Do you know what kind of water is going into the batteries you
maintain? Aside
from making sure there is adequate water in the battery in the
first place, what’s most important is
the purity of that water, because any water is better than no water at all. This is not a question about
the water being
healthy for humans to drink. The water could be considered healthy for
humans,but may be harmful for a battery. Chlorine is commonly used to
kill
bacteria by water municipalities and is present in most tap water, it
keeps the water free of bacteria dangerous to humans. However
the same chlorine is harmful to a battery. Any dissoloved
mineral in the water such as calcium, magnesium, chloirides and other
naturally occurring minerals and salts are said to make the water hard.
Hard
water is water with a high mineral content.
Hard water will shorten the life of any battery, and even more so the
life of a deep cycle battery. The more often the battery is
charged or cycled and gassed, the more evaporation takes place as the
result more water must be added to keep the battery plates covered.
Over time the hard water's dissolved minerals and salts build
up on the plates of the battery. This built up will seriously
shorten the usable life of the battery. Preventing these
impurities from getting into the battery in the first place is what we
are discussing today.
The first question you might ask
is how hard is the water where I am? Do
I even need to worry about this in the first place? Those are
both good questions and an answer can be found
at:
http.//water.usgs.gov/owg/ there is a map there that will give
you
hardness by
region. Let me just
give you a “readers
digest version”. The
softest water is in
parts of New England, South Atlantic-Gulf, Pacific Northwest, Hawaii
regions. Everywhere
else has moderately hard water, hard water or very hard
water.
Even if you are in an area with the softest water there may be
things added to the water that makes it hard, such
as chlorine depending on how the water is treated in your local area.
The best ways to test the
hardness of your water is with an alkalinity test or contact your local
utility. See the website
http://www.epa.gov/safewater/dwinfo/il.htm if
you want to get locally specific water hardness info. Hardness
is caused by compounds of calcium and magnesium, and by a varity of
other metals. General guidelines for
classifications of water are: 0-60 MG/L (milligrams per liter) as
calcium carbonate is classified as soft; 61 to 120 moderately
hard; 121 to 180
MG/L as hard; and more than 180MG/L
as very hard. Most people have hard water and for the sake
of this article let’s assume you have hard water.
Once
you have determined you have hard water and hard water is bad for your
batteries, you have
limited choices:
A.
You
can ignore this article and the major
battery manufactures and just top off your batteries with hard tap
water.
B. Buy
distilled
water, not just bottled water but distilled bottled water and top off
your
batteries with it.
C. Get a filtration system to filter out the harmful minerals and salts and top
off your batteries with that.
To me B & C are the only ones that make any sense.
And unless you are
only
caring for a few golf cars or you want to get some practice as Gung Din
for
you’re your local playhouse’s
annual Rudyard
Kipling poetry reenactment day, I
suggest you
look into getting a filter set up to purify the water
before it
goes into your batteries. Lugging around
gallon jugs of water is hard work and expensive, you usually have to
drive to
the store to get the distilled bottled water and then ther eis a
storage issue,. The water in the tapcan be make pure no mater
how hard it is with a good filter system. This is available
on line
at Jan
Watercraft Products. They carry the Niagara
Water Deionizer and Filtration System. See the web store for more
details under the catagory- Battery
Water Pumps and Carts.
I know putting pure water in your batteries sounds like a lot of extra
work., just keeping water
in the things can be a full time job. But how much work is it
to change out a set of batteries a year earler than you should have?
Credit-
Matt Vallez
www.janwp.com
Print Report- Understanding
Hard Water
|
