>
> > Avoid
> > storing the battery where it can get cold and damp.
> >Put it on wooden blocks
> > rather than direct on the the concrete garahge floor etc.
>
> OWT!! The bit about concrete floors has been debunked ad nauseum
IIRC, there was reason behind this OWT with the old rubber cases. They did leak thought the case. With today's plastic cases, not.
> Just keep the top of the battery clear of acid residue.
Keeping a lead-acid cell on a float charge is crucial for it's longevity. A properly maintained lead-acid will last eight years or perhaps more (where "last" is defined as 80% capacity). They do *not* like to be discharged and they *will* self-discharge.
Sounds about right. The lead-acid batteries I used were rated for an eight-ten year life if treated well.
I was responsible[1] for a battery and charger where the designer was so concerned with proper float charging that that's all he designed. It worked wonders, as long as the battery was never discharged. Since this battery was in a mainframe system (used for crypto key retention and hardware tamper alarms) it was decided[2] that this was a good scheme. After all, who powers off a >$20M mainframe? The system and batteries were designed for an eight-year life with up to a two-week power outage before the keys were "zeroized" (reset because tamper alarms were no longer reliable).
All was fine in systems test. After a couple of months in the field we stated getting field reports with keys being zeroized, and random tamper alarms. We found that the Japaneese are required to shut down systems that aren't in actual production (a surprise to everyone in mainframe-city). Each night the banks powered down the systems for eight hours. The float charge wasn't enough to *ever* fully charge the batteries, and wasn't keeping up with the 2/3s duty cycle.
Moral: Always treat batteries as their manufacturer recommends.
[1] Design wasn't mine, but on my card and the designer retired before TSHTF.
[2] The battery's manufacturer (Gates Energy) didn't like the scheme at all, so I rather sided with them. I tried to fight city hall....
Zounds like a backup for the Federal Reserve banking center system- have heard stories about them:-) Send me a $10M bill if you see one lying around....
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