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Somebody threw this battery in the trash last week. A good deep-cycle battery, better than two hundred dollars new, hauled out to the burn pile because a man said it was dead. And the plain truth is there was likely nothing wrong with it that a cup of water and a little patience couldn't fix.
Most batteries that get thrown away are not dead. They are thirsty, or dirty, or they were left to sit until they went sour. Every one of those is something you can stop doing, and none of it costs more than a dollar. In this video I show you the same three habits I use to keep our own batteries alive out here for years past when other folks are replacing theirs.
In this video:
✓ Why a battery loses water but keeps its acid, and what that does to the plates
✓ How to safely water a flooded battery with distilled water only, in the right order
✓ Why you cover the plates first, charge, and only then top off
✓ The eye and skin safety that matters every single time you open a cap
✓ Why a battery left sitting dead digs its own grave, and how to store one through winter
✓ The freezing danger nobody warns
https://eliasyoder.com
Somebody threw this battery in the trash last week. A good deep-cycle battery, better than two hundred dollars new, hauled out to the burn pile because a man said it was dead. And the plain truth is there was likely nothing wrong with it that a cup of water and a little patience couldn't fix.
Most batteries that get thrown away are not dead. They are thirsty, or dirty, or they were left to sit until they went sour. Every one of those is something you can stop doing, and none of it costs more than a dollar. In this video I show you the same three habits I use to keep our own batteries alive out here for years past when other folks are replacing theirs.
In this video:
✓ Why a battery loses water but keeps its acid, and what that does to the plates
✓ How to safely water a flooded battery with distilled water only, in the right order
✓ Why you cover the plates first, charge, and only then top off
✓ The eye and skin safety that matters every single time you open a cap
✓ Why a battery left sitting dead digs its own grave, and how to store one through winter
✓ The freezing danger nobody warns
Category
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00Come here a minute. I want to show you something before you make a mistake I see people make
00:04every week. That right there is a battery somebody threw in the trash. A good deep-cycle
00:10battery, the kind that costs real money, and it is sitting in the burn pile like a busted
00:16jar. The fellow who tossed it told me it was dead. Wouldn't hold a charge, he said. So
00:22he drove to town, laid down better than $200 for a new one, and hauled this old one out
00:28to throw away. And the plain truth is, there was likely nothing wrong with it that a cup
00:33of water and a little patience couldn't fix. I am Elias Yoder. I farm a piece of ground
00:40here in Lancaster County that my family has worked since we came over from the Palatinate
00:44back in 1838. And I want to tell you something about batteries that the man at the store has
00:51no reason to ever tell you, because there is no money in it for anybody but you. Most
00:57batteries that get thrown away are not dead. They are thirsty. They are dirty. They have
01:02been left to sit until they went sour. And nearly every one of those three things is
01:08something you did without knowing you did it, which means it is something you can stop
01:13doing. That is the whole of it. You are not going to learn a magic trick today. You are
01:18going to learn how to keep a thing alive the way my grandfather kept a horse alive, by tending
01:23it a little before it needs it, instead of a lot after.
01:27Now, let me be straight with you right at the start, because I would rather lose your
01:31trust in the first minute than the last. I gathered the whole of this into a book over
01:36at EliasYoder.com. The book is the long version, with the charts and the numbers written down
01:42so you are not squinting at a screen out in the shop. If you want it, it is there. I
01:47will
01:48not mention it again. So, let us talk about what a battery actually is, in plain words,
01:54because if you understand that, the rest follows on its own.
01:58Inside that black case there are plates. Lead plates, standing up in rows, sitting in a bath.
02:05That bath is what they call the electrolyte, and it is nothing more than water mixed with
02:10acid. When you draw power out of the battery, and put power back in by charging it, a small
02:16piece of that water goes off into the air as gas. Not the acid. The acid stays. Only
02:22the water leaves. My grandfather would have understood that in a heartbeat, because it
02:27is the same as a kettle on the stove. Boil a pot of salted water long enough, and the
02:32water goes up as steam, and the salt stays behind, thicker and thicker in what is left.
02:38A battery is the same. The water goes up into the air a little at a time, and the acid
02:44stays,
02:44and it gets stronger and meaner than it was ever meant to be.
02:48Now here is where the plates come in. Those plates need to sit under the bath. Covered.
02:54Bathed the whole of them. When the water level drops low enough that the top of the plates
02:59pokes up into the air, that part of the plate is done working. Worse than that, the part sticking
03:05up out of the water starts to dry and harden and ruin, and it does not come back. So a
03:11battery
03:11that runs low on water is not just weak. It is dying from the top down, an inch at a
03:17time,
03:17and every day you leave it that way is a day you cannot get back. That is the first thing
03:23that kills a good battery, and it is the easiest thing in the world to prevent. You give it water.
