Last week, I left my Hercules battery out in the garage overnight without thinking much of it. The next morning as I got ready for work I decided to charge it before taking it with me to the construction site where I work.
But instead of a normal steady red and flashing green light the Hercules charger showed me a blinking red and green code. It was something new, I didn’t even know if my charger could do that.
I tried unplugging the battery and putting it on charge again but it was the same problem. It turns out the battery got too cold and the red and green flashing codes were the way of Hercules charger to tell me that.
So how did I fix it? Here is a complete guide.
But before you continue reading this article, you could first watch the short video I made about this topic. You can watch it below.
If the battery is too hot, remove the it from the charger and let it cool down naturally. If it is too cold, put it inside a warm place and let the temperature to return to normal range.
Hercules Battery Charger Blinking Red and Green: What to Do if Your Battery Still Doesn’t Charge at Room Temperature
Wait Until the Battery reaches Room Temperature
Even with the touch of my hands I could tell my battery was really cold but I still let a machine show me that. It turns out the Hercules battery has a safety feature called a hot and cold delay which prevents charging in case the battery is too cold or too hot.
It’s very important to know the different meanings of the indicator lights on your Hercules battery charger. I also have a short video about this topic which you can watch below.
A solid red means the battery is ready to charge. A flashing green plus solid red means it’s charging the battery and this will become a solid green when it’s fully charged.
As mentioned earlier, a flashing red and green means a hot or cold delay. Finally, a flashing red means the battery might be unhealthy.
The simple solution to fix this problem is to let the battery reach a normal temperature itself. I bought my battery inside the house which was warm and after an hour or so it charged fine again without even doing anything.
While my battery was cold, what can you do if your battery is hot? Well just let it cool down in a cool room and let it reach a normal temperature.
What to Do When Hot/Cold Delay Appears at Normal Temperature?
This is an awkward situation, now if you tried everything that I mentioned above and your battery is still refusing to charge the problem might be something else.
Remember the safety feature I talked about? Well it’s called a thermostat and sometimes after the battery experiences change in temperature it does not reset itself.
So to fix the issue of your Hercules battery not charging even at normal temperature, just follow my steps.
1. Take another healthy Hercules battery with the same voltage output as your problematic one. Identify the negative and positive terminals on these batteries. I usually look for the + and – signs on the top of the cover.
2. Grab a pair of jumpers male to male to connect the terminals of both the batteries together, make sure to connect positive to positive and negative to negative, it’s just like jumping car batteries but for power tools.
3. Leave them connected for 15 seconds before disconnecting them, your battery should now have been restarted and should charge like new again.
