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Recovering Moldy Electronics?
cookiej writes "We just completed having our basement gutted and our house decontaminated from mold. The finished basement is gone, my office floor has been removed as well as 24' of drywall around the base of the room. So, we had a full home theater downstairs along with a couple of computers in the electronics closet that were completely immersed (rainwater, not sewage). We moved them to a sheltered area outside and covered them with a plastic tarp. Since the electronics were off when the water hit them, 1) do I have a chance of recovering them? 2) If so, is there a way to clean them with some sort of liquid bath that would not damage the electronics? and 3) I don't want to bring moldy pieces back in the clean house. How could I decontaminate the electronics themselves, pre-bath? Not looking to save the speakers, just the amp, DirecTV box, video switch, etc. Thanks for any help, here, Slashdot." Read on for more details of this reader's plight.
Early last month, we had about 10" of rain in the course of two hours. Many houses in our neighborhood were damaged. We had rainwater coming in our back door and cascading down the basement steps. We have two sump pumps that weren't keeping up (and of course, no battery backup) and as the water rose in the basement, it was getting dangerously close to the breaker panel. So I made the hard decision to shut down the main power and we got the hell out.
The water reached about 6' in the basement before it drained out. Once we got back, we could not move fast enough to get all the debris out before mold set in and boy did it.
Since we are not in a flood plain, our insurance for this is woefully inadequate. While I would love to just go out and buy replacements, there are far more pressing things to re-buy (washer/dryer, furnace, water heater, etc.) and if there is a chance I can salvage some of this it might be a nice change of luck.
Early last month, we had about 10" of rain in the course of two hours. Many houses in our neighborhood were damaged. We had rainwater coming in our back door and cascading down the basement steps. We have two sump pumps that weren't keeping up (and of course, no battery backup) and as the water rose in the basement, it was getting dangerously close to the breaker panel. So I made the hard decision to shut down the main power and we got the hell out.
The water reached about 6' in the basement before it drained out. Once we got back, we could not move fast enough to get all the debris out before mold set in and boy did it.
Since we are not in a flood plain, our insurance for this is woefully inadequate. While I would love to just go out and buy replacements, there are far more pressing things to re-buy (washer/dryer, furnace, water heater, etc.) and if there is a chance I can salvage some of this it might be a nice change of luck.
24 feet of drywall from the base of the room? He's got some big rooms.
If they were not plugged in they can be dried out and probably used again. I've never seen mold growing on electronics, but if you have mold/mildew you can wash them with a mild bleach/water solution. After they are clean flush them with distilled water and let them dry completely.
The devices that simply have circuit boards and cables can possiblly be saved by disassembly followed by thourough cleaning (I wouldn't worry too much about the cleaning agent damaging the boards, PCB assemblies are pretty tough generally just get the boards rinsed and dried thouroughly before reassembly). I wouldn't hold out much hope for cleaning the TV without destroying it though.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Pure rubbing alcohol might be your best best.
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Even though there was no power applied to these devices, the dissolved minerals in the water are enough to facilitate electrolysis between dis-similar metals and destroy the devices. You will be better off replacing the lot.
Sig this!
You can use ethanol to clean them. Just make sure to give it enough time to dry before you turn it on. You can wash electronics with anything, just make sure its dry before it goes back on. We use flux remover to clean our electronics after manual soldering.
Copious quantities of ethanol will help, possibly in more ways than one. :)
...Isopropyl Alcohol, aka rubbing alcohol. It's cheap (1$/pt?) and should sanitize your gear nicely. Given the size of the job, you might get a few gallons and dunk your gear.
Have you tried nuking the fungal infection from orbit? Should do the trick right nice.
They are commonly cleaned in a detergent bath and then blown dry with compressed air.
Perhaps a mild alcohol solution and compressed air would work.
Cheap solution would be some pure alcohol, clean the boards with that, dry it, and hope for the best. You can get actual PCB cleaners, but some of that may end up costing more than it's worth. Depending on how long it was wet, etc, you might have a chance to salvage some of it. Most boards, ICs and solid parts may be fine, electrolytic capacitors, hard drives, etc may become waterlogged.
Many times electronics, can be washed off as long as you let them completely dry before you turn them on. Just make sure they haven't rusted out or anything.
I was able to recover all data from the hard drives of a machine that was fully immersed in muddy flood water for 12-18 hours. The hardware was trash, nothing can be done about fans and power supplies as far as I can tell. However I was able to open up the hard disks, carefully dry them out with a hair dryer on low, and get them spinning again to recover the data. They did not spin for very long, as rust sets in pretty quickly, but it was long enough.
The saving grace was that the HDDs have tiny airholes with filters on them, thus allowing only clean water through. Had any amount of dirt gotten into the drives, I suspect they would have been ruined as well.
