AMacholPhoto wrote:
How long can the batteries site before they start to corrode at lower than full charge. I am only looking at a day or two because I do a lot of photography in the mountains and desert and some times camp where I shoot so I dont have anything to charge off of. I have two AB800's not sure if that makes a difference.
Lead acid batteries have a finite life. Sometimes it is a mystery as to how long that life really is, but with sealed batteries of the type used in the Vagabond, you can usually expect a couple of years out of them before it's time for a new one. As Tech pointed out, a major key to full battery life is to keep your batteries charged, so as to minimize their self destructive tendencies that come into play as they go flat. Stressing the battery by running it until it's dead before topping it off also reduces the number of times a battery will take a charge in it's lifetime. Running it hard, which is to say loading it down with so much load that you run it flat from a full charge in a short period of time, is another way to reduce the life of your sealed lead acid batteries.
It is better to tote the extra weight of two batteries wired in parallel in an effort to better match a high battery load with the rate that batteries prefer to discharge at, than to go light, and kill a battery in one season (your two AB800's are not that heavy a load, so don't sweat this point).
The easiest way to kill a battery is to store it flat, or let it self-discharge over time without topping it off. You can kill a battery in a year or so that way without ever really using it. Death by non reversible chemical change begins in a battery when it is less than fully charged. In reality though, the speed of that death spiral doesn't become a real problem until the level of charge falls quite a bit below full, and/or lots of time passes before the battery is brought up to full charge again.
I wouldn't lose sleep over letting a fully charged battery sit idle for a couple of weeks. If you top off an idle battery every week or two, you are in good shape, and even if you slip up for a Month every now and then, it probably won't ruin your day in terms of life expectancy of the battery.
Just don't ignore it altogether. Your sealed lead acid battery is an always active, sealed chemical lab in a sense. It demands a certain max discharge rate, a certain max charge rate, a reasonable working climate, and a chemical state that represents a full charge when it is not being used. You don't have to be perfect in your desire to meet those needs, as you can bend the rules from time to time, and even flat out break them once in awhile without serious consequence. Just make it your goal to "try" to meet those needs, and your sealed lead acid battery might beat the odds and give you three or four years of good service.
Voyager