seekertom
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i installed an electric gate opener at the s&b awhile back, the kind that runs on a car battery but has built-in charging controller. i bought a new deep cycle marine battery for it but cycled my old one out of the camper to the gate and kept the new one for the camper. made sense to me at the time.
now it's a year or so down the road after the install and my kid comes in from work about 1am last lite. i'm just drifting off to that warm, fuzzy place, and WHAM! BOOM! sounded just like when the power transformer out front got hit with lightning last year. kid calls, 'dad! come quick! the gate just blew up!'.
got there to find pieces of the battery and the weather plastic case it lived in strewn across 25 feet of driveway and the road beyond. battery was ripped open on both sides showing plates like a monster movie shows teeth, top caps blown off, case badly buckled, most of the weather case totally gone. the kid was petrified, thought his car had blown up.
kid said it went off just as he pressed the clicker to open the gate. today, after i cleaned up the mess, i put in a new battery, checking the charge volts and amps. 16v open ckt, 14 v loaded with the battery. amps <1a. gate worked ok afterwards.
point is, maybe this could have happened while that battery was in the camper! hate to think of it like that, but let's be real... it might uv.
anyone here have any such experiences? any ideas about the science of why good batteries turn bad and go boom in the night?
st
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Chuck&Gail
In the Colorado Mountains
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Boom usually caused by cell shorting out, often due to folks not using distilled water to top off. Other cause is overcharging , but sounds like you're ok on that.
Final cause is for some reason you pissed off Murphy.
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Old-Biscuit
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"now it's a year or so down the road after the install"........uh hum when was the last time you check water levels?
Plates get exposed, hydrogen gas builds up, plate shorts/sparks.......BOOM
Like Chuck says........Ole Murphy at it again
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Roadpilot
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My guess since it happened when the button to open the gate was pressed. is that there was a build up of hydrogen gas in the enclosure that blew due to a spark from a relay or solenoid closing.
* This post was
edited 06/16/12 09:24pm by Roadpilot *
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seekertom
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this is gonna sound dumb, but i never added water to it, and there was nothing on the battery anywhere that said anything about adding water. not even sure if the caps would have come off. it did say it was a maint-free battery. did i miss something????
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MrWizard
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16v sounds like over charging of the battery , little wonder it blew apart
do you mean 16 Amps motor load
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CathyGo
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seekertom wrote:this is gonna sound dumb, but i never added water to it, and there was nothing on the battery anywhere that said anything about adding water. not even sure if the caps would have come off. it did say it was a maint-free battery. did i miss something????
st
I'm not sure what part of country you're in but around here even those sealed "maintenance-free" batteries are known to lose water and fail prematurely. I got just regular deep cycle batteries for my RV since it's so much more convenient to add water than to pursue a warranty claim.
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seekertom
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mrwhiz, "after i cleaned up the mess, i put in a new battery, checking the charge volts and amps. 16v open ckt, 14 v loaded with the battery. amps <1a. gate worked ok afterwards."
not 16v charging, 16v measured open ckt, ie, no load connected to wires from controller to battery, ie not connected to battery yet.
also, not 16a motor load either. probly more like 750ma while moving gate. lotsa gears, small motor.
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rgatijnet1
Florida
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It sounds like the case that enclosed the battery was NOT properly vented and it allowed hydrogen gas to build up to the point that it exploded at the spark caused by your son activating the gate mechanism.
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1fastdad
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When a batt. is charging it gives off hydrogen gas and any spark like a bad connection can light it off also when a batt. gets low on fluid it tends to overheat and give off more gas. Thats when you get a rotten egg smell. You don't have to use distilled water just a good filtered water like bottled water will do the job.
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