The battery I'm trying to recover is a PowerSonic PS1270. The UPS I want to put it in (the current battery lasted about 5 minutes) is a Back UPS ES 725. I'm trying to use an unused ES 350 to charge it for now. It was up to about 11.1V this morning. I may try the shake thing another poster mentioned, as a last resort.
Problem is, I buy these things, but then completely forget about them until I need them!! It's not too big of a deal, as it's just a convenience to try and keep the Comcast DVR powered up as it can take a day or two for the program guide to fully reload.
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I have been following this thread for awhile. Many have talked about sulfated cells and you initially said the charging current was less than 10 mA. Given the low battery terminal voltage, I doubt the problem is a sulfated battery since sulfation leads to a high impedance battery and high terminal voltage while charging. I would suspect a problem with the charging circuitry in the 'spare' UPS you are using for charging. The current should be closer to 1A until the voltage rises some more. At ~13.6 volts the current should drop off markedly.
David
The battery I'm trying to recover is a PowerSonic PS1270. The UPS I want to put it in (the current battery lasted about 5 minutes) is a Back UPS ES 725. I'm trying to use an unused ES 350 to charge it for now. It was up to about 11.1V this morning. I may try the shake thing another poster mentioned, as a last resort.
Problem is, I buy these things, but then completely forget about them until I need them!! It's not too big of a deal, as it's just a convenience to try and keep the Comcast DVR powered up as it can take a day or two for the program guide to fully reload.
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That's the very common 12v 7.0A gel cell found in many UPS's. $15 to $20 almost everywhere.
I have one of those running my home system. It eats a battery every 3 years. What seems to be killing it is that if it operates when I'm not at home, it runs until the battery is discharged. Do that a few times, and the battery is dead. Nothing like waking up in the middle of the night just to turn off the bleeping UPS.
The PowerSonic PS1270 is a good replacement for the stock battery.
Very similar UPS. It should work.
That was me. It's not very reliable way of removing sulfation, but has supplied a few miraculous revivals.
Easy. Don't buy them until you need them or invent some scheme to keep the inventory charged.
Switch to Satellite TV. My DirecTV DVR boots and loads in about 5 minutes.
You may want to power cycle your DVR anyway:
It is advisable to cold-reboot the DCT once a month, by simply unplugging the box for 30 seconds. After power is restored, be patient as the program guide and other features reload (approx. 20 minutes, 24 hours for the guide to fully populate). Minor odd DVR behaviors are usually cleared up, and more serious ones prevented by this procedure. However, sometimes a bug is still just a bug.
I just made a quick check of my battery collection on the shelf. Last time I charged them was about 3 months ago. Out of about 8 batteries,
2 of them are showing very low terminal voltage, which is a good indication that they're dead or dying. So much for charging every 6 months. Most were used when I bought them for $5/ea at a ham radio swap meet, so I can't really complain.
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# Jeff Liebermann 150 Felker St #D Santa Cruz CA 95060
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I zapped one of those batteries with a 110 volt welder at 40 amps and brought it back to life for a short while by hooking it to the correct poles like jump starting a car.
The UPS batteries are lead acid jell types. This type of battery if discharged for any length of time will become sulfide damaged.
Under normal use these lead acid jell batteries have a usable lifespan of about 3 to 4 years. Sometimes I only got about 2 to 3 years out of the batteries.
Here in our facility we have many UPS's. I keep logs on their maintenance. I am changing the batteries on an average of about 3 years. If l leave a UPS discharged for more than about a week, I have to replace the battery. I found they become damaged very fast.
When the UPS is powered off and the battery is left connected inside it can hold the charge for maybe a week or two. If I disconnect the battery it will hold enough charge for about a month or maybe two.
- STANDING IN A PARTIALLY OR COMPLETELY DISCHARGED CONDITION
- LOW ELECTROLYTE
- ADDING ACID
- HIGH SPECIFIC GRAVITY
Note that undercharging is a common cause of sulfation.
10ma qualifies as undercharging.
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More likely to finnish it off than do it any good!
If sulphation makes a battery reluctant to take any charge current; splice a bridge rectifier into the neutral lead of a 100W table lamp.
