Where to charge a battery?

[z12358]

Originally Posted by MNBoxster

Hi,

Hydrogen is a colorless, odorlees, gas so you wouldn't smell it. What you may be smelling is Sulphuric acid vapor (in a heavily diluted form). I wouldn't worry about hydrogen fumes in a home where the furnace runs regularly, it'll consume the Hydrogen as it cycles on/off. What you do not want is a small restricted space where Hydrogen gasses can concentrate.

If the battery is even in a 10"X10" room, that's plenty of space to dilute it to the point where an explosion simply won't happen if the source of hydrogen is a 6-cell 12V Wet Cell battery. I wouldn't worry about it...

Happy Motoring!... Jim'99

Thx. So what about the sulphuric acid? Isn't that poisonous? I felt that had I left the battery charged for couple of more hours, no one would be able to enter the room from the smell. And yes, the room was larger than 10X10ft. My fiance is even more jealous of the Box as it keeps affecting our weekends (she can smell it) even when stored!

The sequence of events. I stored the car and took the battery out three weeks ago. The battery has been just sitting in a room (on a thick cardboard) for those three weeks NOT hooked to the maintainer. (I delayed figuring out the charging set-up and location up until now.) Though not likely, is it possible that the battery has discharged itself so much (by just sitting there?) that it needed such intense initial charging to produce a strong sulphuric acid smell only after 30 minutes? Perhaps it would have subsided as the charging intensity subsided? I have the 1.5 amp Schumacher charger/maintainer.

Can I just keep the battery off the charger most of the time, and just charge it every couple of weekends when I'm there to observe it? Or the charger/maintainer has to be hooked to it all the time?

It feels weird to be the only one concerned about these things here. Seems like everybody has this figured out but me.

Thx.
Z.