No, all the caps I am using  are clearly marked pos and neg. One must be very careful when charging the caps to connect properly and not to exceed the rated voltage capacity neither as otherwise they can explode or at the minumum ruin your capacitor.

so they are polarized caps?

<After the circuit I then reconnect C1,C2 and C3 in parallel which gives me 16volts @ 22,000uf
......

How do you get 16 Volts, when you put all 3 caps in parallel again Then you have 66000 uF at 16 Volts

Question: How many caps charged to 4 volts could one get from a single cap charged at 12 volts?

Hi - Sorry have been away travelling and so am with little computer access for a few days.

Elvis-
Yes, the caps I use are polarized.

hartiberlin -
Sorry about the voltage confusion. I will try to reword it a bit better. In my example from my 1st posting I might say instead that I have gained an extra cap charged at 4 volts than I would have otherwise.
How is that so?

Well lets see, if in set up #1 one takes a cap charged to 12 volts and hooked it in parallel with two other empty caps then one ends up with 3 caps charged at 4 volts each which is standard since the voltage is divided evenly amongst the caps. If in setup #2, one takes a 12 volt charged cap but uses my circuit instead you'll wind up with 4 caps charged at 4 volts each. there, thats better
Sorry however, as I haven't been able to get to 16 volts with the same capacitance I stared out with. 
Nevertheless, where most folks will want to answer the first question of "how many 4 volt caps can one get from a 12 volt cap?" with a 3,  I can answer it with "4 at the very least"   

pg46 please post picture(s)