So, three days before I left Africa for my little sojourn in the States, I noticed that the batteries on my solar power system weren’t holding a charge as well as usual. I concluded that in order to fix this I would have to…
DUM DA DUM DUM
touch the batteries.
True confession-I don’t like touching car batteries. There’s acid in them. There could be acid on them! I could touch acid, and then touch my clothes or my eyes or my cat…not much good comes of touching the batteries.
So. I go to unscrew the little cap on one of the cells to see if I need to add distilled water. As you can see, the battery is filthy, because dusting it would involve touching it.
Apparently I haven’t looked at my battery either, because there was this little sticker on the cap, in English even. Oops.
So, I take off all the little stickers, and start merrily topping up the distilled water in the batteries. I have two sets of batteries-one on a table in my office next to all of my computer equipment and language materials, and the other on my kitchen floor. I’m a little paranoid about the acid (big surprise) while I’m filling the ones on the kitchen floor, because I notice my eyes stinging. Turns out it was sweat dripping into my eyes, and not horribly toxic and dangerous and nasty acid fumes. I hurried up and finished my little filling job.
I’m really glad that I overfilled the batteries on the kitchen floor and not the ones in my office.
Note to self:
If you put too much water in a battery, it overflows.
A lot.
Of acid.
Everywhere.
Thankfully, no damage was done, and the cement floor around the batteries and out my back door has never been cleaner.