We recommend that you always use a quality alkaline battery and avoid ‘cheapy’ batteries. Cheapies include ‘home’ branded batteries from supermarkets.

While the battery brand may seem trivial, there are many batteries which need air space around them to be able to operate in a way which doesn’t damage the tap timer.

In our tap timers, there’s not a lot of air space available and this can lead to ‘venting’ which is where the battery releases gases, that will act the same as a leaking battery. This can affect the power delivery in your timer and mean that the timer either can’t get power, or the timer will ‘chew’ (rapidly discharge) the batteries because of the damage to the power delivery.

We’ve got an few example of ‘venting ‘ below:

The one on the left is not ok - this is a damaged compartment after a battery leak (venting)
The one on the right is in good order (no clouding)

This one isn't as pretty, but is also still a 'good' compartment:

In some cases the venting can travel into the timer (beyond the compartment) and cause permanent damage to your timer.

A popular supermarket battery caused the below damage (this caused the timer to stop working as the gases travelled into the timer):

Please select a battery which has a ‘no leak’ guarantee where possible and avoid cheap batteries.

Please note: Remember, you are trusting the timer to look after your garden, so giving it the best possible power source allows the timer to be as reliable as possible.

We use and recommend Energiser (Max is perfectly ok, Max Plus if you can afford them) and Varta (any) batteries.

Essentially you need a 'leak free' battery for these tap timers.

 
Article verified:  CO3111, CO3112, CO3114, BX1, BX2, BX4, WX1TH, WX1TT, WX1, WX2TT, WX2TH, WX2