Rubbing alcohol is your friend. as close to 100% as you can get. Use an old toothbrush and rubbing alcohol right on the circuit boards. I've saved routers, videocards, motherboars with this method. Acetone works too but can melt some plastics and ruin paint and rubbing alcohol can be gotten at any local grocery store.
If you are savvy enough, you could disassemble everything and clean all the circuit cards with isopropyl alcohol. Be sure to get the wire connections as well. The wood/particle board casing is going to be hit-or-miss, meaning either it's still good or has to be replaced.
The World is Yours.
It kills mould, it doesn't strip away much, it evaporates away....so use plenty, plenty, no even more than that ventilation.
I have been through a mold contamination myself, and having made some bad choices, let me assure you. Better safe than sorry. If you leave moldy stuff in your house, it will spread through the whole house via A/C. Just toss it.
Consider anything with IC pins, surface contacts, etc. to be a write-off. I /suppose/ you could save some of the passives, like RCA and speaker cables, if you soak their ends in contact cleaner.
Consider buying a generator and/or better pumps and moving your electronic gear to higher ground... :/
I've had a lot of luck cleaning mold and other contaminants from electronics by disassembling the item as completely as possible, cleaning each peace with a gentle liquid cleanser of some kind (i.e. Windex) and a soft brush, then rinsing it thoroughly with distilled water.
I was recently able to recover a number of computers that had been in a fire and had been sprayed with water from a fire hose. They were a mess, but so far they all work (10 months and counting)
-=- I tried going insane, and it was fun for a while, but I got bored and decided to go sane. -=-
Everyone knows that isopropanol is better than ethanol to clean electronic devices.
"I decided I could write something better than everything out there in two weeks. And I was right." - Linus Torvalds
Solid-state stuff, if cleaned properly (i.e., with copious amounts of distilled water), should work just fine after *brief* immersion, as long as no power was applied (which is not the same as being turned off).
You can kiss the hard drives goodbye, and capacitors may be a big issue. How quickly did you get it out the door?
As far as the question of admitting dirty mold into your house, molds are everywhere in the environment. (Try leaving bread dough out without adding yeast and see how long it takes to start rising.) What makes for an infestation is constant high humidity. Plus, there's nothing there to serve as mold food, unless you've got paper cones on your speakers (e.g.) or the like.
In short: if you wash off your appliances, inside and out, then dry them thoroughly, you might save them. Thoroughly means days in the sun.
Experience to back the above: I've thoroughly washed a dozen or so keyboards and several motherboards.
Finally, where do you live? 10" of rain turns into 6' of water in a basement when you don't live in a flood plain? Why would anyone build a basement in an area subject to such problems? (I live in an area without basements, both because of shrink-swell soil and high water tables.)
Sadly, I've been through this same thing, and everything ended up being a total loss. Luckily insurance covered a lot of it, but something quite depressing about hurling a brand new Mac Pro, cinema monitors and a 52" plasma TV into a garbage truck to be compacted.
Once every few years, I take the keyboard out of my laptop, take the keys off, and wash it. Use alcohol like others have suggested. Just make ABSOLUTELY SURE the electronics are dry when you turn them on. Try putting them under an incandescent lamp for a few days. Just close enough so they get warm and dry.
While you can probably safely attempt recovering any small battery-powered device, I wouldn't do it for anything that plugs in. If there's a catastrophic failure caused by damage, corrosion, or other problems, you could have a pretty serious fire risk.
If you must insist on recovering the hardware, at the very least keep the stuff OFF via a powerstrip when no one is babysitting it. Even then, I wouldn't feel safe doing this.
Firstly, you chances are small. This you must take into account. Your only chance lies in letting the stuff dry out and stay clean. This is what I would suggest:
Well, speaking from rescuing mobile phones (the only things I have managed to get that wet that was more complicated than a wireless keyboard) I would suggest that you give your gear a solid wash under warm water (preferably before it dries out totally). You want to try to wash out all the other stuff before it gets dry and hard to remove. It was already wet, so some clean water won't hurt too much more. Also you want to try to wash away any chemicals (especially those conductive salts that keep water in) that may degrade (eat into) the electronics. Next you want to let it dry really well. Not too quickly, you don't want the moisture to boil away or anything like that, pop it into either a gentle sunny spot with lots of air movement or stick a swivel fan to blow air through it. Then wait wait wait. Don't be tempted to try to turn anything on till it's really dry inside.
Again, I would say your chances are quite slim, but if you have a good old fashioned amplifier for example, there may not be too much high complexity electronics in it. If you have a fancy pants DTS or similar with small computers etc in it, you are likely out of luck. For things to work after water, generally the less electronics and the more electrics, the more likely you are of getting it alive again.
