Minivator Stairlift Issues With Batteries Keep Going Flat Ask questions and find answers to many subjects relating to electrics and electrical work

[Canutakethis]

Mother in laws stairlift secondhand was working fine for 6 month then stopped working changed the batteries working fine for 2 months then stopped again called a stairlift company out who serviced it said batteries where no good so pain out £145.00 for service and new battery's worked fine for 3weeks stopped called them out again and told need a new psu charger so she paid out another £120.00 worked ok for another 3 weeks then stopped told battery's are dead said he never seen battery's that flat no reading wot so ever checked it all over power from psu ok power fine all way down track could not find a problem anywhere and he looked as I said battery's covered so no call out charge he spent nearly 3 hour s trying to find a fault so he could charge a call out and wot ever else i.e. Part that's wot I believe he said if it happens again it would need a new pc board and they cost from £400 up wards now 5 weeks later yep stopped working again grrr any one have any ideas please as to wot the problem could be as the old girl is 85 and really started to relying on the stairlift thanks

[ericmark]

I also had problems with stair lift batteries. The problem with valve regulated lead acid batteries (VRLA) is you can't top up water so over charging can kill the battery.

It's a fine line between leaving the battery flat so you get sulphation of plates, or over charge and it dries out, so what most chargers do is use a stage charging system.

What it does is charge flat out, (stage 1) until voltage is around 14.4 volt, then monitor the current while holding volts at 14.4 (stage 2) and when current drops to around a 1/20 of the amp hour rate of battery, then drop the volts to 13.2 volts (stage 3), also a timer in case the battery is faulty which will drop it to 13.2 after around 8 hours should the current not drop.

There are other methods like pulse charging, but unlikely that would be used with a stair lift.

However a much cheaper method is to simply charge at 13.4 volt and hope the lift is used often enough to stop over charging. With 13.4 volt battery life around 2 to 3 years, with stage charging more like 8 years.

Now with fork lifts the last stage is switch off, rather than an equalising charge, there are variations, with a hedge trimmer they say in instructions only charge for 16 hours, and use a rather hit and miss system.

I would guess the charger has got stuck on one of it's stages and is either over or under charging. For the repair man the problem is how do you monitor a process that takes 16 hours in a 1/2 hour call out slot?

Mothers lift has three charging points, so very easy to put a meter on one of the two not in use, just did it and it shows 29 volt DC, that's for 2 x 12 volt batteries, so 14.5 volt each, well over the 13.2 volt required to maintain the battery, I will assume something inside the chair drops the voltage, but would not be surprised to find no voltage dropper.

So step one measure the volts to stair lift, if like the Stenner we have, everything runs on battery, then it's recharged once parked.

[Canutakethis]

thank you for the info so I take it I will have to get a new pc board for the lift then ? as I was told it wil charge anywhere on the run where it stops not just on the bottom or top as I thought it did

[ericmark]

With mothers lift there are only three charge points, to charge anywhere it would need a pick up rail or flex the length of stair lift, not impossible but unlikely, the idea is in the event of a power cut it will still work, unlike a lift which you can't use in the event of a fire you should be able to use stair lift.

I am sure my mothers Stenner stair lift uses a simple 29 volt to charge battery which likely explains the short battery life, as explained it could have a complex charger, but unlikely.

[ericmark]

I wonder how you got on? Since this thread started my father-in-laws stair lift failed, a Levant what a load of rubbish, unlike the Stenner there was no option to manually wind the stair lift back to station, well could see where the crank could be inserted, but could not find how to release the brakes, my father-in-law had to climb over the stair lift to get to the toilet. Tried numbers and no answer, knew what was wrong, my father-in-law had switched it off, so batteries had gone flat, so quick cure off to Screwfix and new pair of batteries, needed to move it now, not wait until Monday. It then worked again, old batteries recharged and kept as spares, until he died then stair lift ripped out.

As with Stenner batteries charged top and bottom, but whole system was simply plugged in with a wallmart charger and coaxial charging plug into bottom of rail, with inside the rail cables to top for second charging point, the charging points were AC it was turned into DC inside the chair. The Stenner has DC charging points.

The Stenner was so much better, and yet I have complained about the Stenner, but the ThyssenKrupp Dutch stair lift was likely cheap, that cheap when we tried to sell it no one wanted it. It was a straight run up and down stairs, where Stenner turned corners and had three different gradients.

The Stenner had instructions on it telling firemen how to get it back to station manually, I just could not believe it when the Levant agents refused to tell us how to release the brake, they said because of safety reasons they could not tell us, and their agents could be called out when required, but they lived an hour away, can you imagine an old man of 90 who gets on stair lift to go to loo being left sitting there for an hour.

[nstevox]

Hi, I am having a similar issues. Batteries went flat, replaced them, says they are charging when at charging point but they keep going flat over a period of time. Anyone any ideas? What was the fix to this post? Thanks

[ericmark]

Father-in-law also had a stair lift, a German one, the problem with that one was simply my father-in-law switching it off, and it not being parked at correct point, mothers had DC at contacts, father-in-law AC at contacts.

When the batteries failed I had to swap them as lift stuck half way up the track blocking the stairs, but I then tried charging the old batteries off the lift, they recovered, and in the end were refitted to lift.

However to get them to charge I had to cheat, and put them in parallel with a good battery. They simply refused for 8 days to charge, then as if a switch was flicked, completely recharged.

With further experiments it seems this is common with a sulphated battery, and only way I knew what was going on was I used an energy monitor on the charger so it produced a computer graph of the charge rate.

So if I was trying to fault find today, I would supply it through an energy meter, what I suspect is a poor connection, it could be the contacts, it could also be a rectifier breaking down.

All it needs is a bit of muck on the contacts, it may make 9 times out of 10 then fail.