• Welcome to the Checkmate Community Forums forums.

    You are currently viewing our boards as a guest which gives you limited access to view most discussions, articles and access to our other FREE features.
    By joining our free community you will be able to:

    » Interact with over 10,000 Checkmate Fanatics from around the world!
    » Post topics and messages
    » Post and view photos
    » Communicate privately with other members
    » Access our extensive gallery of old Checkmate brochures located in our Media Gallery
    » Browse the various pictures in our Checkmate photo gallery

    Registration is fast, simple and absolutely free so please, join our community today!

    If you have any problems with the registration process or your account login, please contact support by clicking here or by using the"contact us" link at the bottom of the page.

Leave battery in or take out ?

B

Bigmoss

Member
Do you guys from the north like me take your batteries out when you store your boat or leave them in ?

I use to always take them out until my buddies mentioned they always leave them in, I just bought a new merc battery so would hate to damage it just wondering what most of you do ?

If out car batteries can handle the cold the marine ones should no ?
 
i always take mine out, and put in in the basement on a couple 2x4's

the one in my bayliner is stamped '99 and still works.... although i think its on its last season...

ill through a trickle charge on them once through the winter, i take them out of everything, bike, boats, jet ski....etc and they seem to last a while... my $0.02

:cheers
 
Out

End of summer I take the batteries out of the boat, bike and lawn tractor.
Nice warm basement and I'll give em each a few minutes of juice on the charger every few months.
Like chicken soup; "It couldn't hoyt."
 
a battery will not freeze if it's fully charged.... that is is if will hold a charge for the length of a winter- i take mine out and get them off the floor just to be safe!-ross-
 
take it out, charge it, and set it on a maintainer.

if the electrolytes are not kept moving the battry can die for good.
 
Ditto on all the above. The battery is happiest in temps well above freezing, in stable environment and with a battery tender attached. I leave mine on charge just about the entire winter (with a smart charger/battery tender) unless i need the charger for something else for a week or so. Don't leave it lay on concrete either, keep it off the floor with wood. Oh, and dont take advice from your buddies any more ;-)
 
I feel you should take them out. If they freeze they will spill acid everywhere! I was LAZY the last couple years and left them in, no problems so far. If they are charged I really don't think it matters, but if you take them out it is one less thing to worry about.
 
all good stuff, but I did see when I was researching for my new battery about 12 volts that the concrete thing is a myth, and that you can leave any batteries from this decade on a cement floor without a problem. dunno if Ill do it though haha:cheers
 
I leave my batteries in and my boat fires right up
in the spring, but I keep it in a heated building all
winter so maybe that makes a difference but I
don't see the need to take them out and don't
 
Either way won't bother them to much , and yes the concrete thing is a myth it will not dicharge a battery any quicker than anything else.
 
you can leave it in all winter as long as it was charged and then you put some type of maintainer on it. i have seen those small solar deals before. anything that keeps the electrolyts moving is good.
 
when i was in the business - we always left the batteries in the boats - a full charged battery will have no problem surviving a muskoka winter. the ones that don't survive needed to be replaced anyway. and a frozen battery does not leak - it bulges the casing - beleive me i've seen literaly hundreds freeze.

now having said that, mine comes out and sits on a nice cold concreate floor (that wood myth is absolute crap) in the basement for the winter where it gets a 12 hour trickle when i think about it - maybe 3 times a season. this battery is 4 years old and going on strong (1000 amp)

and yes - the marina's around here are very busy putting boats away right now, lots of people pack it in labour day weekend. the shortest season of any of our customers was 3 days - the august long weekend - then back to storage it went.
 
Chris E said:
when i was in the business - we always left the batteries in the boats - a full charged battery will have no problem surviving a muskoka winter. the ones that don't survive needed to be replaced anyway. and a frozen battery does not leak - it bulges the casing - beleive me i've seen literaly hundreds freeze.

now having said that, mine comes out and sits on a nice cold concreate floor (that wood myth is absolute crap) in the basement for the winter where it gets a 12 hour trickle when i think about it - maybe 3 times a season. this battery is 4 years old and going on strong (1000 amp)
.
Click to expand...

I disagree on some points. Leaving a battery in a boat, connected, is not the best. If you are going to the trouble of disconnecting it, why not just remove it and put it in the house or garage? If for nothing else, it will lessen the chance of getting stolen. Plus, leaving it connected will only promote it discharging due to residual draw.
As mentioned, a fully charged battery won't freeze at severely low temps. But the only batteries that are truely capable of being fully charged are brand new ones at room temps. As a battery ages, it loses it's ability to stay at true full charge. And as the temps drop, it's ability to provide it's best service drops as well. I coach a kids ski team and have had several battery failures. Most notable was a 1 year old interstate battery freeze at 22 below.
Lastly, placing a battery directly on concrete won't affect the battery... for the most part. Most brand name batteries use a plastic base made of polypropylene which insulates the cells from discharge. The thicknesses of this plastic vary and in some cases, you'll still experience a discharge. It really takes no effort to place the battery on a 2x4 or pieces of plywood. So why not?
 
I always remove and keep in my garage and charge every month or so....as they will discharge a little just sitting..Rob
 
sorry - should've clarified one thing - in a marina you aren't dealing with 2 batteries, usually closer to 500, so it becomes an issue of storage - in our area - as with most i would guess, you are not allowed to store anymore than 10 batteries in one location, or it's deemed a hazzard and you have to follow a bunch of rules at a huge expense. so they stay in the boats - and yes they are disconnected. funny thing, we stored about 100 boats in each building we had - and leaving the batteries in the boats in a building was fine, but take them out and group them together and its a whole new world.

as with the cement floor - maybe at some point it was an issue, however, that is no longer the case. i've never seen a battery go flat on a cement floor, and i have seen every size and type imaginable. i'll agree to disagree on that one.
 
True enough, the old concrete issue is fairly long gone. FWIW, i'm a huge fan of battery tenders. I have about 5-6 batteries laying around during the winter, most from some muscle cars i own. I have three tenders that get swapped through each one on a regular schedule. I also have 2 solar chargers that keep a very small trickle going all winter. All of them are perched on top of plastic milk crates. Some batteries are going on 5 years now, so i think the tenders have something to do with that.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top