Battery Water

[NOLA26]

I know the topic of water in batteries had probably been discussed hundreds of times but I cant seem to get a definitive answer. I have a 48V Club Car that I bought yesterday. It has 8V Trojan batteries. The batteries are a little low on water, but with two storms approaching Louisiana, all the distilled water is sold out.

I had a saltwater aquarium that I recently shut down. For the maintenance of that tank, I had used only RODI water that I made from a quality filter at my house. I still have the filter and it outputs water that has a TDS of 0%.

Everything I have read about water in batteries says use distilled water because it is pure water. I know for reef aquariums, we did not use distilled water because it was not 100% pure water like RODI water is. So my question is can RODI water be used in the batteries or not?

Looking on Trojans website, they listed RODI water as pure water but didn't recommend it because of the cost vs. distilled. They never said you could not or should not use it if it is available to you. I figured I would ask the experts here their opinions.

[Swan]

yes I have used water from reverse osmosis to fill my batteries. In my opinion RO is better then distilled . Most people do not have access to RO making distilled easier and cheaper for most people .

[simicrintz]

I build and operate 40,000 GPD RO trailers; I agree that RO water is fine for this application.

[Wakko47]

Be safe up there.

[NOLA26]

Thanks guys! I am actually using RODI water so it passes through additional DI media after the RO membrane. Thats the important part that makes it 100% pure.

As far as the storms go, the first one has been a non-event so far. In New Orleans, it hasen't even rained and has been sunny all day.

[WalterM6]

For 79¢ a gallon it makes you wonder how pure store bought distilled water is.

[ThreeCW]

I use our house Reverse Osmosis (RO) water in lead acid batteries. We don't have a De-Ionization (DI) filter on our house system.

Here is an interesting discussion about RODI water:

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/is...-drink.661030/

[NOLA26]

I've read almost every thread on RODI water for reef tanks when I was getting into the hobby. There are a lot of biologists on those forums that will give you a ton of scientific information about RODI water and its benefits. But almost none of them mention other uses for RODI, like in batteries.

[_ogre]

Originally Posted by WalterM6

For 79¢ a gallon it makes you wonder how pure store bought distilled water is.

you make a good point there walterm6, i always buy distilled water, but now you have me questioning that. we have well water and ro filter for drinking water. i've never thought that would be good 'nuff. i'd be interested to hear more thoughts

[ThreeCW]

Originally Posted by _ogre

we have well water and ro filter for drinking water. i've never thought that would be good 'nuff. i'd be interested to hear more thoughts

Try doing a "home" test of your RO (reverse osmosis) water as follows:

Put a few drops of your RO water and a few drops of your regular tap water on a shiny plate (I found that a darker plate works better). Let the water evaporate from the plate and compare where the RO water evaporated from to where the tap water evaporated from.

When I do this, I see absolute nothing (no ring, no solid precipitates) where the RO water was ... as it should be, since RO water should not contain any solids.

Our regular tap water (well water) is high in dissolved solids and leaves a ring of dissolved solids plus some haze in the ring.

If your RO water samples shows no solids on the plate, I believe it is safe to use in your batteries

If your RO water shows a ring of dissolved solids, it is probably time to change your RO filter.

For those of you that use distilled water, your might want to do the same test to ensure your distilled water also contains no dissolved solids.