Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Car battery question, sort of

I have a food plot sprayer that sits on my utv or pick up tail gate and it has a 10’ boom. The sprayer pump requires 12V to operate.
I know I can run it off the vehicle battery.

Question, if I buy a 12V auto battery and it’s fully charged, will it run this sprayer for about 1.5 hours without being recharged?

Yes

Buy a "deep cycle" battery intended to be used on a bass boat trolling motor- - - -the bigger the better. Deep cycle batteries are built to operate down to 25% of their total capacity without damage by repeatedly being discharged/recharged. Automotive starting batteries will fail quickly if they're cycled up and down below 75%. Another option would be to buy two 6 volt deep cycle golf cart batteries and run them in series to get 12V. Those things have a massive amount of reserve capacity.

Don't use an auto battery for this application.

Car batteries are designed to give lots of current for a short time. Using them to deliver steady current over a long time ruins them.

If you like lead acid batteries, an RV battery is a much better choice. A LiFePO4 battery is more expensive, but is a much better choice.

Yes this

You'll get 1.5 hrs out of it. You're pulling 5-10 amps.

Get a deep cycle Marine and RV battery. Sam's club or Costco is usually the cheapest place to find them. An auto battery isn't the best choice and while a lithium might be a better choice I'm not paying $700 for a battery to spray a food plot.

You could run it off the truck's charging system but I wouldn't run it off the UTV. I fried the transformer rectifier on my ATV running a sprayer hooked to the battery, ATV/UTV batteries are too small and the charging system isn't up to the current draw.

Yes on the deep cycle. Since it's not a critical application like running a trolling motor, it's not terribly important if you choose a lead/acid, AGM or Lithium - except for cost. They will run in that order in price. One other minor factor is that you might need a new charger for other than lead/acid. Most chargers now will come with a switch to charge AGM batteries, but you probably would have to upgrade chargers to properly and safely charge a lithium battery.

You can figure how large a battery you need. Find the draw of what you're running and multiply that by the run time to get the amp hour capacity of the battery you need. If your pump draws 10 amps and you need two hours, you'd theoretically need only a 20 amp-hour battery. Except that batteries don't work well down to 0%. Plan to use less than half of capacity. In the example I gave, I'd be looking at no less than 50 amp-hours capacity.

The pump isn’t running constantly is it?

I am using a auto battery for my food plot sprayer and a 12v pump for irrigation needs with no trouble.

Years ago I needed a 12v battery for my camping needs. I run my cpap and phones off a 12v battery when I tent hunt or hunt with friends in Colorado mountains.

Local Parts store recommended Deep cycle, they were crap only ran 3 or 4 nights and needed to be replaced after 2 years. Switched to standard battery which would ran for 8+ days and lasted 4 to 5 years before replacement. Used that setup for 20+ years with good results.

Only thing the deep cycle did was make more $$$ for the auto parts store

Most auto stores have used batteries cheap buy 2 and pigtail them together

45 bucks, small compact and has more than enough ooomph for 1.5 amps for 1-2 hours.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B097BRKCQ...yZWN0JmRvTm90TG9nQ2xpY2s9dHJ1ZQ&th=1

Using a starting battery to run that pump would be like trying to pull a plow with a Kentucky Derby thoroughbred.

If the pump pulls only 1.5 amps, buy what Swifty linked. But do check that your charger can do LiPo batteries.

A standard SLA charger will work on LiPo batteries as long as it doesn’t have a de-sulfation mode.

I have a water tank for extended dry camping days I got from my FIL. What he did was take a trailer connector and wire the pump to the trailer connection. Wired into the running lights, he had everything he needed to refill.

I run a sprayer off my Mule or whatever I want to spray from.

Have a cord long enough to plug into battery clamps on the vehicle battery.

Has not failed me yet. Much better than a cigarette lighter plug.

You’re the only person on this planet with that experience.

Kind of expensive, but I've moved on to using Lifepo4 batteries for my HAM radios, camping CPAP etc. Less than half the weight, but man do they work !

I picked up a 110 AH agm deep cycle from a guy that worked for a cable company. They used them for backups in the head-in buildings. They get replaced at certain intervals regardless.

This one has been going strong for 12 years, I do put the auto charger on it as soon as I finish spraying and top it off in the winter. Probably should just get a maintainer an leave it on it.

The pump pulls about 8-10 amps, ran it a couple hours yesterday.

Not sure a starting battery would last very long with discharges like that.