On Tue, 6 Feb 2018 08:53:06 -0500, "Jim Wilkins"
wrote:
"Larry Jaques" wrote in message
.. .
On Sun, 4 Feb 2018 11:24:18 -0500, "Jim Wilkins"
wrote:
Yeah, precisely tailored chargers for known battery and cell types.
...
Yeah. It appears that almost none of the battery chargers are very
smart, despite having microcomputers inside.
When the smart charger is built into the battery it knows the
battery's capacity and can measure its temperature. Consumers often
don't know either.
Meaning BMS? And you're right.
If you want set-and-forget I don't see why pulse desulfators
wouldn't
work. However you won't know the result until your vehicle fails to
start.
Luckily (?) the vast majority of my car batteries had cells go out,
so
batteries usually didn't give me much trouble until the day they
died.
While that's a bummer for that day, it wasn't causing me to call tow
trucks all over town for weeks, as some people I knew were wont to
do.
g
The HF Carbon Pile seems to indicate a battery's remaining starting
current pretty well. Autozone measured the warm-engine starting
current for me, confirming what I had measured at home. When the truck
finally became hard to start in cold weather the carbon pile showed
the large voltage drop at the starting current value. I used my
chargers and the carbon pile to extend the life of the battery by
several years and knew when to replace it before getting stuck.
I guess that if I took the time to periodically check my battery, I
might see a trend. With the Tundra battery last year, it was hard
starting once in real cold weather (4 seconds to start instead of 1/2)
so I bought a new battery. When it did fail 2 weeks later, I had it
swapped in half an hour. Only then did I realize that it was nearly
10 years old. It has long been my experience that most automotive
batteries, regardless of brand or cost, start failing at 4 years. At
that age, when I get the slightest inkling of doubt about it, I just
replace it. It beats getting caught out in the sticks in a rainstorm
even once. The new truck batteries were the exceptions: 6 years on the
'90 Ford and 9+ on the Toyota.
I realize that most people don't want to add batteries to the list of
techie stuff they have to fuss with (plumbing etc) but if you do, it
does the trick.
I've always felt that batteries were like fuses. Once you have a
problem with them (unless it was a charging or corrosion problem) they
are no longer absolutely reliable, and that's something I demand from
both.
I bought the drain rooter last year, but still haven't invested in a
carbon pile. Now I can keep the sequoia sempervirens roots trimmed
inside my septic line, unless I want to rip up both my rising patio
and the tree which was planted 14' away from the house. sigh ($3k
to take down) I'll leave you to deal with old batts.
I've never had the patience to put up with cranky batteries. 
I neglected batteries until they became my job.
Yeah, that would change your outlook, wouldn't it?
My 2002 18-cube fridge takes 135w max according to the Kill-a-watt.
What do your fridge, TV, and laptops pull?
The fridge starts at 100W and slowly decreases to 80W. The 22"
HDTV/monitor takes ~30W with the backlight at zero, 65W with it at the
default setting. The laptops draw 30W at idle, up to 45W when busy
such as recording a show. They are older, thicker ones with SSD boot
drives plus Terabyte spinning storage for recordings. The power
consumption is low enough to ignore on grid AC even at our $0.19/KWH
rate, but it costs a lot to get from batteries. Although I'm not in
the TEOTWAWKI group I do expect future shortages and brownouts
I'm in both. I've run UPSes since the early '90s, when the grid
started getting really noisy and started experiencing half-second
dropouts which would reboot the computer upon which I had been in the
middle of doing half a page of typesetting and graphics. And it has
only gotten worse since then. I had one for the TV and DVR way back
when, too.
I've been tossing around the idea of replacing my 1970's fridge with
this. Are chest-type refrigerators practical? I think it's easier to
find and remove something from a crowded cooler than a crowded
refrigerator shelf.
I so seldom use coolers any more, I can't remember. How often do you
use your fridge? Being a bachelor, I cook up full family sized meals,
separate it into storables, and put some in the fridge and some into
the freezer for later. That way, I only cook once/nuke thrice. Fresh
veggies take up a lot of space, 8 different beverages, condiments,
huge jars of pickles, etc take up every bit of the space most often. I
use the hell out of my fridge, so a cooler style wouldn't suit me, at
least while the power is on.
Other folks don't use their fridges much, so it depends on how much
space you take up on a regular basis. I've heard bad things about the
college fridges (novelty, as Whynter calls them) for decades, and the
reviews reflect that, but the price difference here is just gagging.
A brand new 18c/f Kenmore is $499. Niche market price?
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B008VX01P2...d_rd_w=pU 4Jp
It doesn't need a separate pure sine inverter because it automatically
switches to DC if grid power fails.
They don't give that away, do they? thud At 8F, the high side is
55F? My wallet just started sweating. Dual voltage is good, but $700
for three 5-gal buckets worth of cool space? Ouch. I've never heard
of Whynter, not that it means much. Oh, they're ten years old and are
sold at Overstock.com and Fry's Electronics. ??? Perhaps their fame
is in the cigar humidor sector.
http://ncph.org/history-at-work/reth...-refrigerator/
"But when I hooked my refrigerator up to an electricity meter, I
discovered something surprising. It was drawing only about as much
electricity as a modern-day refrigerator."
Well, the National Council on Public History has been quite
effectively taken over by Leftist Millennials, it appears. (if the
word "effectively" could ever be used in conjunction with them) He
sounded quite savvy saying "an electricity meter", didn't he? In
looking at other pages, a header caught my eye "The Changing Past" on
their Historian page. OMFG. This guy teaches a "studies" class.
(Y'know, like Lesbian Feminist Dance Theory Studies?) Just wow.
For more fun, watch this quick vid. It's just 3:24, and it's a doozy.
Can millennials change a light bulb? - YouTube
https://is.gd/qlujC9
--
Stoop and you'll be stepped on;
stand tall and you'll be shot at.
-- Carlos A. Urbizo