How often do you charge your power chair
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May 28, 2008 at 1:22 pm
I would appreciate to hear from those of you who own a power chair. How often do you have to recharge the battery? I got mine 4 months ago and I have to recharge it every night. Supposedly it can go 20 miles between charges but I seriously doubt that. Sometimes it seems difficult to go through a day. For example, two days ago we went to Best Buy first. I only went to one aisle to get a new earphone/microphone unit for my voice recognition program. After that we went to Sam’s Club where I drove around for a while. When we got back home I hardly made it up the driveway which is fairly steep.
This is very frustrating. Recently, we took it to the mobility place where we bought it. They couldn’t check the battery because it wasn’t fully charged but they assured me that charging it once a day was nothing unusual especially for heavy guy like me (220 lbs).
Anyhow, I would appreciate your feedback.
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May 28, 2008 at 1:41 pm
Norb,
I sent you an email about using the car to charge the battery while you are driving. You might want to ask the chair dealer, it that is the “heaviest” [amp hours] that they have.Jim C
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May 28, 2008 at 8:39 pm
I have a powerchair and mostly recharge it every night. I am not sure it needs it, but I rather be safe. I would guess that you will not be staying in motels (where you could charge it), but an alternative might be a campground. There are travel books that show all the campgrounds across the country (or probably you could get the same information on the internet). There are plug-in places with the campground and you can get a shower too.
An alternative suggestion is this. It is only supposed to take my electric wheelchair about two hours to charge fully. All these StarBucks have lots of outlets for computers. Why not go get a nice long relaxing cup of coffee and charge the chair–just discreetly plug it in. Or recharge when you are eating at a restaurant. For that you might need to ask permission, but probably it would be granted if you were spending money at the restaurant anyway and they were not at the peak of activity where the plug in spot might be in the way. When I was thinking about this, I thought that might be a nice way to ensure that there were a couple of resting hours built into each days schedule.WithHope for cure of these diseases.
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May 28, 2008 at 11:23 pm
This is something that I need to know about too. When I move, I am going to get a power wheelchair so I can travel around the community where I’ll be living. I don’t know what I would do if I was putting around and my battery went dead. I’d have to depend on other residents to push me back to my apartment.
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May 29, 2008 at 1:16 am
I usually only charge my Jazzi 1113 every 4 days or so, but I rarely take it outside the home, & do walk part of the day. Is this a new chair with new batteries? My chair is almost 6 years old now, still have the same set of batteries. Do you use it around the house a lot during the day as well, or mostly when you go out? Also, I think it actually takes around 4 full hours to fully charge, even though it could read full after as little as half an hour. I do turn my chair off all of the time if I will be in the same spot for a minute or more, always have. Not sure if this helped you or not…
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May 29, 2008 at 4:46 pm
My power chair and battery are only four months old. I use the power chair all the time. Just moving around the house is not a problem. Only when I go outside, go up and down the ramp, up and down the driveway, using the ramp to get into the car etc. when the battery goes down fairly fast. I’m making a point of taking the charger with me in a bag behind the chair at all times. This paid off one time when we went to an Indian festival in Old Town. The battery was getting low and we were looking desperately for a way to charge it. We found that every light post had an outlet on it. So I was charging the battery while watching the festivities. Another time I charged it at a restaurant and one time at Sam’s Club while eating pizza.
Yes, I noticed that only after an hour or so the indicator shows full even so it really isn’t. I don’t quite trust it that it would be full after two hours but then batteries are different. Probably enough to get me going again in an emergency. The instructions from the dealer said to charge it for eight hours overnight which I started doing every night.
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May 29, 2008 at 5:20 pm
Norb, I only use my chair when I go to the store with Dave. So, we usually recharge the night before or the day of. If, we do not take the caution of making sure it is charged fully, then we run into your difficulty. Guess ,I would charge it every night if I used it every day. But, we do carry the charger with us or it is in the car in case we need it.
We did expect the charge to last longer than it does.
Do they have batteries that last longer? -
June 17, 2008 at 12:49 pm
I finally found out what’s wrong with the batteries on my power chair. I took it into the mobility place again yesterday, this time with fully charged batteries which is required for a load check. One of the batteries was bad and they replaced it with another one temporarily. Two new ones will be shipped from the factory sometime this week. I didn’t charge it last night and today it still shows full. What a relief.
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July 20, 2008 at 11:59 pm
wow I think I would go crazy if that happened with my chair. I only charge mine once a week or so and I use it everyday. glad to hear you were able to get it fixed!
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