it still works, I still use it.
But there are times when it is nearly useless, as I can't get it to seek and hold absorption voltage. it and many many smart chargers, will decide to drop to float voltage, where little to no charging occurs very prematurely.
It is a shame when one can plug in, yet they can't get their charger to actually charge the batteries. Its like putting quarters into a gas station tire filling aircompressor, yet never having the tire pressure increase, yet deciding more quarters and more time is needed, or worse that while the tire still looks underinflated, the machine made a bunch of noise for a while, and consumed a bunch of quarters therefore the tire must be inflated properly, rather than realizing the piece of shit is simply not working and finding an alternate solution.
So with the schumacher and an Ammeter/ amphour counter and still disappointed in its ability to recharge my 345Ah battery bank, I learned to load the bank, drag its voltage down below 12.6v with headlamps and other loads, then restart the charger. Sometimes this works, sometimes it just shuts off/reverts to float in a minute or 3. I had an amp hour counting battery monitor at this point and I could see I was still 25 or more AH from full, but the charger refused to hold any voltage over 13.6v( AGM setting float voltage) and the batteries might be accepting 1.3 amps when at 14.7v they would be taking 8 amps or more.
Often I would go check on it just to find it shut off completely, and the batteries were nowhere near fully charged. Unplug it from AC and DC, replug in both, restart it, and 5 minutes later, same thing. either it was in float shining its green light, or it would shut itself off as the fridge compressor shutting off or starting up would make it thing there is an issue with the battery. I'd even shut the fridge off to get it to try and continue charging, with little success.
Just last night I had my Meanwell power supply on the workbench installing a new ammeter and ideal Diode and voltmeter into it and was using the schumacher to charge my 55% battery as it was cloudy/rainy all day. I had to go run some errands and when I came back, with the battery still accepting 20+ alternator amps at 14,6v when I parked for the night, I tried restarting the schumacher and within 2 minutes it reverted to float. A battery which can still accept 20+ amps is nowhere near full, but the schumacher refused to even try. it just kept reverting to float voltage. I turned on my lights and fans and dragged battery voltage below 12.6v, restarted the charger on the 12 amp setting. it went for about 5 minutes, and reverted to float. I tried 3 times to get it to seek and hold 14.4+ volts and it refused.
I said F this and went back in the workshop to Finish the meanwell, just leaving the schumacher charging the battery accepting 2 amps at 13.5v. When I finished the meanwell a while later I came in and looked at my battery monitor which was still saying 16Ah from full, the schumacher stuck in float feeding 1.9 amps. When I plugged in the meanwell and set it to 14.7v and plugged it into the battery 13 amps were required to bring it to 14.7v, and it took 3 more hours before amps tapered to the 0.5 range where it could be considered fully charged. So that whole time I was in the workshop with schumacher in float, almost no actual charging occurred and I was only able to reach full when I returned with the meanwell power supply and let it rip at 14.7v for several more hours.
So basically if I had left the schumacher on overnight at 13.6v, full charge would not occur until mid/late morning the solar was able to bring the voltage higher and amps tapered at Absv to the prerequisite 0.5 amps.
Most automatic garage chargers are going to do this same exact thing. Not only will they refuse to fully charge the battery, they will refuse to even get it close when there are loads on the battery, or there is a surface charge voltage from having just driven the vehicle.
So for your intended use, the garage charger will likely not be able to do what you want it to do, or do only a fraction of what you hoped for. It could just be a lesson in frustration if you have to go back in and keep restarting the charger, and they will only restart once you load it to drop the voltage below 12.8 or 12.6v or somewhere in that range. So you have to load the battery, unplug the charger from AC and DC, the plug it back in hook it to the battery start it, then remove the load. Then you walk away, come back in two hours and see it is in float, providing little to no charging current or perhaps shut off completely flashing an error sign, and know the batteries are nowhere near full. You have AC grid power available to charge your depleted softly sulfated batteries, you have a charger, and yet you cannot get the charger to do the job you bought it for.
I don't know about you, but futility enrages me, and these so called smart chargers are some of the best teachers of futility I have come across in this lifestyle.
The solution for me was removing the 'smart' and Automatic.
Even the PD9245, while an excellent charger/ converter,will only hold absorption for so long before reverting to lower voltages. Pressing the button once will have it seek 14.4v for 4 more hours, but I would much rather set my power supply to 14.4v and just check the ammeter every few hours. I am also happy to not be limited to 3 voltages, not able to influence them if the battery is way outside the 77f range where all manufacturers make their recommendations. Say a 77f battery spec's a absorption voltage at 14.7, well if the battery is 27f that voltage should be raised upto 15.3v or so. If it is 99f outside that should be lowered to 14.25 or so.
So in a few years, when your batteries seem to have lost capacity/no longer hold a charge, whats the plan, just replace them? Try and get your smart charging source to do what it never could from Day one? which is fully charge them? That would be even more futile.
Only then buy a charging source capable of holding a constant voltage for as long as required? What if you'd bought this charging source instead, initially?........Well its likely the batteries would still be performing well.
So many people freak out at the thought of a manual charger, Yet compared to using my schumacher it is 1/20th the effort and can actually fully charge the battery back to its full remaining capacity and thus allow it to retain its capacity for much longer.
