Built in hydrometer?

[greenkarson]

My father in law just gave me 24 6v flooded lead acid batteries.  They were the emergancy backup light batteries for the ten story apartment building that he is the super in.  He guessed they are around 3 or 4 years old.  They are scalletta batteries other then that no real info printed on them.  The electrians changed them all out for new ones because they did'nt seem to keep the lights on as long as they thought they should. I have no idea how many amp hour they are.  But they have a built in hydrometer on the side of them.  With 2 dime size plastic disks in it one green and one red.  Most of the batteries the disks are floating near the top.  But a couple are at the bottom.  Anybody know what the two colored disks mean?  Im assuming they are supposed to be up?

Iv topped the low ones up with distilled water and wired them all together in a 12v bank and have been charging them with a plug in charger.  They seem to be holding a charge fine.  But should i remove the batteries that the hydrometer floats are on the bottom?

Painfully typing this on my ipod so sorry about any errors.  Thanks for any info or suggestions

[wpowokal]

Personally I would connect together the "suspect" ones and try charging them only, a picture helps. They were probably connected as a high voltage bank and therefore the "faulty" units were bringing the whole bank down, I suspect all in all you have had a good win.

allan

[greenkarson]

Thanks planning to do that on the weekend.  Any one know how to interpret the red and green floats?

[wpowokal]

I personally have not seen them and since no one else has chimed in by now I guess they wont, but just following normal protocol red is flat and green is charged so if the green has floated fully up I suspect that cell is charged.

Bog standard hydrometers are not expensive, precision ones are but comparable readings across the batteries is will suffice together with a voltage reading.

allan

[greenkarson]

Thanks again.  I figgered green up was good.  But most have green and red up some have green up red down and two have both green and red down.   That sounds more confusing then it is. Any thoughts on this?

[Rover]

I'd do what Allan suggested, get a battery hydrometer at a local auto parts store... You can then get to the bottom of this.

Rover