In the UK we get 5 years warranty and most manufactures will honour that, if the battery has been charged correctly and topped up with deionised water. I have never heard of anyone using tap water for battery's this is a very interesting issue. Maybe one of the big battery manufactures could shed some light on this topic.

I have seen batteries over 12 years old still working (in freezer applications) i think they lasted long because they actually cooled down when done charging. They used tap water.

I always say: any water is better than no water.

In all my years in the industry I have never seen any battery manufacturer volunteer to fix a battery under warranty. They have always wanted to charge for it until you plead your case. We had a customer who was spent the extra money for a battery that was warranteed for 7 years instead of the usual 5 years. The battery failed at five years and we asked the manufacturer why anyone would pay the extra money for the 7 year battery if it was only going to last for 5. After much discussion they agreed to give a better deal on a new replacement battery.
A battery warranty is like a dock leveler warranty. Unless you have the daily records of what the hour meter reading and specific gravity reading every time you charge the battery it gives the manufacturer an out. With dock levelers it is up ti you to prove that you have never driven over the leveler with an overloaded truck and you have never driven over it more tha X times per day.

ya i generally suggest distilled water too but if i don't have any i will use regular water if i have to.

pickle juice? lol... man that vendor was reaching trying to not honor that warranty weren't they? Sounds like a typical battery vendor. I wonder what kind of test he used to derrive that analysis? a sniff-o-meter? 'Hey it smells like pickles, they must have put pickle juice in it'

Laughs

I agree that the difference may be negligible but as a professional I always recommend distilled or ionized water. You never know when a warranty claim may happen & we all know how fragile a warranty can be when it comes to the vendor finding a way to get out of it.

I once had my battery vendor accuse my customer of topping off their pallet jack battery with pickle juice since that was what business the customer was in & the battery failed with about 6 months. I had to get the battery acid tested (which the battery vendor paid for in the end) to prove no such additive was in the acid. Had there been any minerals in the acid I'm not sure the warranty claim would have gone thru.

yep RCA i tend to agree
the time it takes for the sulfate and sediment to build up the difference is minimal in the end.

I think the only advantage one would get from using distilled/ionized water would be conforming to SOME mfg's standards for battery care. From a warranty standpoint it may gain you some advantage but most of the time battery warranties are gone way before problems occur so.......

Picked up a lil tidbit of info once in a training course in which batteries were discussed and as edward noted above about the water. A person asked the one putting on the course what kind of water and ect. His simple answer was that the average life af a battery is about 5 yrs and the use of distilled versus good 'ol lime water was 3 months. After 5 years or 60 months and about 3-5 gallons of distilled stuff a week, that averages out to about 550.00 to 900.00 spent on distilled fodder@70 cents a gal. I always use plain tap water unless the customer requests distilled or the ion variant. Just my 1 1/2 cents worth.

found a fairly understandable description of the differences.
h t t p://w w w.ehow.com/info_8053808_difference-between-deionized-distilled-water.html
(remove the spaces i added in the url to make the link work)

like edward said, its just the difference in the process and the equipment used to make 'pure water'.
but after reading that article actually ionized water is less pure than distilled water, at least that's what this article conveyed.

In either case the whole idea behind using 'distilled water' or 'ionozed water' is to use water that is not contaminated with the minerals that raw water usually contains. These minerals if used in a battery will bond to the plates and will also break loose during charging and discharging and settle to the bottom of the battery cells creating/adding to the sulfate buildup in the base of the cell that happens over time during charging and discharging.

An example of a sulfated battery is an older battery that when watering you look into the cell and see the light colored build up on the cell plates and the protective barrier on top of the cells, this crusty looking buildup is the minerals and sulfate left behind after repeated charging and discharging.
This build up will still occur even using distilled or ionized water but will be lessened considerably because the processed water has less minerals to create the contaminate that causes the buildup. I actually had an article that showed the differences and explained this in better detail but i can't seem to locate it at the moment (DOH!)

So even though it is recommended to use 'distilled or ionized water' , yes regular tap water or 'raw' water can be used but is not recommended.

Just FYI... to everyone... a simple google or bing search will find you just about anything you want to know about industrial battery maintenance info.

what sort of battery warranty do they give on your side of the pond? over here, they would blame the battery charging operation for virtually any failure of a battery (and in my humble opinion, would be correct 99.99% of the time)

Would never dream of using tap water always demineralised warranty on battery would go out the window if tap water was used

De-ioniized water is not safe for human consumption, but is safe for batteries.
As far as the question of what is the differences; De-ionzed water is "more pure" H2O than even distilled water, which is more pure than tap water.
by "more pure" i mean will leave less residue once the H2O is evaporated away, leaving only the previously dissolved solids behind.

Yes, it is safe to use de-ionized water in batteries.
It is also safe to use distilled water in batteries.
The difference between de-ionized water and distilled water is the equipment and technology processes used to produce it.
As was already by other members, tap water is OK for batteries if it is safe for human consumption.

naturally, water with less contaminates will leave less residue as it evaporates, and over the life of a -properly- maintained battery , it may be possible to have 100s of gallons of water evaporate, and be replaced.
But -very- few % of batteries really are properly maintained. so the difference is not worth the effort to provide de-ionized water, or even distilled water, if the tap water is clean enough to drink.

I think the issue of using distilled water in a battery came from the days when the local water supply used lead pipes. Since most municipalities don't use them anymore I think it is perfectly alright to use tap water now.