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Batter[i]ed
Jul. 1st, 2010 09:11 pmSquatting and crawling on the floor to work on the UPSes at the bottom of a communications rack is, well, not pleasant. Especially when the mechanical room is not air conditioned.
The batteries did get replaced however. Took most of the morning, though. As predicted by others, the old batteries were swollen and resisted being slid out of the UPS units. They were not, fortunately, as bad as some reported by Corelog a week or so back. I managed to get the drawer to slide out after much tugging and wiggling. The real irritation was APC's idea of sticking the batteries into the tray with gobs of double-sided tape. They had to be carefully pried loose, which wasn't at all easy but I did eventually manage it for all eight batteries. Disconnecting the cables was tricky too, requiring the insertion of a small screwdriver in just the right spot (unmarked and unmentioned in the manual, since they expect you to swap the entire tray, cables and all. Of course that costs four times as much as just the batteries themselves.) Anyway, it's all working now. Set aside the badly swollen batteries for recycling, brought home the four that still looked OK though I suspect they'll turn out to be unsalvageable. Also brought home another dead UPS, one made by Alpha (no connection to Digital Equipment) that used to be part of our telephone system until it died. Turns out it isn't really dead. I took it apart, found that its batteries were also badly deteriorated and swollen so that getting them out is going to be very difficult. But I plugged in two of the batteries from the rack mounted UPSes and the charging and indicator circuits came back to life. Apparently its own batteries are so badly deteriorated that they present an open circuit to the charger, while these not-quite-so-far-gone batteries still at least appear to be taking a charge. I'm going to test it again using a couple of tractor batteries in series. If it passes the self test that way, I'll order new batteries for it and find a way to remove the dead ones.
The moral of this story seems to be that you shouldn't wait for the battery failure indicator to go on before replacing UPS batteries. Most manufacturers recommend replacing them after three years of service, whether they are still operating correctly or not. I'm now inclined to agree that this is a good idea. The plain batteries are not really so expensive. Most of the ones I've installed this week were only $15 each. Long distance shipping will kill you though, so try to find a local supplier. APC and Alpha units are designed for battery replacement by the lay user. TrippLite, though in the past I thought their electronics were superior, doesn't seem to support user replacement at all. Sending a 60 pound UPS back to the factory for battery replacement is both counter-intuitive and impractical.
I also have a recycling issue now. What to do with a hundred or so pounds of worn out lead acid "no maintenance" batteries. Obviously we don't just toss them into the landfill any more.
The batteries did get replaced however. Took most of the morning, though. As predicted by others, the old batteries were swollen and resisted being slid out of the UPS units. They were not, fortunately, as bad as some reported by Corelog a week or so back. I managed to get the drawer to slide out after much tugging and wiggling. The real irritation was APC's idea of sticking the batteries into the tray with gobs of double-sided tape. They had to be carefully pried loose, which wasn't at all easy but I did eventually manage it for all eight batteries. Disconnecting the cables was tricky too, requiring the insertion of a small screwdriver in just the right spot (unmarked and unmentioned in the manual, since they expect you to swap the entire tray, cables and all. Of course that costs four times as much as just the batteries themselves.) Anyway, it's all working now. Set aside the badly swollen batteries for recycling, brought home the four that still looked OK though I suspect they'll turn out to be unsalvageable. Also brought home another dead UPS, one made by Alpha (no connection to Digital Equipment) that used to be part of our telephone system until it died. Turns out it isn't really dead. I took it apart, found that its batteries were also badly deteriorated and swollen so that getting them out is going to be very difficult. But I plugged in two of the batteries from the rack mounted UPSes and the charging and indicator circuits came back to life. Apparently its own batteries are so badly deteriorated that they present an open circuit to the charger, while these not-quite-so-far-gone batteries still at least appear to be taking a charge. I'm going to test it again using a couple of tractor batteries in series. If it passes the self test that way, I'll order new batteries for it and find a way to remove the dead ones.
The moral of this story seems to be that you shouldn't wait for the battery failure indicator to go on before replacing UPS batteries. Most manufacturers recommend replacing them after three years of service, whether they are still operating correctly or not. I'm now inclined to agree that this is a good idea. The plain batteries are not really so expensive. Most of the ones I've installed this week were only $15 each. Long distance shipping will kill you though, so try to find a local supplier. APC and Alpha units are designed for battery replacement by the lay user. TrippLite, though in the past I thought their electronics were superior, doesn't seem to support user replacement at all. Sending a 60 pound UPS back to the factory for battery replacement is both counter-intuitive and impractical.
I also have a recycling issue now. What to do with a hundred or so pounds of worn out lead acid "no maintenance" batteries. Obviously we don't just toss them into the landfill any more.
