What have done towards your prep?

[Pete Grey]

I believe driving on the left in the UK just follows on from horse drawn carriages riding on the left, the main thing is we obey the rules of the country we are in.

In the meantime I’ve just had to replace the battery on one of our vehicles, after a couple of mornings of slow starting. The old battery I have completely discharged and now I will recharge it, I will repeat this several times over the next couple of weeks, this should show the little b**ger who’s the boss, I will let you know the results. I will also put some injector cleaner in the fuel in the vehicle.

[Mortblanc]

What is your goal in messing with the old, dead battery?

[Pete Grey]

(29 January 2018, 15:06)Mortblanc Wrote: What is your goal in messing with the old, dead battery?

Hi MB. The battery is off a classic car which is not used very often but is started every two or three weeks, the battery is only two years old.

A vehicle battery has to give a heavy starting current then it is recharged by the dynamo, this is a continuous process.

If a battery is just left on a charger/maintainer the natural cycle is broken, so I am trying to get the battery into it’s correct behaviour pattern.

The battery reads ok with a hydrometer, it doesn’t give a high starting current to spin the engine , no cell bubbles when a professional discharge tester is used, so I believe a complete discharge to dead flat and recharge cycle repeated several times will give me a useful battery, not 100% but maybe 80%.

I will let you know how I get on.

[Pete Grey]

Have bought a roll of radiator reflective insulation to make thermal screens for the back of the camper van, have already got bought thermal screens for the windscreen and cab door windows, dirt cheap no weight but will be good for a winter bug out.

[Mortblanc]

I have never heard of taking a battery to dead and recharging it for efficiency.

Most of my experiences have been that if you let an old battery go dead-flat, it will kill a cell and render the battery useless.

What is your obsession with "bugging out"?

Once you leave the house your alternate title is "refugee".

And living in your van, no mater how well equipped, is still considered "homeless".

[Pete Grey]

I’ve never known a battery damaged after being completely discharged as this can be the result of just leaving the lights on overnight, you recharge it, this can happen 2 or 3 times during the life of the battery with no lasting harm done to it.

I do not understand “obsession with bugging out”. I have always stated our preference is bugging in, this has been where our preps have been concentrated over the last few years, at this time I am quite happy with the results, obviously you are never finished and preps will continue.

What I am doing now is working on a different situation, the evacuation of our home as a last resort. One which as a prepper I am sorry to say has been neglected, that is where I am concentrating my efforts at the moment, when I am further along the line and I am satisfied with the results I will focus on an other scenario, there is always work to be done.

[CharlesHarris]

A low voltage limit is subject to sulfation on the negative plate. Leaving a flooded lead-acid battery continuously on float charge for a prolonged time may boil off the electrolyte and expose the tops of the plates to the atmosphere, causing sulphation. Lead-acid batteries do not like deep cycling. Depending on the depth of discharge and operating temperature, a sealed lead-acid provides 200 to 300 discharge/charge cycles.

If you look at the discharge curve for a Lead-Acid Battery and optimistically assume that you are only interested in 0.2C discharge, at 12V there is a "tipping point" where the voltage goes from relatively constant to plummeting. At 11V it is almost going straight down. At 9V it will drop right away under the same loading current.

This means that at 12V point you have used 60% of its capacity. At 11V you are at effectively 93%. At 9V you're at 99.5%.
A battery with 0V across it has no chemical initiative any more, of any chemistry type, you will need to motivate it re-create the chemical imbalance that causes the apparent voltage and potential for current to flow. This is hard on any battery (which is why almost all batteries are built with electrodes already chemically built of the right materials to create the cell potential).

With SLA a lot of energy goes in chemical recombination of Sulphates and Sulphites, wasting a lot of energy. This results in needing excessive power to re-engage a cell that is left at 0V. Excessive power = heat. Heat = gassing. Gassing = moisture loss. Moisture loss = bad. Not to mention the higher voltage usually required makes many, many by-products on the plates, next to by-products already generated by neutering it in the first place and you're left with a AA battery with the weight and size of a BCI Group U1 SLA wheelchair battery.

Now, discharge down to near 9V, the battery will drop to 0V very quickly. You'll easily be too late to salvage it. Marine battery y manufacturers tell us to "Consider your deep cycle battery empty at 11V." Common automotive starting batteries will be damaged below 11.8V Those who keep separate engine starting and deep cycle batteries for use in their RV must take care to appreciate the difference in depth of discharge lower limits exactly for that reason.

If they will not accept that 100's of manufacturers, countless experts in the field and users alike say "at 11.8V you're not going to get much more out of it and it'll be risky to try", then just convince them with the fact that at 11V there won't be much to get any more anyway. Done. All other points moot.

The reason a car battery can be dropped to 2V and then keep working, is because that battery was at 2V very shortly, because the idiot leaving his lights on realised after a while. And because they are usually over dimensioned by a factor of 2 to 5, depending on the type and brand of a car, so a crippled one will work for a couple more years.

[Pete Grey]

I am going to treat myself to a new bow saw, it will only be used occasionally, as we don’t have any large trees so i do not need a chainsaw. I will take the opportunity to get a new hard hat, one with a face guard and 2 or 3 pair of the toughest gloves i can (i have ordinary work gloves and safety boots with shin and ankle protection). In an emergency situation accidents can happen so easily and it’s better to prevent one than have to treat an injury after an event especially if there are no medical services to call on.

[Mortblanc]

Sounds like you are going to spend half a hundred pounds on safety gear to use a 5 pound hand saw to topple a sprout.

And remember, safety gear does not prevent accidents, safe use of the saw prevents accidents.

While I do not heat with wood I do keep a chain saw as part of my emergency gear for clearing storm damage.

It gets used once or twice a year for pruning and gardening work too.

My long term preps include a stand of trees in the corner of the lot that would keep me warm for a year or so and I would need the chain saw to deal with that if worst came to worst .

One of the first things I learned when I moved onto my first homestead was that I could not keep my family alive using a bow saw. There were not enough hours in the day to keep up with the demand.

Now I am too old and broken down to attempt to supply wood for fuel using a hand tools, or even to use them for occasional clearing of debris.

Anyone that tells you hard work never hurt anyone has never done any! I had my first heart attack while splitting firewood with hand tools.

If you have only the occasional trimming to do look into one of the new lightweight electric chain saws. I have a Remington that is a real jewel. Cost me about 50 pounds your money. Probably about the same as you intend to spend on safety gear.

I have used it for several years and it has done more than its share of work. I took down three trees from the front garden that were 100 year olds and rotting from the inside.

One of the neighbors took 6-8 full sized pickup truck loads of wood from that cutting. That electric saw did a fine job and even though I expected it to burn up within minutes it went through all that green wood and has blocked out several other large trees that were storm damage.

I have a small genset I can run it from if the power is down. The genset also doubles as power reserve for the house during crisis so it is not job specific.

[MaryN]

Pete, you need to get the gear appropriate for your circumstances, and get good stuff. We have learned from experience not to buy cheap junk - we now will only buy Stihl or Husqvarna chainsaws. The cost of replacing chains on cheaper models was simply not cost effective and was a real pain when the damn things kept jamming.