The best way to optimize your battery’s performance and extend their life is by giving them regular battery care and maintenance. Today, we’re gonna talk about the best practices for regular battery care and I’m gonna show you what happens if you’re a slacker like me and don’t do enough regular maintenance on your lead acid batteries
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WATERING
During the process of charging and discharging your lead acid batteries, Water is consumed and Hydrogen gas produced and vented out the top of the batteries. When enough time has passed and water is consumed, the water level in FLOODED lead acid batteries will drop and expose the lead plates inside the battery casing. Lead plates exposed to air will corrode and ruin their performance. They need to stay submerged in the sulfuric acid solution in order to work properly and prolong the life of your battery. The proper solution should be about 3 parts water to 1 part acid. In order to maintain this solution, it’s best to top off the water in your flooded lead acid battery cells about ONCE PER MONTH. Use only DISTILLED water and follow your battery manufacturer’s guidelines as to the appropriate fill level. Any other water (like tap water or even rain water) will have minerals that will harm your battery and cause it to self-discharge rapidly. Make sure your batteries are fully charged before you top them off with distilled water. This ensures the proper electrolyte balance within the battery and keeps it running in good condition.
STORAGE:
In order to get the best performance out of our batteries, we store them inside our home in a wood box. If you do store them inside, it’s very important to vent the Hydrogen gas to the outside air, which is exactly what this 2” pipe right here accomplishes. If you store them outside, avoid places that may be exposed to freezing temperatures, which can destroy the lead plates.
TESTING YOUR BATTERY’S STATE OF HEALTH (SOH)
The most reliable way to test your battery’s state of Health is to Use a Hydrometer. A Hydrometer measures the Specific Gravity of the Acid Solution inside your battery. Consult your battery specs to determine how the specific gravity reading correlates to the percent of charge of your battery.
For a quick check, you can use a Volt Meter to measure the open circuit voltage of each battery. Place the positive probe on the positive terminal and the negative probe on the negative terminal. The batteries should read within one tenth of a point. If they are widespread like here, you will need to EQUALIZE the batteries. Equalizing the batteries is basically when you supercharge the batteries with a higher voltage, which makes them boil. This process breaks up the sulfate crystals that build up on the lead plates. It also reverses acid stratification (where the acid is concentrated at the bottom of the battery) and makes the solution more uniform. This ultimately helps the battery charge and distribute power more efficiently. You can do this with your solar array (like I do) or with a generator. Trojan battery has an excellent reference manual and tips on equalizing. Check out the link in the description below for more information.

https://www.trojanbattery.com/tech-su...

CLEANING:
When exposed to air, the acid crystalizes on the battery posts, which can interfere with battery charging and power distribution. Its best to keep up with the cleaning so it doesn’t get out of hand. Otherwise you’ll end up like me and have to replace corroded ring terminals, or replace the battery cables altogether. Which can get expensive and cause your battery’s state of health to decline RAPIDLY.
SAFETY FIRST: make sure to disconnect the power to your batteries before you attempt to clean them. I like to take a teaspoon of baking soda and mix it in a cup of water. Then take a toothbrush or wire brush and clean all the terminals. The baking soda neutralizes the acid and makes it safe to work with. Although I still wear gloves and safety glasses. disconnect the bolts and battery cables so that you can completely clean all surfaces of the terminals and posts. Then simply dry them with a clean rag, reconnect the battery cables, and you’re done!
Over the years, I neglected to disconnect the cables and didn’t get a really good cleaning.
I didn’t even realize that my battery cables were almost fully corroded until I started having trouble getting my batteries fully charged. Don’t wait that long. It’s really bad for your batteries to discharge so deeply and will ruin them quickly. I had to buy new terminals, a crimping tool, and heat shrink collars to rebuild every single battery cable. I got lucky and was able to reuse the same cables, and I caught it before my batteries suffered too much. But don’t push it. Batteries are EXPENSIVE to replace. It’s much easier to keep up with them with regular care. You’ll get the best performance and peace of mind.