Building manager tells me to remove battery tender

This occurred to me as well. It's amazing how many people feel threatened by someone else's success or good fortune.

 

I live in an apartment with my three 308GTBs, I had the option of a totally private garage though.

I leave the Tender on the Ducati, the lights on 24/7, and a stereo playing the blues...

It IS unmetered electrical consumption, and I'd imagine that's the real issue chapping their azz, but you pay extra for the parking, $90 a month in my case, and if they aren't 'covering costs" on that rate I'm sure they'll rethink it.

To the OP, give up, drive the car more.......keep it at your gf's place??

 

That's what I do, with the unregistered Ducati, LOL!

 

You have to suck up HARD to those Leasing Office ladies.

Thankfully they are all HOT!
So I don't mind too much.....

I get the most interesting packages..........Ferrari hood and body repair parts, promo items from Shell (give out RainX, etc.).

Get them on your side!!!

 

If he pays a monthly maintenance fee how is this "stealing" electricity ?

If this is "stealing" then if he turns on a lightbulb in lobby bathroom or storage room that would also be "stealing"

 

Offer to pay to have the line brought to your space and pay for the electricity. Is it possible to get a parking space closer to an outlet?

I would be cooperative not combative. Go to the people in charge and see what you can work out. After all if you pay your rent on time and do not create other problems in the building, they will probably value your business. Good renters are hard to find.

Hope the solar charger works or you can find winter storage.

BTW I keep my tender plugged all year in as an abudance of caution.

Good luck and may the horse be with you.

 

Unlike you, I am not a lawyer but as far as I know this is the legal definition of stealing:

"STEAL--
the wrongful or willful taking of money or property belonging to someone else with intent to deprive the owner of its use or benefit either temporarily or permanently. No particular type of movement or carrying away is required. "

I guess it comes down to intent... He was depriving the owner of those kwh.

 

As a Ferrari owner who parks his car in a high rise garage similar to yours, let me chime in:

1) You're in this building for the long haul, so it is paramount that your relationship with the garage manager and his team is on the best possible level. Forget your petty problem, think longterm and how vulnerable your car is where it is. All kinds of things could happen to it. Keying is one of them. So become the manager's best friend. My garage guys get a x-mas gift and they treat me and more importantly my car with respect.

2) In our garage some of the exotics indeed have trickle chargers year round on them. My car doesn't because it is too far away from an outlet.

3) I'm no fan of storing the car off site. For one I like to work on the car and second I'm a strong believer in maintenance driving. At least once a month (ideally more often) to rotate the tires and lubricate all the mechanical parts.

4) In our garage there is a rule that demands all cars to be able to drive (emergency etc). So I couldn't just leave the car sitting there without an operating battery.

5) I bought a second battery which I keep charged in my apartment. The battery in the car lasts about 2.5 months, so somewhere in January I'll swap them and that should get me through the winter.

6) You probably have a condo association dictating the rules. So trying to "escalate" would only work if you go in front of your condo board. And whether they are sympathetic to an "exotic" issue is doubtful. Try it, but don't get your hopes high.

Whatever you do, make sure #1 is taken care of first.

 

Excellent post Andreas...

If I can have offshore ice chests in the kitchen, he should be able to keep the spare battery somewhere....

 

This is probably a very simple case of, if you give them an inch they'll take a mile. The owner/manager are simply heading off a possible problem with other tennants wanting changes too. I once rented a space in my commercial building to a small construction company. The space has its own forced air system for heat. The electric panel was on my meter. I offered to let them have the electric at no charge. So what do these guys do.......they turn off the forced air gas system, and use electric space heaters on my dime. They had no problem leaving the space heaters on 24-7.
They were thrown out, and to this day I am a complete ******.

 

If this space is lighted all the time, would it be possible to use a solar charger like many dealerships use to keep batteries up on the lots? Local dealer (not F-car) sets these on the dash, plugs in to the lighter socket. I don't know if these are as practical or even useable for your car. Just an alternate thought. Any thoughts on potential damage from these?

 

Hello Everyone!

I am not a combative persion by nature. I said hello to the building manager this morning, in spite of misgivings.

I removed the power line last night. I'm probably going to put the line in over saturday night once a fortnight, or when I go downstairs to clean something or other to keep car condition tip top.

To be clear, my claim that the door self lock, the battery dies after 7 days etc are to tilt things in my favour. The point raised above is another one for my book - as this surely IS a health and safety issue in the case of a fire.

"4) In our garage there is a rule that demands all cars to be able to drive (emergency etc). So I couldn't just leave the car sitting there without an operating battery."

Perhaps the insurers require that it can be driven out of a garage if needed too?

There were other people in the garage doing the same thing, but last night I could see that they had put their lines away too. Perhaps they have had a clamp down. One guy had a massive lead, but only used 5 metres of it, the rest was left strewn around on the floor or covered up. There are approximately 50 sockets down there so I actually think the purpose in mind was car tenders, as any contractor performing maintainance would undoubtedly have an extension cord.

Regarding the stealing of electricity. I would be amenable to install my own plug based KWH meter so that I know what to pay, or just offer £10 upfront which will more than cover the milliamps that will be used over the next 4/5 months.

Lastly, I have found the name and address of the appartment tennants association, who also happens to sit on the block board. I am going to enquire as to what could be done going forward to allow me to keep the battery topped up. Secondly I am going to raise the question as to whether the building managers handling of this matter was acceptable. He was not looking for a solution, so far as he is concerned there is no possibility of me doing this, and expects me to take his word as law, which is frustrating. Being told I was "cheeky" and my problem is "I dont like the answer" when I ask for exactly which health and saftey rule is demeaning and not on for someone who is supposed to assist and lubricate the inevitable frictions of many people living in one block!


