I looked through the archives and couldn't find anything about this. If it's there, forgive me. Those of you who are going to be charging deep cycle batteries from a generator need to check out this home made battery charger. I built one of these using a 3 1/2 hp Briggs horizontal shaft engine ($154 from Harbor Freight Tools), an automobile alternator ($40 from a salvage yard) and a bracket designed for just this purpose from: http://www.geoduck.com/epicenter/order.cgi?page=power.html&cart_id=%%cart_id%% The bracket cost $27.95. I put the whole thing together and get 50amps(600 watts) of 14.4 volts for charging my deep cycles. No wasted energy by using a 115 volt ac battery charger! I also plan to modify the engine to run on propane. With a 5hp engine I could probably get a little more power but I'm into using the least amount of gas possible.

Hope this is useful to someone.

-- Steve (bibleout@tds.net), June 26, 1999

Answers

Sorry about the url. You can get there at www.theepicenter.com

-- Steve (bibleout@tds.net), June 26, 1999.

You should really check out the possibility of using a static charger...It is both cheap, and easy to make your self....Cheap, as in about 10.00 or so, if that much.

-- Shaking_in_a (Bunker@forty.feet), June 26, 1999.

Dear Shaking,

What is a static charger and how many watts does it put out?

-- Steve (bibleout@tds.net), June 26, 1999.

Steve,

Sounds like you put together a nice little system. However, for those who are not as handy as you, there is another option. Coleman sells a Powermate 800 watt unit which is available at many large home supply stores. It's a nifty little package. The whole unit only takes up about 1 cubic foot of space, weighs about 15 lbs, and puts out both AC and DC. The AC is 120 volts and 800 watts on my unit, but I think the newest model now shows 900 watts. For DC, you get some heavy duty battery cables with it, and it puts out 55 amps continuous for charging, or up to 80 amps surge for starting assistance, at 14 volts. The engine is a 2hp Tecumseh 2 cycle, so you mix oil @ 24:1 but I wager it will use no more fuel per hour than the 3-1/2 Briggs. I bought mine thru Harbor Freight about a year ago for $200 but that was a closeout on a model change. I called Coleman and asked about it. They said the newer model is basically the same, but in a more attractive wrap-around plastic case, and they found they could rate it safely for 900 watts. I think the new ones are about $300 at the stores, but I'm not sure. Anyway, it's a *very* portable unit which could go anywhere that you want, without any hassle. Just a thought.

-- Gordon (gpconnolly@aol.com), June 26, 1999.

Gordon,

How did I miss that one? I thought I had the Harbor Freight catalogue memorized. Oh well, at least I had fun making it all work.

-- Steve (bibleout@tds.net), June 26, 1999.

Don't forget the surplus military 24 volt generators that are available from 1-50Kw. They are great for charging 2 batteries at a time and are great for lights, heat and cooking ( with the right accesories)

-- Rickjohn (Rickjohn1@yahoo.com), June 26, 1999.

Harbor Freight has kids pup tents this week for $12. and last week a nice barrel siphon pump for $5.

-- rb (phxbanks@webtv.net), June 26, 1999.

Sir..To answear your question about static chargers. It is known that you can get a static electrical charge from ungrounded wire (ask an ham radio operator about how dangerous it is if he/she picks up an ungrounded antenna cable.)

All right now...The basis of the premise, I believe came from N. Telsa's experiments. (I do know that there have been electrical line men killed when they shorted out an ungrounded lenth of transmission cable) ( by touching the the cable, that is)

That Wind blowing over a lenth of wire will build up a static charge..The longer the wire, the greater the charge...By experiment, I found that you can achive the same, and even greater results by using a fifty feet or so lenth of chicken wire(the kind that comes in 2 foot widths) strung up like you would a tenis court net ( the higher off the ground the better, but say at 8-9 feet) tie the chicken wire ends in a rolled around fasion, to lenths of rebar, or iron pipe. (this is so you can reinforce the ends. Next tie off the chicken wire lenths to mounted ceramic insulating knobs (the kind that screw into wood, and have holes formed through the middle of them so that you can run your rope/bailing wire through to tighten up your new tenis court type static charger.