So often 'plug and play/automatic' is aim gun at foot, then shoot, then call the gun a piece of shit or yell at your foot for being in the way.
Most Anybody who has bought the gun, not yet shot themselves in the foot, will say the gun is great, i have one therefore you should too, but they will not tell you 6 months after you bought the samr gun they then shot themself in the foot. Few are honest with themselves, much less strangers.
Amazon ratings given by the ignorant, should be ignored. There might be a few actual reviews by someone who knows the product, but they tend to be longer with some tech talk and are often ignored by those who only read reviews favorable to their desires for inexpensive as possible but expect 'works just as good' as the more expensive options.
This guy says this is the cheapest and works 'just fine', whooohoo! place order.
Regarding the trolling motor battery users, used actually trolling. They are charging a battery not with the trolling motor still running on and off. They have ZERO idea the actual state of charge of the battery, they do not know about surface charge voltage retention, not what a hydrometer is, all they know is the battery either lasts or it does not. when new they last all day, a few weeks later they do not.
My sister's ex was one of these, and boy was he proud of his Schumacher similar to the one I own and know to be a lying incapable piece of shit, but kept complaining about the batteries, and the warranty not being honored more than once. He is one of those who is simply smarter than anybody in the room in his own mind, and would not listen to me that the Schumacher he was so proud of, was failing to fully recharge the battery that it was not even getting it close and this was prematurely reducing the capacity of the batteries. His logic was that when the battery was new it could power the boa all day and now not even half the day, It was the battery not the charger, in his mind.
What to do in this situation?. Prove him wrong while teaching, with absolute irrefutable proof.
After the next fishing session, rowing back to the dock, we put his dead as a doornail battery onhis charger. Dip the hydrometer when it flashed the green light and all cells were 1.220 or less, deep in the red on the hydrometer.
I'm like:
'see this green area, 1.265 or higher, this is where it should be, if the relatively newish battery( which it was) was fully charged.'
I wound up restarting that charger time and again, a dozen times and forcing him to watch the hydrometer float, testing the specific gravity each time it quit, and basically never got any cell to rise over 1.250. I'd even rigged up an old sealed beam headlight as a 7 amp load in order to be able to restart the charger more quickly. Once he acknowledged that his charger even after restarting a dozen times was unable to get the specific gravity above 1.250, I then got my Meanwell power supply, set it to 14.7v and the battery was taking 5 amps. 12 hours later it was taking 1.2 amps, and 5 of cells were 1.270, one was lagging 0.005 behind. Well into the green.
This was irrefutable proof. it was so incredibly obvious, that there was no ability to argue and boy was he pissed off at being proven wrong. I then raised voltage to 15.5v and once amps tapered to less than 4 , raised voltage upto 16.2v, and all cells in about 15 more minutes read 1.280 or higher and I stopped charging completely. 12 hours later resting voltage was 12.97v and SG read 1.285 on all but one cell which was still 1.280.
We used the battery that day, and it outperformed the Newer larger marine battery he had bought 3 weeks earlier. When we were done we checked the specific gravity and it was 1.190, and put the schumacher back on it, and when it flashed the green light, 1.225. We had just established that when fully charged specific gravity was 1.280, and the schumacher refused to bring it over 1.225.
He was then online, furiously reading reviews on Automatic chargers, what about this one, what about that one as my temper got shorter and shorter. I was like buy it then!!! I'll leave you my hydrometer and you can see how good or how bad it is. Because its impossible to guess as to how it will perform based on the stickers or reviews! He cursed at me, i returned the curses and a few more and he walked away.
I pulled up the 55$( at that time) 33 amp Megawatt power supply online, bookmarked it, and closed the lid on the laptop and said nothing more on the subject.
When it arrived I cut off the cord on an old power strip, and told him to buy the cheapest drug store jumper cables he could find, but he already had some in his truck. They were perhaps 10 gauge. I cut them in half, wired up the power supply set it to 14.8v and said to run it for 8 hours after each day fishing. That was 2015 or so and every time I go back there, I hear about that megawatt power supply/charger and how awesome it is and how everybody wants to borrow it. If Florida had any hills there would be minstrels up in them writing and singing songs about the Megawatt power supply that 'magically' restores trolling motor batteries. My sister has a new boyfriend now, yet when i meet some of her friend's boyfriends they are like , hey you are the guy you set up that small ugly silver rectangular battery charger.... Dude!!!, I borrowed that thing and it saved my battery...
All it is doing is actually fully charging them, something no automatic battery charger can do.
So when i see these threads about which automatic battery charger is best, I am like the best one is one that is not automatic as automatic chargers are designed to never overcharge a battery, not to actually fully charge one( depsite teh marketing claiming exactly that), and only get it enough charged that it can start a car. For 99% this is more than good enough.
But those 99% are totally ignorant when it comes to electricity, much less charging lead acid batteries.
Makes me want to make a sexy plastic box with a green light and market as the answer to every human ill/angst on the planet.
Whatever charger you get, you should get a ammeter, and a hydrometer, but there is NO arguing Ignorance is indeed Bliss, at least until it gets too expensive.
Be wary of reviews, reviewers, and remember product marketing in this day and age is nothing but lies mistruths, deception, manipulation, and amoral douchebaggery, but that seems to be par for the course.
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