BOLTON, England, June 17, 2020: Battery watering is one of those tasks that gets kicked down the road until it’s too late. Well, it used to be until our range of SmartBlinky electrolyte indicators became industry standard and everybody knew exactly when to water their batteries.

For some, however, that’s where the conversation stopped, they knew when to put water into a battery so problem solved right? Certainly, watering the batteries at the right time is half of the battle won, but it doesn’t take away from the fact that the task of watering the batteries still needs to be carried out. This often arduous, mostly time-consuming and sometimes dangerous task could easily see a huge portion of a maintenance budget lost to the many days and hours required to water batteries by hand, especially on a medium-sized fleet.

Here at Philadelphia Scientific, our ethos is Making Batteries Better. That doesn’t just mean making batteries last longer and achieve maximum performance, it means making everything to do with those lead-acid batteries better too, including maintenance tasks.

With the term ‘Blinky’ being coined for all electrolyte indicators available on the market, ours still being the original and the best, we knew we had battery monitoring down to a T. So our attention turned to the task of actually watering batteries. Our Gun-X battery watering gun is perfect for single or very small fleets. Using the Gun-X does still take some time to fill a battery fully and we saw a need for simple to install, easy to use battery filling system for those with a few more batteries in a small to medium-sized fleet.

It’s from that space, and with our expertise and knowledge that the AFS was created. The AFS - Aqua Filling System is the best battery watering system on the market for those looking to save maintenance costs by having a quick and easy to use battery filling system.

The AFS battery filling system is a float-based system. This means that the flow of water into the battery is controlled by a buoyant float mechanism, which rides on top of the electrolyte. As the battery is being filled, water flows into each cell through individual AFS valves. As the electrolyte level rises, the float rises with it and shuts off the valve when the correct electrolyte level is reached. While the force generated by this process is small, it is enough to shut off the valve in most conventional applications. The shut-off mechanism has been designed to shut off precisely under a wide range of operating pressures, which means that it will work with almost all facility water sources. Our adjustable float height setting design is the key to our exclusive universal product design. With the AFS battery filling system, you don't need to worry about what having a multitude of float sizes in stock for your battery. 

The AFS makes battery watering safe, easy and affordable, as we designed it from the ground up with those key targets in mind. It fills an industrial forklift lead-acid battery in one-tenth the time of hand watering, which means that these systems typically pay for themselves in under a year. The system also improves safety as it prevents exposure to electrolyte while filling.

The AFS has also been designed to work with our range of battery watering carts as a water source, one of the bigger and easier to use carts being our HydroFill Pro. The HydroFill Pro even features it’s own integrated HydroPure Deionizer Cartridge so you can fill your batteries with pure water. Pure water is vital to ensure any particles and minerals don’t interfere with the chemical reaction taking place in a lead-acid battery.

With time on site now a commodity that is becoming more difficult to either afford or sanction, the quicker a critical maintenance task can be completed the better it is for asset owners and battery room managers alike. Find out more about the AFS battery filling system by visiting it's product webpage: www.phlsci.com/product-lines/aqua-filling-system/afs