Overflowing

Cap
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. 

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