Water for Batteries ?

[s/v Jedi]

Originally Posted by Sailmonkey

$150-$200 buys an awful lot of distilled water....plus I don't need to make electricty for the bought water....plus I don't need to clean and store a distiller.
Just a thought.

What you say must be valid for a specific area of the world. I can assure you that there are areas where no distilled water can be found for hundreds of miles. Right now, we are in an area where distilled water is hard to find and costs $13.- per gallon. $3.5 per quart. At these prices or in areas where you can't get distilled water at all, you will have to find alternative solutions.

ciao!
Nick.

[thinwater]

For standard lead/acid batteries, not over-charging, how much water is a full-time cruiser likely to use? Just a examples, as I know this is too open ended. A few gallons? With my limited cruising and therefore limited cycling, 1-gallon would last about 5 years.

[s/v Jedi]

Originally Posted by thinwater

For standard lead/acid batteries, not over-charging, how much water is a full-time cruiser likely to use? Just a examples, as I know this is too open ended. A few gallons? With my limited cruising and therefore limited cycling, 1-gallon would last about 5 years.

Yes, there are big differences between full time cruisers and the rest. The size of the battery bank for example. Also, the really big deep cycle batteries (like 2V cells as used on diesel-electric submarines) use much more water than a 12V starter battery. Also the age of the battery bank matters. My 6x Trojan L16 bank is just new and hardly uses any water, but the 6x Trojan L16 they replaced (exact same batteries) needed more than a gallon per year.

The thing is just that you can find yourself without distilled water and far from a source. I have been there and I think many other full time cruisers have been there too

ciao!
Nick.

[sailorboy1]

get a small DI resin bottle filter from a lab supply place, you can put regular tap water in it and make pure water

I'm in chemical treatment and testing and this is what I have on my boat for the batteries

[barnakiel]

Engine cooling no problem you still mix with the anti freeze agent in any case.

Get batteries that do not have to be topped up. Can't be spilled either.

b.

[capnorv]

[QUOTE=gonesail;649621]you have a basement in your boat? also running a dehumidifier while underway would take a lot of power. [/QU

Don't all boats have basements? Just spent a day in mine hooking up H/W heater, heating radiator and ductwork. I agree using AGM, gel batteries are a great boon to the marine industry! They're more than worth it! Been using them almost 20 years, unfortunately, new boat has new batteries and I haven't justified changing them out yet. I also agree with Tellie, carry extra water.

[s/v Jedi]

From Ion-exchange resin - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia :

In this application, ion-exchange resins are used to remove poisonous (e.g. copper) and heavy metal (e.g. lead or cadmium) ions from solution, replacing them with more innocuous ions, such as sodium and potassium. Few ion-exchange resins remove chlorine or organic contaminants from water - this is usually done by using an activated charcoal filter mixed in with the resin. There are some ion-exchange resins that do remove organic ions, such as MIEX (magnetic ion-exchange) resins.

This means that you first catch rain water or make some RO water, and then treat it with the resin and then put it through your RO membrane again. Even better when you put it through a charcoal filter too. Very interesting, I had never heard about using resin for this.

ciao!
Nick.

[CharlieJ]

Re: Distilled Water Consumption

I set up my trawler for unsupported cruising several years ago which included an inverter (before inverters were cool :-) ) and a house bank of 12 x Trojan T105's in series parallel to provide 1320 amp-hrs @ 12VDC. We lived on the hook for a very large portion of a three year cruise "Down Island". My trawler has a household reefer that made up the largest portion of my DC load which was about 500 amp-hrs per day.

As we started to use this system on a shakedown cruise to the Bahamas, I realized that checking the battery water every x days, y weeks or z months was not the best way to manage my battery bank. If I waited too long, it would take me a significant amount of time to properly water my 36 cells.

I decided that I wanted to be in and out of the battery watering and maintenance business in about 1/2 hour and use no more than two battery watering bottles full of water. I also decided to base my battery maintenance schedule on amp-hr consumption (and replenishment). Thru trial and error, I found that maintaining (watering, neutralizing the battery tops, checking connections and drying) these batteries every 10,000 amp-hrs met my criteria. This worked out to about every 18 days.

With this experience, I would say that maintaining your FLA batteries based on a calender is not optimum and that, with a little logging and arithmetic, a much more efficient water consumption determination can be made.

For what it's worth.
Charlie

[sea_goin_dude]

Just remember that "maintenance free batteries are also MAINTENANCE PROOF" I like to be able to check the level in mine just to be sure.
Also get one of these battery fillers and you will always have the correct level of electrolyte in your batteries.