03:28Not just any water. And here is where I have to stop you before you go grab the hose because
03:34this
03:34matters. You do not use the water from your tap. You do not use rain water from your barrel, and
03:40I
03:41say that as a man who catches every drop of rain he can and loves doing it. Tap water and
03:46well water
03:47and rain water all carry minerals in them. Iron, lime, whatever your ground gives you. Those minerals are
03:54fine for you and me and the tomatoes, but inside a battery, they settle onto the plates and choke them,
04:01like lime building up inside an old pipe until the water can barely get through. Once that scale is on
04:07the plates, it does not come off. So you use distilled water. Only distilled water, the kind you buy in
04:15a
04:15jug at the store for about a dollar, or the kind you catch off a still if you have one.
04:21Distilled water
04:22has had all the minerals cooked out of it, so there is nothing in it to leave behind, nothing to
04:28choke
04:29the plates. Just clean water to bring the bath back up to where it belongs. Let me walk you through
04:36it
04:37the way I would show my own boy in the shop, because there is a right order to it, and
04:42the order keeps you
04:43safe. First, and I mean this, you put something over your eyes, safety glasses, the goggles, whatever you
04:52have, and an old long sleeve shirt and a pair of gloves. That bath inside the battery is acid, and
05:01when
05:01it has been sitting and drying, it is stronger acid than it started as. It does not care that you
05:08are
05:09careful. It will find your eye if you give it the chance. So you cover up first before you ever
05:16pop a
05:16cap. This is not me being an old woman about it. This is me having seen a burn that did
05:23not heal right.
05:24Cover your eyes. Second, you look at your battery and you find the caps on top. Most flooded batteries,
05:33the kind we are talking about, have caps you can twist or pry up, one over each cell. A 12
05:41volt battery
05:42has six of them in a row. Some batteries are sealed and say right on them, do not open. If
05:50yours says
05:51that, you listen to it, and this method is not for that battery. But the good deep cycle batteries, the
05:59ones worth saving, the ones a man keeps for his solar and his fences and his shop, most of those
06:06you can
06:07open and tend. Third, before you add a thing, you look inside. Take a flashlight and look down into each
06:17cell. You are looking for the tops of the plates. If they are covered in liquid, good, that cell is
06:25not
06:25starved. If they are poking up dry into the air, that is a thirsty cell, and now you know.
06:33But here is the piece most folks get backward, so listen close. You only add enough water right now
06:42to just barely cover those plates if they are sticking out. Just barely. You do not fill it up to
06:50the brim,
06:51yet. Not yet. I will tell you why in a moment. Fourth, you charge the battery. Full charge,
07:01all the way. And you do this in a space with air moving through it. A shop with the door
07:07cracked. A
07:08barn with the wind coming through. Not a closed little closet. Because when a battery charges,
07:15it gives off a gas, and that gas will burn if enough of it gathers with a spark nearby. Out
07:23in open air,
07:25it is nothing. Trapped in a small room, it is a danger. So you charge it where the air moves.
07:33My grandfather did not have a battery charger, but he had the same sense about a lantern in a hayloft,
07:39and it is the same sense. You give the fumes somewhere to go. Now, why did I tell you not
07:48to
07:48fill it up before charging? Because when a battery charges, the bath heats and swells and rises.
07:57If you filled it to the top when it was cold and low, the charging would push it right over
08:03the edge,
08:03and acid would come bubbling up out of the caps and run down over everything. And that is both a
08:10mess
08:11and a hazard and a waste of the very acid the battery needs to keep. So you only cover the
08:18plates
08:19first, charge it full, and then, and only then, you top it off the rest of the way.
08:27After the charge, with the battery full and settled, you bring the water level up to just below the bottom
08:35of the fill hole, not to the brim. Just below where the hole starts, so there is a little air
08:42left.
08:43Then you put the caps back on, snug. That is watering a battery. That is the whole thing. A dollar
08:53of
08:53distilled water, ten minutes, and a battery that a man was ready to throw in the trash, comes back to
09:01work for years more. Not made new. I will not tell you it is made new, because that is a
09:10lie people sell,
09:11and I do not sell it. But brought back, given its water, kept alive.