This will give it all the voltage it needs to break down the sulphation, as the battery terminal voltages approaches normal the lamp will get near to full brightness, when the terminal voltage falls within the normal range you can move it to a regular charger.
If the lamp trick doesn't get it going, its time to scrap it and buy a new one.
I put the ES 350's own battery back, also somewhat depleted after sitting awhile. It's a slightly smaller 3.2AH version. After sitting overnight, I was able to get it the UPS to stay in ON mode if I unplugged the UPS from power, then plugged it back in. I roughly measured nearly 100mA of charge. I tried swapping the other battery, and it was back to 5mA. I'm considering that battery toast.
The battery in the one UPS that lasted only 5 minutes has been drained once or twice before, so has lost capacity from that. I'll get a pair of batteries to replace both of the ES 725's I have, as both are nearly the same age.
Now to figure out where to safely recycle these. I have a pair of old
12AH's from another UPS that have been sitting around in addition to the ones I'll be replacing.
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Ace Hardware and Home Depot _should_ have a battery recycling program since they sell batteries for tools and emergency lighting. (Both NiCad and gell cells.
If not, look in the yellow pages for a recycling center.
See "drop off locations" on the right side of the page. Not every location will take SLA batteries, so it's best to ask before leaving a pile on their doorstep. In general, any place that sells SLA batteries, will also take them for recycling. Also, nobody wants a leaking battery so make sure it's not dripping acid.
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Here's a clue as to battery quality. Note the shipping weight on the above battery is 7.0 lbs. Now, look at the shipping weight of a real SLA 12V 7A battery:
which is 9.0 lbs. In most (not all) cases, the quality of an SLA battery is determined by the amount of lead included.
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Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558
Most places that recycle car batteries will take them. Here in Central Florida I can drop them off at any of the transfer stations. If they say they can't take them, tell them they are built like car batteries, but smaller. Or tell them it was on your motorcycle. ;-)
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I was just looking at some of those triple-I brand batteries a couple of days earlier, and noticed that they're low priced, and assumed that they may also be low quality. John, your experience with them in somewhat severe service is actually quite impressive.
Since many of the lead-acid batteries which are available are now made in China, there probably isn't a reliable method of choosing any particular brand name for any significantly-better durability.. other than the comparatively very expensive premium quality U.S. or UK brands.
Just a note that on that dead battery, the manufacturer date code (how to read the code was on the PowerSonic web site) was from December 2002, and it had never been used. No wonder it was dead!
I went and bought 2 replacement batteries. I should have done my homework first and looked at what was actually in the UPS's. The battery I found on-line was a PowerSonic PS-1270. This is a basic, 12V 7AH battery. They are dated from October and November of 2010. The battery I took out of the UPS, after removing the APC label, was a BB Batttery HR9-12. This is a 9AH HighRate. The PowerSonic equivalent would be the PSH-1280FR. The date code for the BB battery is DD021018. Haven't found how to read that, yet.
Just how much life will I lose with these 7AH batteries, and do you think the HR rating will make a difference? The UPS is rated 725VA, although I only have a VCR and cable box plugged into it the backup section.
Costwise, it wasn't too big a deal. The 2 batteries ($14 each) and shipping ($13 for the pair) were about the same as buying a single genuine APC battery. I bought them from PortablePower.com, via Amazon. They do have the PowerSonic 1280 for $20.50. Any suggestions for any other brand that you may trust more?
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If I follow the story correctly, your dead battery was originally purchased as a "spare". Ergo you had the subject UPS at that time or shortly thereafter. Is there any reason you haven't gone with the logical YYMMDD interpretation of the BB date?
IMOE the main issue with using "standard" (as opposed to high rate) batteries in a UPS is they are being operated outside their design envelope at any decent proportion of UPS load capability - which in your case *may* be irrelevant. I have seen standard batteries' deliverable capacity deteriorate after a handful of serious discharges in UPS duty, and the HR units haven't exhibited this. One thing I haven't actually done is measure temp rise in the battery after a full load discharge to cutoff - THAT would be a telling comparison.
We always reload SLA/VRLA-based UPS with HR batteries.
Most "genuine APC" batteries we have seen are BB anyway.
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