My old ericsson GF337 survived a dip in a chlorine pool, a freshwater lake and a spin in my front loader with this sort of care. My Nokia 8250 survived a spin in the wash only then died after a second time. So far, I haven't got anything else that wet.
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Water can be used to clean electronics in manufacturing processes. Most electronic components will not be damaged by water. Make sure you get all the dirt and grim out.
1.Don't plug it yet.
2. Take all electronics completely apart. Look for damage or corrosion.
3. Remove every battery.
4. Flush it out with distilled water.
5. Use electronic cleaner or alcohol(not the stuff you drink) to remove any mineral deposits.
6. Dry off with paper towel.
7. Let it dry completely. If you have any doubts wait till it's completely dry.
8. Plug it in and cross your fingers.
Computer fans and the like will probably be unsalvageable, but the rest should be OK after some cleaning. I'd disassemble everything, as much as I was comfortable putting back, and use some distilled water and a toothbrush to clean it. If there's evidence of corrosion on the boards, you can try cleaning/scraping it away, but your odds of a successful recovery start to go down. Follow up with some rubbing alcohol to displace the water and let things dry for a day or two before reassembly.
If you value your data, I would put the hard drive in a known-good system first, to get all of the data off of it, before trying it in a recovered system. And if the system fails to boot up, that doesn't mean that all of the components are dead. You might be able to consolidate memory, hard drives, etc., and avoid spending too much.
Use caution when disassembling and cleaning power supplies, since they can still kill you. That's actually the one part that I would just throw away rather than attempt to fix.
Start with a rinse with distilled water. There's very little in electronics that gets hurt by water anyway -- the issues are with it shorting out, or longer term, corrosion. You'll want to open all the cases to do this, and then ideally blow them dry with a compressed air nozzle. Letting it evaporate will just redeposit all the crud you cleaned off.
Then rinse with alcohol, and again blow it off rather than letting it dry. At this point, if it looks clean it is, as far as the electronics are concerned. I imagine the same is true from a mold standpoint, but you probably know more about that than I do.
If things are being really stubborn, an ultrasonic cleaning bath in alcohol is remarkably effective (and completely safe for the electronics). 5-10 minutes should be plenty. I don't know off hand where to find a large one cheaply, though -- that may take some investigation. If you can't borrow one, I'd just take some warm soapy water and a toothbrush and work at it by hand (and then repeat the distilled water and alcohol rinses to remove any soap and such).
If any of these things have moving parts (eg DVD player) they'll be more difficult. None of this will hurt anything, but if there are any gears that are supposed to be greased this will remove that. Some rubber in pulleys and such might not like the alcohol. But, most modern cheap moving parts are unlubricated nylon, so there isn't likely to be an issue. Cooling fans are usually unlubricated, either with a plain nylon bearing or ball bearings, and so should be ok with this cleaning treatment.
Similarly, hard drives are almost certainly a lost cause. I'd try powering them up, but if they've been underwater then the water likely got in through the pressure equalization holes. I wouldn't clean them (wipe down the outside with a damp sponge, but nothing more aggressive) -- just hope for the best and expect them to have died.
Good luck, and may I suggest you invest in a more serious pump?
Hose off whatever is affected with soapy water and then rinse with plenty of clean water. Then put it into an oven at 100 F for 3-4 days before plugging in and trying to turn on.
We can have a government and economy just like other countries that "spread the wealth".
Like Zimbabwe.
It depends, 1) Where they powered when they got flooded? This can create some short circuits and then the electrinics would be compromised. 2) If they were not powered by that time, but it stayed some considerable time under water, it is possible to get damaged as mentioned by the guy from topic 2. 3)If none of both, and being tooooooooo optimistic, if you get a way to dry it, like using some haird dried or somethiong similar, right after the inmersion, you can get them to work again, but if you DO NOT LEAVE any dorp of water, as it can create a short circuit and damage you equipment. In this case, as you mentioned on the description, I belive most of your electronics may have get damaged.
Pretty much everything is unrecoverable at this point. There is a limited amount of time before corrosion sets in, even if it doesn't look bad, it still can be. Plus, the possibility of re-introducing mold back into the house pretty much seals the deal on our electronics being a 'loss'. Still, you had homeowners insurance to cover this....right?
As another poster has mentioned, if there are now dissolved minerals permeating the circuitry you are probably out of luck.
Here's what you can try if you are feeling brave.
Get some DISTILLED WATER. Clean the electronics thoroughly. The more you can take things apart and get to the nooks and crannies the better.
Now the hard part. To drive off the water you will need a nice dry enclosure which can be heated to a relatively high temperature, say 130-140 deg F or so. The upper temperature depends on the plastic materials used, if it gets too hot they will start to deform. Watch carefully.
Leave things heated for at least 2-4 hours.
Now go back over things with 90% + isopropyl alcohol (it might be hard to find - do NOT use the 70% stuff).
