Epic solar boat adventurer Stress testing my old battery

Ive had this big old deep cycle battery for years, and I dont know enough about it so I thought Id learn some stuff.

Its a conventional, unsealed, 100ah lead acid, deep cycle thing.

At least I think its 100ah. Thats the kind of thing youd think someone would emboss onto the side rather than adding it as a stamp. That and the voltage.

At least they went to the trouble of embossing the + and - marks.

So with this kind of battery, it seems they dont mind being run down as much as, say... a car battery might. Car batteries hate it when they are run down, and it shortens their lives in a big way.

A deep cycle battery (also called a flooded battery apparently) is a bit more forgiving, but they still see damage with every bit of use. The lower you allow the voltage to get before recharging, the less charge cycles you get from them before they need replacing. 

As I understand it, 11.8v is considered "empty", but thats at rest 6 hours after you stop using it.

I need to know what "empty" is when Im cruising along drawing 20 amps or 35 amps (that being the amount of juice the motor pulls from the battery at speeds 4 and 5 of 5.

So my education for today turned into more questions than answers. It looks like its business as usual.



120 Things in 20 years thinks the Internet might not know something I need to know.

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Thinking Old peoples hands

I got old peoples hands yesterday.

Ive never had old peoples hands before.


Wear Levis, pick guitars and go riding on trucks.


Ill be right back in just a sec...

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Aquaponics Cooling a fishtank

I found a source of really inexpensive trout fry from my local fly fishing association, but its already half way through the trout season, If I were to buy them, ($30 per 100) Id need a way of cooling my aquaponics system through summer.

A while ago, we had a burst water main in front of our house, and it got me thinking about the possibility of shedding a bit of heat into the water main. Given the foot path is currently dug up, and there are a couple of orange cones alerting people to this fact, it might be possible to run some plastic tubing around the main supply pipe, and pump some of my system water through it.

The temperature of the water and the underground pipe will be roughly the same as the earth around it. If you dig down a few feet. the temperature is much more stable than air temperature in the same location. If you think of a cave, youll see that the temperature is pretty close to the average yearly temperature of the location. This is because stone (dirt) holds a lot more heat than air, so it takes a lot longer for the rock to change temperature because so much "temperature" can be stored within it.

Because the pipes on my side of my water meter are open to the main pipe running down the length of the street, it might even be possible to use the pipes within my property.

Its just a vague thought, but it was in my head, so it had to come out.


120 things in 20 years just thought of something else, but its too naughty to post about.

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