most of what was posted is pretty good, but

a battery needs to rest at least 12 hours if not a full 24 hours before you can get
a very accurate specific gravity reading after a full charge, one hour is probably sufficient after a routine charge, but waiting for 24 after an equalization charge will provide the most accurate results.

sizing of the bank to the charging system or rather the charging system to the battery bank (however you wanna look at it) is very important.
however in my opinion one should have the charging capacity of around 25% of bank capacity because..

if the bank is moderately discharged it can handle higher amperage to begin with, and depending on what you are using to charge with will dictate the amount of time required to charge the battery.

overall i don't find much fault with your faq, however depending on what the system is (size, charging source, useage, etc) will alter some of the figures a bit one way or another.

but in general your efforts should be close enough to save a lot of folks from killing their batteries.

you might add a bit more about the use of a quality temperature compensated hydrometer and a good meter that is accurate to .01, too many folks try to get by on the cheap with crappy hydrometers and inaccurate meters in my opinion and thus
never know for sure whether they are fully charged, under or over charged.

it seems to me if you are going to spend real money on batteries not spending a few extra dollars to get good test instruments is false economy.

One thing I didn't see, was max discharge. I have a pair of golf cart batteries, that are rated 220Ah at the 20Hr rate. I have only 90 watts of panels right now, and I occasionally have to supplement the charge with a 25A Black and Decker invertor type charger I have. My constant loads are about 1A for about 24Ah discharge over a day's time.

I understand battery chemsitry to the point that if a battery heats under a too large charge rate, it must also heat under a heavy discharge. I've read a lot of info about the care and feeding of these batteries, but I don't think I've seen a max discharge rate anywhere.

I have my batteries in the basement, inside an old cooler, with a 2" powered vent rigged to the outside. I only run the fan during charging with the battery charger, as my panels don't get the batteries to the gassing point. I have an old E-Meter hooked up and it was about -40Ah after the sun went down, so my auxiliary charging tonight is going to let the E-Meter recalculate charging efficiency. I have a 80A type T fuse mounted right on the pos battery terminal, so I guess it's my discharge rate limit.

Couple things need clarified.  Is 12.7V or 14.8V 100%?  Is 11.8V 35% or empty?

But in my opinion much of it is overwhelming or over thinking the plumbing, especially for newbies apt to read the FAQs who are confused enough without having to think about batteries as a magical complex device.

Do I care if it is 65% or 99% full?  Nope!  
I only want to use my hard earned RE power without ruining the battery.

If it is over 12.2V, use it.
If it is over 14.4 or 14.45V, it may be overcharged.
Equalize it every so often.
Life is good.

both excellent questions

as we all know or should know a 225amp/hr battery can deliver perhaps a couple thousand amps for a short period, into a dead short, so that is the extreme and likely hard on the plates of a true deep cycle battery.

i have read that one  can take for instance 225amps out of a 225amp/hr battery but not for an hour because the electrolyte will statify, but it is safe to do so without damage to the battery, so i would expect that is probably the maximum safe limit of discharge although probably still not what most would like to do.

so maybe one half that or maybe 100amps from a 225amp hour being likely a safe max discharge?  that is probably as hard as  would want to draw down a deep cycle and not with any regularity.

charging is another thing all together, when the battery is down to about 50% SOC
and below, it is able to take a rather large amount of amperage without issue.
certainly 25% of the amp/hr capacity and,  (if monitored for temperature gain) up to 40% of amp/hr capacity is not unknown. i have even seen reference to even higher rates of charge.

all things change at or about 80-85% SOC where the gassing starts to occur or
if the battery temps exceed ~110F, in either case the charge rate will have to be reduced accordingly.

most folks will find that getting to 25% charge rate a problem, and still more will find it near impossible to attain 40% charge rate on all but the smallest of battery systems. not many folks can generate and deliver 250-400amps into a 1000amp/hr battery bank. but it is not only possible but desirable for larger battery banks for efficient charging using fuel powered gensets, where runtimes being reduced = reduced fuel consumption= less dollars spent= lower cost per kwatt/hr generated, converted and stored.

for such a simple and well understood product (flooded lead acid battery) it becomes a bit more complex when you factor in all the  other variables that make up a complete system.

there ought to be an E=MC(2) equivalent equation :)

but sadly in my opinion there is not a single equation but a whole black board full of them using dozens of variables some of which are not static numbers but are variables in their own right.

thank god a lead acid battery is fairly forgiving, if not for this attribute
system failure rates would be as high as picking "winning" weekly lottery tickets.

the window of success is fairly wide, the goal being not to either habitually undercharge or overcharge the battery, keep in around 75F, clean and watered.

not much different than how we want to be treated!, i think most of us would last longer with fewer issues if we are fed right, not underfed or overfed (charged), worked within our ratings (discharged maybe to 50% capacity and not till we are flat beat to death), kept at around 75F, given good clean water, our back scrubbed (terminals/connections/case cleaned), blood pressure/sugar levels checked (voltage and specific gravity).

seems reasonable to me :)

seems a bit analgus to an old trucker who after 40 years and over 2.8 million miles on 3 mack trucks had never lost a single clutch, transmission, engine or anyother major component when asked what his key to success was...

"i drive my truck the way i would want to be driven if i had 80,000 lbs on my back"

can't fault that! :)