Deep Cycle Marine battery tips/dos and donts/info

I have gone through a bunch of deep cycle batteries now with my trolling motor + canoe and along the way gained a great respect for things like battery maintenance, storage, and overall info I didn't know before. When I first started I was kind of clueless- left batteries in hot cars or freezing garages, didn't re-charge promptly, etc. I've become much more informed and careful, but wondering what other general info and or advice people have about deep cycle batteries and how to get the most out of them?

Great website to start off: http://marine-electronics.net/techarticle/battery_faq/b_faq.htm

One interesting thing I learned from the above link is how important temperature is for every part of a battery life- discharging, charging, storage- particularly "thermal stratification." Yes, kind of like lakes themselves:



I used to run my batteries just sitting openly in a canoe, with just a 1/2" thick polyethylene hull to sit on and no sun protection. In the spring when water is 40 degrees but the sunlight is beating down, the tops get warm and the bottom contacting the canoe is ice cold- that can't be good. I am not sure how much it matters but I'm going to be careful to insulate the bottoms and cover the tops of my batteries from now on. Likewise I won't be storing or recharging them sitting on cold concrete garage floors anymore either. Anyways, if you have any tips like this please share.

Also curious what batteries people are running and for what and where do you buy them?



I use 3 of the above 27DCs for a 55lb thrust TM, with 16' 8 ga jumper cables, and I get them at Walmart.