Why this might not work : the "dissolved" materials which have stuck to the PCB and components do not get washed off completely. They are still present and when you hit the power something shorts - bright lights and probably a decent badda-boom.
The exposure which the electronics have already experienced have more than likely started corroding the potentiometers, i.e. volume, bass, etc.. controls. So even if things power up they may not work correctly.
Finally, if you can't take things apart and expose the PCBs and a good portion of the components, then your chances of success are very low. However if you can really get at the compenents this method will work.
Good luck !
REMEMBER, IF YOU TRY THIS BE VERY CAREFUL WHEN IT COMES TIME TO FLIP THE POWER ON. I AM NOT RESPONSIBLE IF YOU GET ELECTROCUTED.
Absolute statements are never true
it really is that simple.
not the answer you want but its the smart answer.
you will NEVER clean the insides of electronics well enough to TRUST them.
plus, you just spent money de-molding the house. why even risk bringing that bad stuff back in?
sorry - but its all a 100% loss. that's what insurance is for.
the ONLY things I would hand-clean are the old ancient things that can't be replaced (if you have such things). but anything buyable should be re-bought, if its still current. family heirlooms are the only things worth the labor and expense of hand cleaning to that level.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
I've heard of systems flooded out and filled with sand courtesy of the odd tropical cyclone. Most of them come back; I'm hoping mold wouldn't make too much of a difference. Take the systems apart clean the mold off with water and dry in the sun for a few hours. Alternately, dry in the sun for a few hours, baking the mold, then try to blow it off with compressed air and a dust cloth. We're talking about plastic, aluminum and/or steel; all very non-porous and inorganic. Not the sort of territory I would expect mold is really going to fight you over.
As for lingering spores, my understanding of post storm mold outbreaks is that the spores were already there anyway; lying dormant until the heat and humidity were right. So tracking fresh spores back in, devoid of their requisite post-flood conditions shouldn't pose any danger.
If you microwave each bit on high for a minute, that oughta kill the mould.
One of the ugly little things about homeowner's insurance (at least in the US) is that it, by default, does not cover damage due to flooding.
Many people who don't live in an area where floods are a real likelihood don't buy the extra flood insurance, which is probably the case here ("Since we are not in a flood plain, our insurance for this is woefully inadequate.")
I learned the hard way a year or two ago exactly what "flood" means in insurance terms. It includes a flooded basement due to a failed sump pump. Fortunately in my case, the only loss was some 20-year-old carpet.
So here's my little PSA: Even if you don't live somewhere that can really "flood" in a traditional sense, buy flood insurance if you have a basement. At least the minimal "get the mold out" insurance.
The preferred solution is to not have a problem.
i love rooting around in yard/garage sales sometimes i find some good deals on old radios, what i have done to dirty radios is i remove the covers, speakers microphone if it has one, basically strip it down to the chassis and circuitboard the i put it in a dishwashing machine with about a cup of vinegar, then when it is done i dry it with a hair dryer (hand held blow dryer) and once it is completely dry i reassemble it and it works like new...
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
I repair antique arcade games; my experience is that washing with simple green, low ion content water, and spot treatment with Caig labortories DeOxit followed by through drying is your best course of action.
I subject every 25+ year old cabinet that passes my way: arcade boards, power supply and monitor to this treatment.
Lots and lots of distilled water might do the trick. Of course, you'll have to get rid of the mold first. I suggest you soak it in methanol and then you wash it with distilled water. That way, the mold dies and all the salts get washed off.
Dismantle the devices, take the boards and spray them with Simple Green or similar cleaner, and run the boards through the dishwasher (no other soap, just the spray cleaner). Preheat the oven to 200 degrees. Turn off the oven. After the boards come out of the dishwasher, put them in the oven, and leave them in there until the oven has cooled down. Should be dry enough, but I'd leave them sit a little longer. You can clean casings and other parts manually, or with the dishwasher.
Don't put hard drives in the dishwasher. They aren't sealed devices, and if they were totally submerged, best of luck to you with regards to getting your data back. Any labels that may have been on the boards will probably be gone now (You know, the one that says "Warranty void if dishwashed"...)
This procedure would be for extremely filthy hardware (i.e., mold growing, mud, 20 years of filth, anything owned by a smoker). For hardware that just got really wet, you can probably get away with just rinsing it off, drying it, and hooking it all back up.
Water doesn't hurt electronics as much as people say it does. I've had hardware that was left out in the rain for a long time, and it worked just by hosing off the boards, letting them dry in the sun, and putting it all back together.
I've only done drastic things like this on very old hardware (early 80's computer parts, arcade machine parts), your mileage may vary with newer gear. I would remove socketed chips before washing, but, I don't think this modern stuff will have any.