09:21I remember the first time my grandfather showed me this, though we were not tending a battery that
09:26day. We were down at the spring house, and he was showing me how the crock of butter kept cool,
09:31sitting in the running water. And I asked him how he knew to do a hundred small things like that,
09:37when to do them, how much. And he sat down what he was holding, and he said something I have
09:44carried my
09:44whole life. He said, A thing does not fail all at once, boy. It tells you it is failing, a
09:52little at
09:53a time, long before it quits. The plow tells you with a spot of rust. The fence tells you with
10:00a loose
10:01staple. The trouble is not that these things break. The trouble is that a man stops looking,
10:07and then he calls it broken, when really he just stopped tending it. That is the whole of what I
10:15am
10:15telling you about a battery. It has been telling you it was thirsty for months. The low water, the slow
10:23charge, the weak start on a cold morning. Those were not the battery failing. Those were the battery
10:30asking. Most folks just did not know the language. Now you do. Now let me tell you about the second
10:38thing that kills batteries, and this one is quieter because it does its work while you are not even
10:44looking. It kills them while they sit. A battery left to sit dead is a battery digging its own grave.
10:55When a battery runs all the way down and then just sits there, empty, for weeks and months,
11:02something happens on those plates. A kind of hard crust forms on them. The old timers I learned from
11:10did not have the fancy word for it, but they knew the thing itself. They called it a battery going
11:16to
11:16sleep, too deep to wake. That crust builds on the plates and hardens like scale on the inside.
11:24of a kettle. And the more it builds, the less of the plate can do its work, and the battery
11:30gets
11:30weaker and weaker until one day it truly will not come back. And the thing that causes it is simple.
11:39Leaving it dead. Leaving it sit empty. So the rule my grandfather would give you if he tended batteries
11:48is the same rule he gave for everything on the farm. You do not let a good thing sit idle
11:55and neglected. A plow left in the wet rusts. A horse left in the stall too long goes stiff and
12:04sour. And a
12:06battery left dead goes to sleep and does not wake. You keep it charged. If you have a battery you
12:15are not
12:15using through the winter, you do not leave it in the corner drained. You bring it up to a full
12:21charge
12:22and you check on it, and every so often through the cold months you give it a charge again to
12:28keep it up.
12:30A battery that is kept full and warmish and tended will wait for you patiently for a year. A battery
12:38left
12:39dead in the cold will be ruined by spring. And that word warmish matters, so let me say it plain.
12:48Cold is hard on a battery, but freezing is worse, and a battery that has run low is in real
12:57danger of
12:57freezing. A full, healthy battery, with its bath strong and proper, can take a hard, cold night and be
13:06fine. But a battery that has run down, where the bath has gone weak and watery, that battery can freeze
13:14solid like a jar of water left on the porch. And when it freezes, it can crack the case or
13:22buckle the
13:22plates, and then it is finished for good. So through the winter you keep your batteries charged, which
13:30keeps the bath strong, which keeps them from freezing. You store them somewhere with the edge taken off the
13:38cold if you can. A cellar, a spot in the shop that does not drop below freezing. Not baking hot
13:46either,
13:46mind you, because heat is its own slow poison to a battery. Cool, but not freezing. The same spot you
13:55would keep your root vegetables, more or less, is a fair spot for a battery too. Now the third thing,
14:03and this one you can see with your own eyes, which makes it the easiest of all to catch. The
14:09terminals.
14:11The posts on top where the wires clamp on. You have seen it. That crusty, blue-green fuzz that builds
14:20up
14:20on the posts of a neglected battery, or a white powdery crust. That crust is corrosion, and it is not
14:29just ugly, it is a thief. It gets in between the post and the clamp, and it fights the current.
14:37It is like
14:37trying to shake a man's hand through a thick wool mitten. The connection is there, but weak, muffled,
14:44half of it lost. A battery can be full and healthy and well watered inside, and still act half dead,
14:52simply because the current cannot get past that crust on the posts. Folks have thrown away good
14:59batteries over a problem that lived entirely on the outside, that a rag and five minutes would have
15:05cured. Here is how you tend it. First, same as always, cover your eyes and put on your gloves,
15:12because that crust is acid too, and you do not want it on your skin. Then you take the clamps
15:19off
15:19the posts. And here is a nice old trick, and it uses a thing you likely have in the kitchen.
15:26Baking soda. Plain baking soda, the same box my wife keeps by the stove. You mix a spoonful of baking
15:34soda
15:34into a little cup of water until it is milky, and you brush that over the crusty posts. You will
15:41see it
15:41foam and fizz and work. That is the baking soda neutralizing the acid in the corrosion,
15:48taking the bite out of it, turning that mean crust into something soft you can wipe away.
