A ute will keep you in demand

Part of owning a ute is being the person who can move the big or heavy or dirty things around without an issue. So when my parents needed some help to get some concrete slabs home I had myself an excuse for a nice drive.

Here is the first one in place and ready to go. Having a quick breather before moving the second one. Each of these weighs about 80kg so I'm sure you're wondering how we moved them? Well thankfully we didn't have to just muscle them. In a pinch 2 of me could move one, however it would be quite hard work and slow going; with plenty of potential for hurting yourself.

This picture might help. You can just see what we used to make it so easy to move these.

Thankfully Mum & Dad have an engine hoist which easily lifts loads like these. We had a couple of proper lifting slings so with those under the slab and someone to steady the load it was very easy to roll the hoist over to where they needed to go. Once they were nearly there we could just slide the slabs sideways by their width and the lifting was done.

And why did we need to put in some big heavy slabs? In this box are a heap of big batteries for running the house. Batteries like these need a very solid base that ideally is slightly elevated so anything on the ground needs to climb a bit before getting to them. Hopefully these slabs will hold them for years to come.

So thank you Mum & Dad for giving me a reason for a nice drive out there and a chance to ogle at their new power system going together.

Cheers,
Rex

Charging Batteries

While I've got the front of the engine bay apart for replacing the water pump here I have the battery sitting on my back veranda not doing much. So I figured I would give it a charge. However I don't have a proper battery charger. I do have a more sophisticated tool that will charge a battery though.

Enter the laboratory power supply. This one is a fairly cheap one that I picked up off ebay a couple of years ago. It's noting to write home about but it is more than enough for this job. The reason it will work for this is that I can set it to output a maximum of 13.8V which is the standard charging voltage for lead acid batteries. It also has a constant current mode which would be useful for smaller batteries which should be charged slower, but a big one like this can probably handle as much as this relatively small supply will provide.

I just used a set of jumper leads to connect the battery as they are all that I have that will fit the posts built into the battery.

Here we are after about 1/2 to 3/4 of an hour. The battery is still accepting .52A of current into it at the full charging voltage of 13.8V which means that it is essentially full. Certainly close enough for me. Tomorrow or the day after I am going to pull the 2nd battery out of the Land Rover and see if it will charge up. The previous owner said that it didn't charge for him but I want to see exactly what happens as sometimes a "dead" lead acid battery can be brought back to life.

I will leave this battery on charge until I go to bed tonight to trickle it up as much as it will, then I will take it off the charge to reduce the risk of something going wrong, boiling, hydrogen production, etc.

Cheers,
Rex