battery vs concrete

[zuluwiz]

Many years ago, I was told to never place a storage battery on a concrete floor because it will drain the battery.
Has anyone else been told this? Is it true? It never made much sense to me that it would do this, but I've always refrained from doing it just in case it's true. Anyone have any thoughts on this?

 

[rphillips]

I think that came from yrs. ago, before batt. cases were made out of plastic. It doesn't affect today's batt's but I still set them on something other than concrete if possible.

 

[Grimly]

Batteries used to be encased in pitch-soaked wood or rubber. Even at that, I can think of no good reason why that particular myth ever started.
Suffice to say, it's a load of old tosh, and can be disregarded.

<edit to add>
It might have been more to do with leakage and the effect on the concrete. Garages tended to have particular areas where batteries were tended to, and setting down batteries on the floor day after day would have led to some corrosion issues.

 

[Steve]

Both replies (so far) are hinting about problems with OLDER batteries. REALLY old, as in 40-50 years ago. Battery cases used to be made of rubber. Treated to be rigid and somewhat non-permeable, but the calcium in the concrete could leach through the pores of the rubber case and neutralize the acid. Even a piece of paper would stop that, but most used a block of wood or similar.

Today's batteries have plastic cases and the leaching is NOT a problem. Put your battery anwhere you want. However, if you have a standard "wet-cell" battery and are charging it off the bike, ... if it overflows, you might want to have something other than concrete under it. The acid will not do good things to the floor. It's better to have some cardboard or a piece of wood to absorb the fluid.

.

 

[Gorminrider]

I never store batteries on the floor. I just don't.

...not for any tangible reason except maybe having them a bit higher saves lifting them that much more, but unreasonably, it just seems wrong. Maybe the temperature differential twixt "ground" and surroundong air but whatever...pallet height is minimum in my world.

 

[Rob S.]

Carpet, wood floor, then concrete - right here on the living room floor!

 

[slayer61]

Many, many years ago, I was taught that a battery set on a concrete floor was "neglected" by definition. A "neglected" battery will discharge over time. .02

 

[dorkburger]

Interesting. My father always followed the not on concrete storage.

 

[GS1150Pilot]

So did my dad, and he was a career Porsche mechanic. I think it was a carryover from his early days with British Leyland.

 

[zuluwiz]

It seems to be decided that this is old and outdated advice. I was told about this myself 40-45 years ago. Obviously, to make up for lost time, I should go out and remove all my batteries and set them on the (concrete) floor. .............mmmmmaybe not.

 

[rphillips]

Great idea!!! Get back with us & let us know how it worked out.

 

[Steve]

I have some car-sized batteries in my shop on the concrete floor. No problems.

.

 

[bwringer]

LOL, this stupid old legend just refuses to die, doesn't it?


I once helped a neighbor kid with something on his truck. As part of the process, we had to remove the battery in order to reach something or other, I forget what.

I put the battery down in his driveway and went back to the task at hand. When I looked up to ask him to hand me a socket, he was standing there holding the battery.

Apparently, his grandpappy had told him the legend of the magic concrete electron stealing elves, and in his teenage idiot mind that somehow meant he had to instantly pick up the battery and hold it some distance away from the concrete so the magic electron elves couldn't get to it.

I could not persuade him to put it down or even place it on the grass or on top of something else so he could assist with the rest of the project. By the time I got things sorted out so that we could reinstall the battery, his arms were shaking badly and he had very nearly dropped the battery several times. He was even a little salty that I dared to place the battery on the driveway for even a moment, and that I disparaged his grandpappy's sage advice.


It is true that a battery placed on concrete and then left there for a year will be dead. The same would apply whether it's placed on plastic, wood, metal, glass, or rubber, or snuggled into a feather pillow under a climate controlled glass dome.

 

[Gorminrider]

"ancient wisdom" is oft corrupted through generations and so too, the context...It may be a wikipedic answer suits theorems of conflicting chemistry. But - batteries are heavy. If you've ever dropped a battery, you will forever after be especially careful on a concrete floor...

 

[Guest]

I have some car-sized batteries in my shop on the concrete floor. No problems.

.

Concrete proof?

 

[Grimly]

. He was even a little salty that I dared to place the battery on the driveway for even a moment, and that I disparaged his grandpappy's sage advice.

You can be sure that when that battery finally died, he'd be thinking back to that episode and blaming you for its demise, even if it's ten years old by then.

 

[slayer61]

LOL, this stupid old legend just refuses to die, doesn't it?


He was even a little salty that I dared to place the battery on the driveway for ev....

Salt & Battery! LOL! :applouse: :clap:

 

[Guest]

Many years ago, I was told to never place a storage battery on a concrete floor because it will drain the battery.
Has anyone else been told this? Is it true? It never made much sense to me that it would do this, but I've always refrained from doing it just in case it's true. Anyone have any thoughts on this?

The story came from the AC Delco warehouses many years ago. Delco automotive batteries were shipped in a bottomless box that slid over the top of the batteries, cardboard touching both terminals. The box prevented the battery from shorting out if it came into contact with metal, and kept the new batteries clean. This type of box was pretty popular up into the 90's. In the Delco warehouse the batteries were stacked on the floor along a long wall in the warehouse, then there were several shelf's of batteries above the batteries on the floor. Every few days the floors were cleaned and the floors hosed down, the boxes on the batteries sitting on the floor would get damp. The damp boxes became slightly conductive and this slowly discharged the batteries with damp boxes. The corporate office at AC Delco figured out this problem, and they sent out notices to not place batteries in the warehouse on the floor because sitting them on the concrete was causing them to fail. That message without any technical information about the nature of the failure caused this concrete battery legacy. I have always called it the killer concrete theory, and challenged anyone sharing the killer concrete myth to technically explain to me how concrete could effect the battery. I never got an intelligent answer, is just does it is all I got. In the 70's an old retired gent that managed an AC Delco warehouse showed me a framed copy of this notice. He just hated it when some idiot chastised him for sitting a battery on the concrete at his shop. He passed on a few decades back, he was a laugh a minute, and a great automotive craftsman.

 

[eil]

Outside of normal use or abuse, there are two things that cause a battery to discharge on its own:

1) time
2) temperature

While I could explain in some detail how lead acid battery chemistry works, for the purposes of this thread, suffice to say that the speed of the chemical reactions inside a battery are proportional to the battery's temperature. The lower the temperature, the slower the reactions happen. This is why cars start harder when it's cold out, and why older marginal batteries always seem to die on the coldest winter day.

However, because the chemistry is slower in the cold, the self-discharge rate of a cold battery is also lower in colder temperatures. A lower self-discharge rate means less topping-off while the battery is in storage and less damage to the battery over its lifetime. Bringing it indoors and leaving it sit for months without a battery tender is the worst thing you can do. As everyone else in this thread has mentioned, what the battery sits on is completely unimportant.

For my bikes, part of my winterization ritual is removing the battery, charging it up, and leaving it on the cold concrete garage floor over the winter. I buy AGM batteries so I try to remember to top them up once a month but usually I find they don't need it.

 

[Gorminrider]

No mention of concrete specifically but my GS650 Owner's manual says to keep batteries off the floor, preferably on a wood shelf, and in room that doesn't freeze. I think I will keep doing this....