I lost 300 pounds this month while eating all of my favorite foods

I took my old lead acid batteries to Walmart this morning for disposal, and they were kind enough to take them out of the truck for me. I was very thankful for that because I've been handling those 300 pounds worth of batteries enough in the last couple of days that my back was starting to complain, and when I don't listen to its complaints my back has a way of exacting corporal punishment on me for at least a week.

My next problem, and it's a very minor one, is to get rid of the large ice chest that the battery's sat in. Fortunately I didn't buy an incredibly expensive Yeti ice chest, I bought a Walmart ice chest for about 30 bucks. And it has served me well for the last four years as a home for my four Trojan batteries.

When I first got the batteries I had planned on building some kind of a housing for them myself because I knew that since they were in the same compartment as my solar controller and my inverter they had to be isolated so the gases from the batteries wouldn't corrode my electronics.

As usual since I tend to over build things, my battery housing plans started getting more and more complicated and expensive. They sell battery housings but I couldn't find anything that was reasonably priced and fit my particular situation, but I was always on the lookout for something that might work so I had the battery dimensions with me at all times.

Then one day I was cruising through Walmart and saw a pallet of large ice chests in the middle of the aisle and they were on sale. I ran over to the hardware aisle and borrowed a tape measure off the rack, came back and measured the ice chests and they couldn't have been more perfect if they had built them for my four batteries, I couldn't believe my luck.

I put the ice chest in the front compartment of the Arctic Fox, drilled some inch and a half holes near the top, put some hoses in the holes and routed them outside to get rid of the gases, and Jack strapped the ice chest to the floor.

So now the Trojan T145 batteries are gone, the ice chest is sitting in the driveway in pieces, and a new storage area has opened up for my collection of vintage bowling balls.... if I can just figure a way to tie them down.

                   Theboondork