I moved from Ca to Co once. In winter.
In a storm.
In the back of a truck.
Get the idea?
LOADS of electronics got wet. Some took, literally, years to get working again.
The BIGGEST thing you can do to save your stuff is this: GET IT DRIED THE FUCK OUT. Water is corrosive to the copper in the products you have (besides the electromechanical problems, like bearings in hard drives (old ones), etc), and if left to do it's thing, electrolysis will eat them up.
I ended up having the entire back of my truck filled with the style cartons you find at 7-11 or something similiar. Split top, about 12 to 18 inches deep. My tarp had a rip in it, unbeknownst to me, and when I stopped, THEY FILLED WITH WATER.
The next day, I made my destination, and the day after that, I got the screwdriver out. EVERYTHING was cleaned off with a rag internally, and I ended up losing about 10 percent of the devices.
Don't power them up until you KNOW everything is dry.
Any transformers, if your really worried about (read, if they are HEAVY and expensive), can be desoldered and heated in your home oven, on it's lowest setting (they can take > 150 degrees easily). That will bake out any moisture.
Ditto for some really high power transistors. One trick we used in making REALLY high power CB radio amplifiers was to bake the transistors for about 2 hours. This removed ANY moisture under the caps of the 2879s (part number 2SC2879). This netted us about 2 to 3 more volts on the collectors. After talking to engineers, we found that even a LITTLE bit of moisture in there, will turn to steam after the devices reach their internal operating temp. Higher voltage on the collector = higher temperatures (more dissipation). Baking them got us 2 to 3 more volts and that equalled a few hundred more watts (for every 50 percent increase in supply voltage, your Pout doubles) (think, 24 to 64 transistors being combined).
Simple green or even lysol does well for mold inhibition. You can also do a 5 % bleach solution, but then you run the risk of losing color, faceplates, some plastics, etc.
Hope it helps.
--Toll_Free
My grandparents' house was flooded in the mid 70's. Truly flooded - water up past the first floor. Rip the plaster down clean the mud out of the studs flooded.
They had a little black-and-white TV at the time - 12" or so I would guess. According to grandpa, he just hosed it out with a garden hose and left it to dry. You couldn't see the numbers on the dials (they were still full of mud) but it worked for decades after. It might still work, I'm not sure what ever happened to it.
With modern equipment I'd be a bit more gentle, but it's a loss now, so take it apart as far as you feel competent to do, rinse it out, and leave it out in the sun to dry.
The preferred solution is to not have a problem.
I tried to recover some electronics from a freinds house that had been merely dampened (not submerged) by the rain but not touched for about a week. After they had been dried thoroughly and cleaned with a dry cloth and q-tips) they simply did not work. The power supplies were trash and most of the boards in the chassis of the computers were fried. No power on when they got wet but after they dried...no go. Likely your luck is about that good in this case as well.
Why bother
Oh yeah, WD-40 is also your friend.
You know
Water
Displacement
4
0
WD formula 40.
Ensure you wipe it off, and don't use it in any controls. WD40 will cause dirt and grime to get in the potentiometers.
Someone else mentioned alcohol. Dunno, but I like drinking bacardi 151.
--Toll_Free
I've had luck rescuing a digital camera which was immersed in a dirty puddle by taking off the cover, rinsing the circuit boards with distilled water, and then putting everything into the oven.
In particular, put the oven on its lowest setting - hopefully around 150 deg F - significantly below boiling. Let the oven heat up first, then put your electronics inside and let them cook for several hours, even overnight. This will evaporate the water out. Then take your electronics out of the oven and let them cool before testing.
The advice to clean with alcohol might work as well or better (I haven't tried it), but I would trust that alcohol would dissolve the contaminants that came with your dirty water. Since the contaminants dissolved out of water in the first place, you should be able to get rid of them with water.
Seth
I hope you have good insurance coverage. It's a much better option than trying to recover your water-damaged property.
Actually, we remove mold from electronics all the time. We use either an ozone machine or ultrasonic cleaning as demonstrated by this link.
http://www.arsmitigations.com/Electronics_Restoration.php
What would it cost to replace what you bought versus sending everything to a recovery specialist, or replacing it with stuff from Craigslist?
What would it cost (in terms of dollars or hours, whatever is more valuable to you) to:
- take everything apart
- subject the individual components to any of the treatments prescribed here
- reassemble everything (except for those extra pieces, intentionally removed for efficiency's sake!)
And is there any guarantee everything will work? Speakers without rigid cones? Not.
Television produced in the last 6 years? Nope.
Was everything relatively new? Purchased on a credit card? Some have their own protection plans.
If everything was a few generations old, you might not have lost as much as you think - especially if you post a few messages in sympathetic environments, describing your plight.
Pity and surplus electronics were made for each other.
