Okay, so things are getting hanky again. I went to the boat yesterday and pretty much found what I would expect: Consumed Energy on the Victron showed -39 Ah with SOC at 88% (house bank = 270Ah). I had left the boat the day before with no charging sources, the fridge ON, and the SOC at 98.5%. I decided to put some time on the generator while I did some cleaning on the topsides and charge up the batteries. Started the gen set, turned on the ProMariner and went about my business.
After periodic checks of the Victron monitor it finally showed 100% SOC and 0 CE. However, it also showed 9.19 amps still being pushed into the batteries at a voltage of 14.6. That seemed like to much amps and volts for a 100% charged battery.
The ProMariner display showed:
Amps Output = 11.2
Volts Output = 14.8
Charge Output = 3 of 5 lights ON
Charge Mode = Conditioning
Next I went to check the batteries with the Volt Meter and saw a fair amount of electrolyte on top of one of the house batteries - the same battery position and 3 cells that exploded before!
Comments/Questions:
1. I did see the ProMariner perform properly a couple of days before and go into Float mode with volts at 13.4. Why was it still in Conditioning (absorption) mode and not Float mode? I have a call into ProMariner and am waiting to hear back.
2. Before installing the new batteries I topped them off with distilled water by filling the cells up to the tube with two slits on either side until the water reflection puckered - this still left the slits open for gas to reach the caps. I thought this was the proper way to do it. However, upon reading the battery documents I got later from the manufacturer, their instructions were: make sure the plates are covered but do not top off! Charge fully to 100%, then top off and only bring the electrolyte level to 1/8" BELOW the bottom of the tubes - no puckering. Is this why electrolyte was expelled during charging? How do I remove the extra distilled water from the solution? Can I just leave all the caps open and let passive evaporation remove enough water to get the electrolyte solution down? Can I open the caps the next time I charge up and let the water gas out from electrolysis? I don't want to remove electrolyte directly as this will also remove acid and affect the proper concentration needed for battery performance.
3. Is it just coincidence that the battery leak is in the same position and same cells as the one that exploded? I have not changed any wiring on the boat since I purchased it a year ago and up until the battery failure everything has been working fine. The battery ground and hot cables to their respective buss bars are 1G. The 3 house battery grounds run to the Victron shunt and are all of the same length and the hots are same length as well. All connections are clean and tight.
All comments welcome. GF