Gas build up in Batteries??

Hey Axle

Perhaps we should swap names? LOL

Good thing you didn't cop it in the face.

G'day Axle

Its good you are ok. Yes hydrogen and oxygen mixed in exactly the right proportions do go off. had that experience too.

In most vehicles there is a clock or radio memory and nothing else switched on. This means there is a capacitor which wants to charge when batt connection is made. So a spark occurs. If you want to be safe make yourself a small test light with a clip on both leads.

First connect test light lead to the battery terminal and then at a distance away connect to the heavy batt lead with the other.
Now the spark at the batt terminal has been neutralised and you can fit and tighten the batt heavy lead. No explosion.

Be safe

Ross M

Axle,
best I ever saw was a bloke put a screwdriver across a cat battery to see if it had charge in it.

Well yes it was charged and bits of battery went everywhere.

Have a good one,
RA.

Does happen but not often. You have to have a couple of things going against you, battery has to have been recently on charge and you have just the right fuel air mix and the air fuel mix must have been just right around the battery terminal as hydrogen is lighter than air and disippates very quickly.

Um this battery..was on a machine...was it in a bit of an enclosed space.

Explosions from battery fumes are uncommon if the battery top is in wide open air..unless you get realy close with the ignition source to a open cell top.

The gasses can get away.

But it does not take much to confine a good charge of gas arround the top of a battery.

lots of batteries are far to much enclosed in some uses for my liking.

Often if it is a screwtop wett cell battery that has recently been on charge, there can be bubbles of gas clinging to the plates inside the battery....and they will sit there for some time till you bump the battery then they all rise to the top and come out the vents all at once.

Unlucky....or maybe not....you could have very easily ended up blinded and disfgured for life.

I recon you will be waveing ya hat arround a bit before you connect batteries in future.

Better still......try and get this gear over to "sealed" batteries.....there may not be any such thing as completly sealed batteries....but the sealed ones present a far far lowrer risk with this sort of thing.

OH...btw.....if you want to do that again...I know a few musicians who would like to sample the KA bOOOOM fr a drum sound :)

cheers

Axle
Yes mate, need to be a bit carefull there !..
I fuse everything I can at the battery, and then insert the fuse last.
I also put the earth on last.
Never mix spark and battery (hydrogen) BIG BANG THEORY

that reminds me
I played a joke on my Brother in Law, on King Island, some 5 years back, when I smoked.

You see, he generates his own power there, on his 300 acre property.
It's a combination of solar, and diesel generator, into a rather impressive bank of re buildable batterys. All thru an invertor. He is a sparkie by trade.

Back to the joke...

Went down to the generator shed, some 100 mts from the house, and he is checking battery's, and believe me, you could smell the hydrogen,
So yours truley whips out a smoke and a lighter, and caught his attention, just as I brought the lighter up to the smoke..

I learnt new SWEARWORDS, and laughed my head off, as I caught him out..

He is still trying to figure out how to get me back.
Cheers Bucky