My friend and I once found a receiver buried in a dry creek bed (probably stolen - but it was literally buried with a faceplate sticking out). We dug it up, took it home, hosed it out, threw it in the pool, etc.. In the end, after it dried out, it worked perfectly. It still works today - 20 years later.
There's a product called SafeWash, that was used by PCB assembly people before flux free solders were used. Its just like dishwashing liquid. Place the electronics in the washing liquid and agitate. Use a tooth-brush, etc to clean off the nasty stuff.
Once washed, rinse in fresh water (use distilled water) and then bake in oven for a few hrs at no more than 50deg celcius.
Yo,
I don't think that they will be salvagable, but I think your first mistake was putting them under the tarp, unless that could have been avoided. Putting them under the tarp would make it much harder for the water to evaporate
First and foremost, how long have these items been wet / sitting? If only a few hours to a day you can try to salvage, otherwise I would suggest tossing them. That said I have had luck salvaging some equipment when a fire sprinkler went off at work doing the following:
Rinse all of the affected items in distilled water.
You can use your kitchen sink but be sure to wash it first and make absolutely sure not to use the faucet. Distilled water only!
Gently blow off all water with canned air and then allow to sit for a few hours
Hit it with the canned air again and then saturate the circuit boards with Caig Labs' DeOxIT Gold (used to be called ProGold) or Blue Shower (I think Chemtronics makes this). Gently work all moving parts (faders, buttons, pots, etc) to get the product to penetrate. Use a synthetic swab to work the solution around solder joins and contacts. Allow to sit several hours, then hit it with the canned air and repeat once or twice.
After the circuit boards are dry, cover with a light coating of DeOxIT and allow to air dry. Do not remove the DeOxIT from the electronics as it helps to prevent corrosion.
While the circuit boards are drying, wash the housings in distilled water with a few drops of household bleach. This will kill any mold and get them clean. Allow to air dry.
After all of the above, hit everything with canned air and re-assemble. Power on your items one at a time, preferably into a GFCI outlet in case something isn't dry or is shorting so you don't shock yourself.
If all works, congratulations. Be advised that the items will probably not work like new and you should be prepared for premature equipment failure but hopefully they'll work long enough that you aren't putting out money for everything all at once.
Good luck.
Would it be cheaper in terms of both time and money to simply buy better, faster, and cheaper components now? "Pick two" applies to any relative "now", but the future tends to offer the whole shebang.
Rinse thoroughly with first distilled water and then alcohol (90% would be best). Try hard to flush out the small spaces under parts with alcohol as those are the hardest areas to get dry. Then dry with low heat. You should have done this immediately: too much corrosion may already have occured.
And file an insurance claim. They will pay off when they learn that the stuff got wet: most people believe that water always utterly destroys electronics.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Quite a few posters have said this is a write-off without even seeing the state of the kit in question. That's pretty pessimistic! Here's a tale that should give hope:
Many years ago I worked in the service department of an electronics OEM repairing stuff returned from the field. The OEM built two-way radios. One time we were sent a portable radio that had been recovered from the sea-bed having been dropped from an oil-rig in the North Sea six months previously. The unit had a die-cast zinc/aluminium chassis and case and standard double-sided PCBs with mostly discrete components and a few ICs. It was extremely corroded, covered in salty deposits, and naturally didn't work. I was written off immediately but as a 17yo with time on his hands I took it as a challenge. I cleaned up the unit by passing it through the tanks of hot trichloroethylene that were used for cleaning newly assembled boards. This removed most of the surface corrosion on the PCBs and chassis. An open-framed rotary switch for channel selection was replaced as it was too far gone.I ran the boards through the normal service/setup procedure. The receiver came up no problem with basic retuning. The transmitter was dead but only needed a new final stage transistor and a retune. It passed spec. It was returned to the customer along with a new replacement unit. They were astonished and very pleased with the customer service received beyond the call of duty or expectation. Whether it was connected I don't know but they placed a huge order with us several months afterwards...
The kit here was immersed in fresh water for much less time. While component densities are much higher in modern kit, I think there's a good chance it will work after careful cleaning and drying. Worth a shot anyway - what have you got to lose?
Believe it or not, I actually have ran keyboards through the dishwasher on numerous occasions. After they get 'crusty', I have taken them apart, placed the circuit board in the dishwasher, used NO DETERGENT, and just ran them on a standard cycle, let them dry for a few days, and works good as new. I suspect, that this might work for other electronics as well. Just make sure that you only run PCBs and so forth, and NOT hard drives through the dishwasher.
Getting all the mold out of them -- the second priority is having them work again.
