battery vs concrete

[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!

[metalfab]

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....

[Admiral Beez]

I store my battery in the bike all winter, connected to trickle charger.

[Chancho196]

I enjoyed reading those! Thanks folks, the AC Delco one is great!

[metalfab]

I store my battery in the bike all winter, connected to trickle charger.

I did that in the past and I had trouble with the trickle charger/maintainers overcharging the battery after months of storage. It isn't discussed much but even slightly overcharging a battery for a long time can do damage to the battery. Now I use a battery maintainer on a timer. I have it set to run 1 hour per day in the winter. I have had much better luck with that as opposed to leaving the trickle charger on all the time.

[rphillips]

I've looked for a maintainer that turns completely off when batt. is fully charged. Haven't found one yet. I'm using my reg. charger set on 2 amp. It turns completely off.