Ok, I've had my fun and the OP has had to take some ribbing. I hope no offense. A couple of things. Yes, your load meter reads high as soon as you turn on tthe generator after a start because it is recharging the battery due to the current drain from starting. Your flight manual should probably give you a voltage reading from the volt meter that is, more or less, a threshold lower number that if it drops down to this point when you hit the starter button it would not be wise to continue with the start. No harm with piston engines as you just end up with a dead battery if it won't start but if a turbine isn't spooled up to produce high enough air flow by the starter you may get a hung, or worse hot start, if you mismanage it. Normally, you aren't turning on any radios etc., until the load meter shows the battery has recovered to some percentage. The " drop down" in voltage and the length of time it takes a battery to recover to what ever the book says is good to go does tell you some about the condition of the battery. Also, I would never turn down an external power start if it was conveniently available. My policy, not mandatory.
As for putting a battery, or rather not putting a battery, on a concrete floor.... this would be ill advised if you had a lead acid battery that was made in the 1950s or earlier when battery cases were made out of materials that included rubber, tar and who knows what else that insulated but developed small cracks and became porous, thus allowing the battery to self discharge due to external dampness. Not so with battery construction today. Since I am an old fart, even though I know this to be true, I cannot put a battery on the floor without some wood under it. Go figure. BTW, you can actually make your own replacement smoke so you don't need to call maintenance when it escapes from the wires. Under no circumstances use smoke from, for example, a Bell product in an Airbus machine. And for heavans sake never use Russian smoke. Their smoke is much thinner and is for use in unimaginably cold conditions only. Anybody have a few gallons of rotor wash ( and don't send me any of that prop wash junk)? Also in need of 300 feet of flight line.