i currently use 10 x us 8volt, battery's. im currently useing a 100amp 12v charger and it isnt doing a good enough job. i once tried a 250amp 12v charger and it worked but im curious if a 16v 25amp charger would be best.....any suggestions?

 

The 16volt charger would be best. It will take longer however.

 

how long is long? with my current 12v 100amp charger, i never see a really good charge. it reaches 18.6v then drop bellow 17.5 when i turn the amps on

 

You'll want to trickle charge them with the 16+ volt charger. It will retain the charge unlike the faster charging with less voltage.

 

Power Master makes a good one... not inexpensive.

Arent your batteries always partially charged (6v per 8v cell) with a 12 v charger? I am assuming your running 5 parallel sets of 2 batts in series. They cant be lasting very long?? but your posted SPL (termlab?) is pretty strong so am I missing something?

 

well, by charging a bank of 5x 8v batts with the 12v, 30amp setting on the charger, that bank will reach over 10.5v surface charge, and rest at 9.5v (charger off)......charging the full 16v bank (10 batts) with 12v, 100amp boost, charging volts reach 18.6, butv immediatly return to 17.9v (charger off)

when i power the amps though, voltage immediately drops to 17.5......drops to 15.3 durring burps, then returns to 16.8v.........this is all the info i have......the batts were individually checked for gravity cell by cell and tested good, so im assuming the charger is the problem

 

definitely want to use a 16 volt charger. The slower you're able to charge them the better to build the core charge. Charging your batts quickly will just develop a surface charge which will be quickly erased by the first small load on the batts.

The powermaster charger is the best as far as battery longevity is concerned. And you can also put 2 chargers on the bank at the same time for 50 amp charge. Shouldnt need much more than 25 amps though to charge for burps...particularly if you charge them on a lower amperage setting the whole night before.

 

... your charging 8v batteries in parallel using a 12 charger? not a recipe for long battery life and should be serious Hydrogen off gas, do you find yourself adding water to them a lot or is their visible leakage?

 

water levels are fine.. i only used the 12v charger because i already owned it, thanks for all the opinions, i think my next investment will be a 16v charger.....is there any second opinion out there regarding ( two chargers on one bank)? i dont see why that wouldnt work!

 

that was straight from Scottie Johnson from powermaster

its not a big deal with flooded batts but when charging agm batteries properly it gets much more complicated. And the powermaster charger can charge agm batts aswell with 2 chargers to 1 bank. You can get a straight 16 volt version or the version that does 12 and 16 volts. 5/10/25 amp. High and low voltage.