15:54Let it work a moment, then scrub the posts and the clamps with an old brush. A toothbrush is perfect,
16:01until they come clean and shiny. Then, and this matters, you rinse the baking soda off with a little
16:08clean water and you dry it all well with a rag, because you do not want that baking soda water
16:14running down inside the cells. Once your posts are clean and dry and shining like a new penny,
16:22you do one last thing. You put a thin smear of grease on them. Any decent grease, the kind you
16:29would put on
16:30a bearing or a hinge. Just a thin coat over the clean posts before you clamp the wires back on.
16:37That grease seals the metal from the damp air, and damp air is what starts the corrosion in the first
16:44place.
16:44A greased post stays clean for a long, long time. My grandfather greased everything that could rust,
16:52every hinge, and every hasp, and every blade going into winter storage. And it is the same wisdom,
17:00exactly. A little grease keeps the weather out. So there you have the three things. Water when it runs
17:08thirsty. Charge so it never sits dead and never freezes. And clean greased posts so the power can get
17:16out. Do those three things and a battery serves you for years past when other folks are throwing theirs
17:22away. Now I want to be honest with you about something, because I would not be doing right
17:28by you if I let you walk away thinking every battery can be saved. They cannot. A battery whose plates
17:36have truly worn out, where the lead has shed off and settled into sludge in the bottom of the case,
17:42that battery is done, and no amount of water or charging brings it back. There is an end to every
17:50tool. What I am telling you is not how to raise the dead. It is how to keep a good
17:55battery from
17:56dying years before its time, which is what happens to most of them. The man who waters his battery and
18:03keeps it charged and tends its posts will get many good years out of it. The man who does none
18:09of those
18:10things will be back at the store in two years wondering why batteries do not last like they used to.
18:16They last fine. He just did not tend his. And let me say a word here about my own place
18:23so you
18:23understand where I am coming from and I am not talking down to anyone. We do not take a wire
18:29from
18:29the public power company. We never have. But I am not against a battery, and I am not against catching
18:36power the honest way, off my own roof, from the sun that God sends down free every morning. In my
18:43community,
18:44we allow a modest bit of solar, panels on the buildings charging a bank of batteries for the
18:49water pump, the fence, a light in the barn. The stricter orders among us do not, and I respect
18:56them for it, and I am not here to argue whose way is right. But I will tell you this.
19:02When your power
19:02comes from a bank of batteries you tend with your own two hands, you learn very fast to take care
19:08of
19:09them, because there is no company to call when they fail. There is only you and your neglect,
19:14or you and your good habits, and that teaches a man to water his batteries.
19:20Now, who profits from you not knowing all this? And I want to be careful how I say it, because
19:26I am
19:27not telling you there is a scheme, a room full of men plotting to sell you batteries. It is nothing
19:33so
19:33dramatic as that. It is quieter, and it is worse, because it needs no plotting at all. The money
19:41simply runs one direction. Nobody makes a dime teaching you to water a battery for a dollar.
19:48Everybody makes a dollar selling you a new battery for 200. So the knowledge of the cheap fix just
19:56quietly falls away, not because anyone buried it, but because nobody had a reason to carry it forward.
20:03The man at the store is not lying to you when he sells you a new battery. He probably does
20:09not know
20:10the old one could have been saved either. The knowing just got lost, the way a path grows over
20:16when nobody walks it. Well, we are going to walk it again. Here is what I would ask of you.
20:23If you have a
20:24battery you were about to give up on, a garden tractor battery, a deep cycle from a camper or a
20:31boat,
20:31one of the batteries off a solar bank, before you throw it out, try this on it. Cover your eyes,
20:39check the water, give it distilled water to cover the plates, charge it up full in the open air,
20:46clean and grease the posts, and see if it does not come back to life for you. And then come
20:53down to the
20:53comments and tell me. Tell me what kind of battery it was, and how old, and whether it took the
21:00charge
21:00again. I read them, and other folks read them too, and every man who reports back teaches the next one.
21:08That is how this knowledge gets carried forward again, one comment at a time. Now, I will not
21:15always be talking about batteries, so let me tell you what comes next, because it follows right on from
21:21this. So many of you have asked me how our solar setup actually works out here. How a plain man,
21:29with no wire from the power company, keeps the lights on and the pump running. And that is a fair
21:35question, and it deserves a whole sitting of its own. So the next time we talk, I am going to
21:42walk
21:42you through the whole of our modest little system, the panels, the bank of batteries you now know how
21:48to keep alive, the whole plain arrangement of it, from the sun coming down, to the water coming up.
21:56It is simpler than you think, and it is more free than you would believe. So keep your eyes covered,
22:03keep your water distilled, keep your batteries charged and your posts clean, and do not throw
22:10away a good thing that only needed a little tending. The people who built this country with their hands
22:17knew that, and we are only just starting to remember it.
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