I just got 11 days out of my 312’s taping them each night. I would get about 7 days if I didn’t tape over the holes each night.
It also helps to rotate the batterys back and forth between left and right each day. I mark the tape with a red marker and stick the left battery on that side of the tape each night. In the morning I put the battery on the red side of the tape into the right side hearing aid. This evens out the usage between your good ear and a bad ear.
Is there an advantage to keeping the new unused batteries in the refrigerator?
I’ve worn a hearing aid for over 40 years. The last time I had a battery leak was in the early 70’s during the waning days of silver oxide batteries (dang, them things got EXPENSIVE). I have not once had a battery leak otherwise, and I wear 7 days a week, 18 hours a day.
I’ve tried refrigerating my batteries, didn’t seem to make any difference. Never tried to tape them, research I’ve read said that the batteries, once exposed to oxygen, will continue to degrade, tape or no tape. Interesting to see information up here otherwise.
No. Here is what Wikipedia says: “Storage and operating life[edit source | editbeta]Zinc-air cells have long shelf life if sealed to keep air out; even miniature button cells can be stored for up to 3 years at room temperature with little capacity loss if their seal is not removed. Industrial cells stored in a dry state have an indefinite storage life.”
This is wonderful, I never did this…I’ll surely give it a try. Thanks seb.
seb, thanks for this helpful post!
I am taping mine a few weeks ago, thanks to seb´s recommendation and it have seen to improve.
In 5 days I start wearing hearing aids…Thanks to all of you for great advice/comments. It’s been very helpful…About battery life, I can see where taping them nightly can prolong their life, my question is: I just bought the serene innovations renew dryer/refreshner and it has a magnetic strip to hold the batteries when you take them out. Will the magnetic strip be as effective as the tape, or is tape the best? Thanks
No, putting the tab back on will not make a difference. I’ve been a hearing aid specialist for 10 years, and my father 25. Just one of those old wives tales. The batteries will still drain power at its normal level with the tab back on or not. Zinc air batteries only drawn in air the first time you remove the tab. That’s why in some cases if you remove the tab and put it right in the hearing aid it will die, or not last as long. You should always wait 1 minute before you put it in the heairng aid to get the full life of the battery.
Batteries are so cheap, I’ll rather save the wear and tear on my batteries draws from fully opening them every night then try and save a few cents on batteries. My hearing aids will be a lot more to repair especially when out of warranty.
If putting tape over the holes does no good, then why can I put tape over the air holes on my #13 batteries or 312’s when I’m using my other HA’s and then when I go back to the other aids and take the tape off the batteries I can get days or even more than a week out of the batteries that has been re taped for maybe a month or longer?
This would be a nice little science project to do 
Tape or No Tape?
Better you open them to allow your aid to air out. In 40 some years of wearing aids, a battery door has never worn out on me from multiple daily openings.
I’d have to agree with Otologix. I’ve been following this taping batteries thread and thinking to myself all this time that that doesn’t add up to how I understand the chemical reaction works, but I figured that I can’t possibly know it all, so I kept quiet.
Not sure, but you can ask any hearing aid or battery manufacturer for verification. Maybe you were using a good brand and it was a really good batch. I’ve seen size 13 batteries last 2 weeks while in use, its very unusual but can happen.
I’ve had Costco #13’s last 17 days with taping and only 14 days with not taping and on my 312’s I’ve had them last on average 9 days with taping and only 6-7 without. Zinc air batteries need air to work, rob them of the air and they stop working. If they didn’t need constant air to work every HA manufacturer would have had a waterproof HA on the market years ago; I read an article on the Siemens Aquaris and in the article the Siemens rep was saying the hardest part of the design was coming up with a membrane that was waterproof but still let the batteries breathe.
I honestly cant really say one way or another why it seemed to work for you but we’ve been studying and using hearing aid batteries for over 25 years now and can confirm it doesn’t work. I’m sure you can ask the forum owner and he can confirm.
Laying the hole side of the battery down on something flat will have the same effect. No need to tape them.
The zinc air only became law about 4 years ago. Standard mercury batteries were used before then.
God not this again!!