Steps;
-- well away from any sparks or flame (ie NO SMOKING :-)
1: Disassemble completely
2: Immerse everything in wd40 -- wd stands for water displacer -- this will make absolutely sure there is no water at all left on them. Agitate in the wd40. (you can buy wd40 by the gallon)
3: Rinse with as pure ethyl alcohol/rubbing alcohol as you can find -- closest to 100%. Use plenty -- scrub with a toothbrush at this point to remove anything stubborn. This should remove anything not removed by the wd40, and will remove all the wd40 too.
4: Immerse in a second pure alcohol bath that you try to keep clean -- ie use a different bucket than step 3 -- try to get everything off in step 3.
The alcohol will evaporate quickly, leaving everything dry quite soon with no residue (the two rinse steps help with this).
-- at this point, I'd be quite surprised if there was any mold or dirt or oils of any kind left on anything.
4:Reassemble
5:Plug it in and hope for the best -- if it doesn't work, toss it in the trash.
This procedure will not work for anything with any unsealed lubricated moving parts, as it will remove *all* of of the lubrication.
It will also likely cloud any transparent plastics.
Ian Ameline
I have had experience with electronics immersed in water, sea water, various chemicals, even metal dust.
As others have mentioned, circuit boards can indeed be cleaned in water and survive. Most modern circuit boards and components are immersed in a water based solution at the factory for cleaning (now that TCEs are gone). Be sure, be absolutely sure, be positively sure, that you dry them completely before you apply any sort of power at all. Any batteries are probably going to have to be replaced, that's usually not a bad idea. If any ICs are socketed, remove them to allow the moisture to dry in the contacts.
Some hard drives can take a bath, some cannot. It depends on how well they are sealed. You can't even guess by manufacturer, as each one has drives that are sealed well and drives that are not. Worse, there is no easy way to check that moisture has gotten inside the casing. These are probably going to be the biggest concern.
Power supply units are capable of hiding moisture in all kinds of odd places. I would replace the internal ones, test the external ones.
Really, the hardest part of all this is getting some of the cases apart to get them dry!
It's probably possible to fix everything except hard drives and speakers, but it may not be worth the trouble. There are companies that do this, but they usually are called in by flooded industrial plants, not consumers.
You need at least modest repair facilities. A small tank with a stirrer or agitator is a big help. Things like PC boards can be rinsed off with deionized or distilled water. If that's not enough, put them in the tank with deionized water and dishwashing detergent, and agitate for a while. An ultrasonic cleaner is useful but not essential. Allow to drain, then dry with a hair dryer.
It's helpful to have a test bench with a very low current fast-acting circuit breaker for initial power up. (An old trick: wire an outlet in series with a switch and a lamp socket, and put in a big incandescent bulb, like 150 watts. For first power up, plug into this rig. If there's a short, all that happens is that the bulb lights up. If the load isn't drawing much current, there's very little voltage drop, because incandescents have a low resistance when cold.) Have a CO2 fire extinguisher handy.
Non-ball-bearing fans may have rusted and probably will have lost their lubrication. If they'll spin freely by hand, give them a try; if not, or they're too noisy, replace as needed.
Devices with potentiometer knobs may need the pots cleaned with spray-on control cleaner. There's also spray-on connector cleaner; you'll need a can of that, too.
Dry out the hard drives with a hair dryer, and try to power them up. They might still work long enough to get the data off. Hard drive internal cleaning is possible, but it has to be done by specialists in a clean room at far more expense than the cost of a new drive. It's only done to recover the data; the damaged drive is read once and discarded.
CD/DVD drives may or may not have survived. The odds are poor, but the drives are cheap.
When you reassemble a computer, you'll need to run all the diagnostics. You'll need to buy one of the better PC hardware diagnostic programs (not a Windows diagnostic program) that will boot up cold.
And then you'll need to reinstall all the software, starting with the operating system.
Audio amplifiers and such should be completely recoverable.
I don't know what to do about large flat-panel displays. Ask the manufacturer.
Get a large plastic storage box. Place the items in this box. Now fill a milk carton with some calcium chloride (one brand name is damp rid). Put on the lid and run some plastic wrap around said lid.
The calcium chloride will draw all the moisture from the surrounding air.
As far as the mold or other particulate I havent any suggestions. Good luck.
and hit the sales. There is just too much chance of frying electronics or re-infestation of mold and it's just not worth it. Just ask my Uncle, he almost burned down an entire fouplex trying to be cheap with repaired electronics. If you really want to try use distilled water alcohol.
Si vis pacem, para bellum! For evil to succeed good men need only do nothing!
Usually circuit boards will be fine if they are rinsed quickly with distilled water and dried. For drying I like to take an air compressor and blow all the water out then have it air dry with warm air blowing against it. The air compressor helps get the water out from under surface mount parts. Rinsing in pure alcohol might also help. Rubbing alcohol that you buy at the store typically contains between 10 and 40% distilled water.
However, if the boards stay wet for a long period of time then you will have problems with corrosion and it's no longer really recoverable.