Cheers to all!

N

 

I'll keep them coming
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Did they put in writing that it was ok to install on the weekends? If so, I think that is what you are looking for. A weekend charge once a month should keep your battery strong.

 

Use a battery charger(quick charger that then becomes a tender) on weekends rather than a battery tender. Just make sure nothing additional is sapping power through the week. I doubt that this practice would diminish your battery life in the least and would be similar to driving it on a fairly regular basis.

 

If they keep the lights on in the garage 24/7, maybe a solar battery charger would work.

http://store.sundancesolar.com/trchforcatrr.html

They would not have to worry about wires, and you would be still be using their electricity.

If it works, it would be a win/win.

 

I don't think there is enough light for that.

 

Forget it.

 

I kind of like this solution as the least hassle of everything:

1) The "jumper battery" can be very easily removed to the apartment,

2) Should do the job over the winter with scant attention,

3) If insufficient for long-term charging, just use as a "jumper" in the spring.

4) In the summer, keep it in the apartment plugged into the wall outlet

5) Keep it with you on the road for emergencies.

6) Takes confrontation with management out of the picture.

7) You wind up with a valuable emergency device for small money

Scott

 

Just buy a house with a garage and do what ever you like. Condo's are for women.

 

This quote:

"The battery becomes flat after approx 7 days, which is standard for this car."

can't be right.

Let me show some math and testing I did for my Lamborghini Diablo about this subject..

Electricity is measured in volts and amps. Basically, if you think of electric wires as water pipes, the voltage is equal to the water pressure and the amps are equal to the flow rate. Car batteries are always around 12 volts so measuring amps is all that really matters when looking for how much power is being drained when the car is off.

One of the measurements of a battery is amp-hours. A typical car battery is around 50 amp hours (40-100 is normal).

Now, let's say you leave your dome light on. How long will it take the battery to die? If you have 12 watt dome light on your car, it will pull around 1 amp (12 watts / 12 volts = 1 amp). If your battery had 50 amp hours, it can power 1 amp for 50 hours. So, in about 2 days, the battery would be dead if you left your dome light on with the car off. If you leave it on overnight, no big deal (unless you have a really bright dome light )

A battery may also lose 1% of its capacity per day doing nothing. And you car pulls a small amount of amps to keep various computers and radios powered even when the car is off. So, it might be a little less than 2 days to a dead battery if you leave the dome light on.

If you leave the headlights on, you have more of a problem because headlights can run maybe 60 watts or so and there are two of them. So, let's say they pull 120 watts when on. That's 10 amps (120 watts / 12 volts = 10 amps). If you have a 50 amp hour battery, it would die in 5 hours if the car was off and the headlights were left on.

So, how about the Lamborghini? Mine was tested to pull 0.011 amps with no radio or clock plugged in and the car off. With the radio and clock connected, it pulls .044 amps when the car is off.

My car also has an electric disconnect. You unscrew it and it shuts off even more electronics. You are supposed to unscrew it if you are storing the car. It is a little annoying because when you unscrew it, you lose the AC temperature setting (but not radio settings or clock).

Is it useful?

With the electric disconnect unscrewed, it pulls .031 amps. Really not much different from the .044 amps it pulls with it screwed in unless you are storing it a long time.

Since the car pulls .044 amps when it is off, if I had a 50 Ah (amp hour) battery, it would take 1136 hours or 47 days for the battery to die if I just let it sit there. With the electric disconnect unscrewed, it would be 67 days.

However, it will die a little quicker than that because of the implicit capacity loss. In any case, if storing the car for a while, charging it up once a month with the disconnect unscrewed while stored would be fine. Leaving it for 2 months without doing anything wouldn't be fine.

Forgetting the tender issue for the moment, what you need to do if your battery is dying in 7 days is check how many amps your electricial system is pulling with the car off. If it is pulling too many, you can start pulling fuses to see what is causing the draw. Also, check the amp hours on your battery and do the math to see how long it takes until the battery dies.

If the draw is low and the math shows it dying faster than it is, it is either the charging system or the battery.

You can read this for more information:

http://www.aa1car.com/library/battery_runs_down.htm

I can't believe it is standard for the battery to die in 7 days. It should be able to sit there at least a month. There are rumors about Ferraris and Lamborghinis having large current draws when they are stored but I've never seen anyone with any test results.

I actually had the testing done on mine and those are the actual numbers above. If you test yours out, you'll figure out the actual amount of time it will take for your battery to die instead of having to guess and you'll also find whether you have a problem with your charging system, battery, etc.

Additionally, if you are testing things, you can see what pulling the radio and/or clock fuse does to current draw. Pulling those might be easier than disconnecting something else that is pulling current while the car is just sitting there.

 

Slip him a few bucks every month and be done with it. check if you could plug your Tender into one of those charging units that has its own electrical supply! If it can't have an electrician modify it for you.
Docf

 

If you go over his head, don't be surprised if your paint job doesn't hold up over the winter. Guy sounds like he's gotta be the winner and is gonna take it out on you(or car) somehow.

I'm surprised your car has been unmolested up to this point, being in an open garage.

Maybe you could throw in a sacrificial/used up battery, lock the doors and keep the real battery elsewhere until you need to get it all going again???