Battery Venting

First topic message reminder :

We are newbies to this and so this has probably been asked but i could not find anything. We have a 2011 Wildcat 28rkbs with 2 6v batteries. They are not vented. Is this normal???

Portagie1968 wrote:Hope not. Still lost. I need a special battery charger is what I am getting out of this.

Most likely. Nearly all standard chargers don't have an equalizing feature. The ones that do are really expensive.

I am able to equalize mine through my inverter/charger. The converter hasn't been hooked up for years. Thru the inverter/charger, I can manually control the charger setting as well as the equalization process.

The point is to make sure each cell is equal to the next in voltage, re-stratify the acid, and desulfate the plates. It's a dance though, because equalizing too often can shorten a battery's life, just as not doing it often enough. If I'm camping quite a bit, I usually equalize twice a year. If my camping is limited, once a year is usually enough.

TC

Thank you and I will forget about this for me then.

I just switched to 2x 6V lead acid (golf cart) batteries from 2x 12v AGM type batteries. I was away with the Navy for the past 5 months and came home last week to dead batteries even though I have a 160W solar panel (obviously not working well). I plugged in the unit to power and one of my batteries off gassed and was boiling (did not leak thank goodness). AGM are maintenance free and do not off gas but I'll tell right now that they do off gas when they are boiling!! The benefit to AGM is that they do not need to be vented so are good when stored under sleeping areas. The Interstate dealer I just bought my new batteries from said that the 6v's should be vented because they do off gas when being charged. My new bats would not fit in the 12 volt conatiners which were vented as they are too tall. I bought a new container and drilled a hole in the top and connected the original vent pipe to it. I also drilled a whole on the bottom, lining it up with the previous whole that was there from the old 12v container to allow air in from the bottom. Hopefully this will do the trick.

Short answer to this... yes, according to where I bought my batteries (Interstate store), lead acid batteries if located under sleeping/living areas, should be vented. AGM do not.