Does Placing your Car Battery on the floor Damage it?
If you’ve ever been told that you shouldn’t keep your car battery on the floor for long periods of time, you may be wondering if there’s any truth to this claim. After all, it seems logical that leaving your car battery on a cold, concrete floor without any insulation could potentially damage it.
Interestingly enough, there is some scientific evidence to support this assertion. A study conducted by researchers at McMaster University found that batteries placed on bare concrete floors lost charge more quickly than those placed on insulated surfaces. It’s a good idea to keep your car battery off the ground. If it sits on a cold, concrete floor without any insulation, it could discharge quickly or cause damage.
Car batteries are hard plastic (Polypropylene) that acts as an electrical insulator.
Your automobile battery is an essential component of your vehicle, supplying electrical power to it through terminals on top of the battery. These terminals have no contact with the ground, which is how car batteries are designed today.
However, that wasn’t always the case. In the past, car batteries were constructed with wooden cases.
This meant that if they were left on the floor for long periods of time, the dampness in the floor would soak into the wooden box and cause current to flow onto the floor. This would gradually deplete your car battery over time. The rubber used for the battery casings was changed to a tougher variety, but this did not resolve the issue.
A wet concrete floor can cause an electrical current that discharges the cells internally, due to a reaction between the concrete and the carbon in the rubber.
