Charging Your Lawnmower Battery

One of those typically annoying situation is if you’ve planned to mow the lawn, the sun is shining, when you turn the key and all you hear is …. well ….. nothing, due to a flat or discharged battery. Perhaps it wasn’t used for some time or your battery is getting older, either way, there a number of reasons why you have to charge your Lawnmower battery.

Assuming your battery is in a good enough condition to accept a charge, then the following steps will help you get your battery charged and ready to mow those lawns again very soon!

Finding The Correct Battery Charger

Most lawnmowers and lawn tractors use 12 volt batteries, some models built before 1980 might use a 6 volt battery, if this is the case please consult your owners manual.

Use an intelligent battery charger that matches the voltage of your battery. Use a battery charger of less than 10 amps, to avoid any potential damage to the battery due to the battery charger being to powerful.

Battery Charging

• Always make sure you are wearing safety protection glasses for your eyes and gloves for your hands. Latex gloves can provide the dexterity that you need whilst protecting your hands.
• Make sure your lawnmower or lawn tractor is parked on a flat surface, turn off the engine and the moving parts, blades etc have stopped.
• Remove the seat or lift the engine cover to access your lawnmower or lawn tractor battery, if your battery is not visible please check your user manual to locate it.
• Once the battery is located make sure the battery and the battery terminals are clean and dry.
• Make sure your battery charger is the correct power for your battery, in most cases your charger should be approximately 10% capacity of your battery. Example: if your battery was a 50Ah battery, then your charger would ideally be a 5 amp charger.
• Connect your intelligent battery charger to your battery by first connecting the positive (Red) lead to the positive terminal on your battery.
• Connect the negative (Black) lead to the negative terminal on your battery.
• Then you can plug your intelligent battery charger into the mains power and turn on the battery charger. If you have various modes on your intelligent battery charger then select the correct mode for your battery. If you are unsure, please refer to your owners manual.
• With intelligent battery chargers, once they have charged the battery fully they will switch to a float charge, meaning this just keeps a pulse charge going into the battery until you’re ready to take it off charge and use it. With this type of charger you can leave you battery charger on for 12 hours or so and then your battery should be fully charged.

Disconnecting Your Battery Charger

• When your battery if fully charged and you want to disconnect the battery charger, make sure you turn the power to the charger off at the wall (the mains power outlet).
• Remove the negative (Black) battery lead first.
• Remove the positive (Red) battery lead.
• At this point it would be a good idea to test the battery with a battery tester, if you have one, or take it to a professional who’ll test it for you.
• Once you’ve had your battery tested and it has passed, you’ll be ready to install the battery back into your lawnmower.