Reconditioning Rechargeable Batteries

A year or so ago, I purchased a cordless vacuum to use on my sailboat. There are a lot of brine flies out on the Great Salt Lake and they love to infiltrate the cabin of my boat where they die within a few hours. I used to just sweep them up but having a vacuum is much easier. The only problem is that rechargeable batteries don't last forever. Over the Memorial Day weekend we went to the boat only to discover the vacuum lasted about a minute or two before dying.

Sometimes the rechargeable batteries still have a charge and it is the charge controller that thinks it is dead. I brought the vacuum down to my office so I could play with it throughout the day. The first thing I discovered is that I could plug the charging cord into the vacuum and it would immediately tell me I had most of a charge. I quickly unplugged the vacuum and would use it for a minute before it died. I continued doing this 3 or 4 more times until the charge only lasted a second or two. Then I let the vacuum charge for several hours.

I hoped by running the battery down to truly nothing would reset the charge controller and I could get more than a minute or two of use. Just to get an accurate reading I started a stopwatch as I turned on the vacuum and began cleaning my office carpet. One minute and six seconds later, the vacuum shut off with a dead battery.

I looked up the user manual on the Internet and quickly scanned the entire book. I didn't find any help about how to replace the internal battery. About the only hope I came across is that it told me to take the device apart and remove the battery before throwing it away. The good news there is that I should be able to easily take the unit apart and remove the battery. Unfortunately the battery is soldered into the printed circuit board and is not meant to be replaced.

Fortunately I have been able to put the vacuum back together and now have to decide how much effort I want to put into fixing it. It would not be difficult to cut the wires from the battery and solder in a new one. Then again, for the price I paid for the thing, it might be easier to buy a new vacuum. Naturally it would be a different one. One with better batteries.