Floyd L. Davidson wrote:
dpb wrote:
ransley wrote:
On Jan 20, 9:54 am, dpb wrote:
B'razeer Boobar wrote:
Past couple of years I didn't remove the sealed battery from the
lawn tractor which is kept in a detached garage. Winter temp in
the garage never dropped to 32F due to mild winters. There were
no problems the following springs. If the temp does go below 32
for a sustained period, does this necessarily cause irreparable
damage to the battery?
That's an acid solution in there, not water alone...freezing temp
is _well_ below 0F.

--
If the battery is kept full charged is wont freeze if
it goes dead it
can freeze, ...

Charged or uncharged doesn't make much difference on the freeze
point--certainly not anyways near 32F, anyway...

The state of charge makes all the difference. A fully
charged lead acid battery is not going to freeze at
-60F, but a totally discharged battery has *water* in
it, and will freeze and crack the case at 32F.

Well, not at 32f because of the mix and impurities, but the temp starts
getting dangerous to batteries at some point not too far below 30F.
If you've ever noticed, the liquid in a cold, discharged battery will
turn to slush first when it freezes, and continually become more solid
as the temp drops.

Typically, it's best to charge batteries monthly, especially if they're
exposed to the elements. Besides their internal rate of discharge, a
nice cold battery with dew/moisture on it can also find external paths
to discharge through.
As a battery discharges it becomes more and more susceptible to
freezing. Even with slush, if pressure builds up between the plates and
moves them at all, added to the normal sulfation of not being kept
charged, they can then take a quick nosedive to dead, becoming nothing
but a resistor and capacitor.
I keep my batteries in the garage and periodically charge them
whenever the mood hits me; seems to work well. Usually I'll hold a
headlight on the posts for a minute or so, just to bring it down a bit,
so it'll charge at a higher rate. Theory is, it helps the sulfate
situation, but who knows?
You used to be able to "shock" such lead acid batteries back to
another season's use sometimes, but the last couple times I tried it, it
didn't work. The ability must have gone away with all the design
"improvements" in batteries.

My 2 ¢ anyway.

Twayne