The rest of the set up is simple. You run an insulated wire up to the net and make an electrically sound connection...Then run the other end of the wire over to where your batteries are set up. Tie in a car's spark plug at the top connection (where the spark plug wire normally goes.) Then from the grounded side (the threaded part) take a connection to a car's coil and hook up to the battery side; then you take a connected wire from the coil's connection for the points to your plus side of the battery(S).

Now. taking the negative side of the battery to a good earth ground, you tie it off...Your last connection is to take an in line (1-3 kv, the kind you find in old TV sets will do) capasitor to the top side connection of your spark plug and tie it in with your positive side wiring coming from the charging net.This will complete you brand new static charger.

At this point I feel I should add that an Electrical engineer informed me that I could achive the same result (as using a capasitor by puttin another spark plug in ln line with a much larger gap....Then the spark plug being used charging actuator.

I have experimented with this set up and have found that I get some really fantastic voltages from it (this is the reason of using a car's coil..as a step down transformer...Else it would blow up the Battery pack...As it is, I blew the fuses in my multi meter trying to see what kind of voltage I was getting un-grounded in stormy weather...Wind/cold/and rainy weather all work to build static charges fast! In calmer weather, the charge builds up more slowly..But build up it will.

But beware!!! This set up if left un-attended/ungrounded WILL build up to lethel levels rather fast....

The spark plug and it's gap will allow the static charge to jump the gap once a certain amount of static electricity is built up..And then by going through the Car's coil. It will step down the voltage to an aceptable level...and pulse a charge to the battery.

Try it! You'll like it! Especially in a nuclear winter type of situation, when I am down in my forty feet deep bunker, and my solar array won't work ( and I do have one of those by the way, solar array that is.. LOL) Just wish I had known abut the static charger before I put in the array...could have saved a bundle.

My bonifides...I am a master electrician, semi-retired. From building electrical generation plants....

Shaking

-- Shaking_in_a (Bunker@forty.feet), June 26, 1999.

Steve,

Bought the bracket and built the rig. Works fine. Used to get epicenter through y2klibrary.com with pages of instructions on various projects for us dummies.

-- Carlos (riffraff1@cybertime.net), June 26, 1999.

Shaking, is there a website where I can get a scematic for this setup?

-- John (..@.....), June 26, 1999.

In answear to your question. I am sorry, I do not know of one...The directions are simple enough to understand ( at least I thought I made them easy enough)...And I am unable to use a webtv to send diagrams either. Shakey

-- Shaking_in_a (Bunker@forty.feet), June 26, 1999.

Bingo1 just posted the new address for How To Survival Library.

-- Carlos (riffraff1@cybertime.net), June 26, 1999.

If you want your deep cycle battery to last very long, then charge it at the C/10 rate and never discharge the battery more than 50% of its amperage capacity; preferably even less. The C/10 rate means you shouldn't put in more than 1/10th the total amperage of the battery per hour. So if you have a battery with 100amp/hour capacity, then you shouldn't charge it up at more than 10amps per hour. If you do, its life will be considerably shortened. So perhaps that little inefficiency of using a battery charger isn't such a bad idea.

The electrical experts here can undoubtedly give you a better explanation of the care and feeding of batteries but if you want to delve into battery arcana go to www.homepower.com or read alt.energy.homepower on Usenet News.

Good luck, brett.

-- brett45 (brett45@bigfoot.com), June 26, 1999.

As well as the epicenter site, also check out Homepower magazine at: http://www.homepower.com/download.htm#Mark8 and download the file mark8.pdf.

They give design information for a similar DC battery charger. The article also gives a schmatic for an electronic current/voltage regulator (pretty simple).

-- will (the@link.work), June 28, 1999.