You will want to completely disassemble everything. You also will probably want to clean the inside of the cabinet and any displays to get rid of water marks.
A projector might be ruined if water got into the optics since many components do not like water.
Speakers also don't like water very well. Many speakers have a port to help with bass and are often filled with some form of batting. Many are also made of particle board or similar materials which also do not do well when wet.
DVD/CD players are also probably toast since the optics are a bit delicate and do not take kindly to water.
This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
Strong UV (black light) will kill mold and bacteria regular black lights like at spencers aren't strong enough . they are starting to use them in forced air heating and a/c equipment to keep the air clear and the duct work clean of mold and mildew .
i have no sig
You can wash most electronics safely, then put the circuit boards in an oven to dry. Don't use a lot of heat! Set to around 110 degrees F and allow to dry for 2-4 hours. Electric ovens will work faster due to the dryer heat of electric stoves as opposed to gas stoves.
submerge everything in 95% rubbing alcohol to to bio decontaminate all electronics boards.
HDDs only wipe
same with control boards from your furnice etc, don't waste few grands only because it got wet
I had a similar problem with a stereo system. Open them up and clean them with Blue Shower from Tech Spray ( no affiliation) I just know it works from experience.
I think it would be extremely dangerous to plug in these electronics and would just dispose of them.
I'm an electronic tech and have seen many water damaged electronics. If you did not get the water out and force dry them immediately with a hair dryer or other device, the solder joints and copper traces of the circuit board are probably extremely corroded and the leads of the components have rusted through even though it may have been relatively clean water.
The damage should be easy to see if you remove the covers of the electronics and examine the circuit boards. I think you will immediately see that it will not be worth trying to salvage or repair them. I find that when the metals used in electronics get wet, they corrode or oxidize just about as fast as the mold started to grow in your basement.
I got some aerosol circuit cleaner from Radioshack some years back and it worked well.
My problem was the opposite of yours tho. I picked up a couple scorched computers that were in a fire.... The cases melted down they looked hopeless, the drives were toast, and I didn't trust the power supplies. But suprisingly the motherboards (intel?), memory and P3's all lived. Maybe still running today, I don't know I gave them away at some point. There was a good layer of soot/smell and the Rat Shack cleaner got it all off.
CRC makes a QD Electronic Part Cleaner sold at autostores, I use that for cars. Just looked at the can it has Hexane. Not sure if it would be good for circuit boards. In addition to cleaning connectors I found it really cleans up plastic connectors too, hit the plastic with some Aerospace 303 protectant afterwards and you'll swear its new.
Stuff like this gets expensive if you need many cans, so maybe bulk alcohol of some sort that others recommended. I'd recommend some kind of spray bottle so you can get a pressurized stream
I used to do consulting for a dentist who specialized in dentures. Every few months he'd call and complain that his computers were acting wonky. The dust that came from the denture material was conductive, and the computers would start doing strange things. I would pick the computer up, take it home where I would disassemble it completely. Then I'd give the components a full shower with hot water, followed up by drying with a blow dryer on medium heat and compressed air. Since it was Wyoming, there was little humidity and I was able to re-assemble the computers the next day. The computers lasted for years this way. Moral of the story: Water doesn't hurt electronics. I'd say wash them with warm water and a toothbrush, then blow-dry with warm air and compressed air. Don't re-assemble until they are completely dry, at least 24 hours or more depending on your climate.
... they're washed in basically filtered tap water. I'm sure you can work this one out.
You had water up to the celing to get your projector and all the gear in the rack as well? Holy crap how about replacing the electrical panels as well as the furnace, ac and other things forst..
If you re-read the original post, you'll see that those things are of course on our list. We had the electrical panel dried out, taken apart and inspected by an electrician.
The water didn't actually reach the ceiling. It got up to about 6' which was close to (like within 3-4 inches) the bulk of my networking equipment (router, one of my UPSes, Apple Airport and the cable modem) but just missed.
Or are you calling a best buy TV and stereo a "home theater" if you did not have a projector, screen sound control on the walls, and a real integrated sound system you did not have a "home theater".
I find it cute when people call their TV and cheapie stereo a home theater.
P.S. if your surround sound decoder cost less than $3500.00 it's a cheapie toy.
Well, I've been upgrading parts here and there over the years. We had a Zektor HDMI switcher that swapped between the computers, the PS3 and the DirecTV. Had a Slingbox pro that piped stuff upstairs through the 1GB network. An older Panasonic AE700U projector projecting on a home-built 102" screen. Truly, the amp was a cheapie but the speakers were klipsch and the sub was an old NHT Sub-One. I had a Philips Pronto that I used to control the DirecTV, lights and the switcher, but no in-wall controls, so I guess it doesn't meet your criteria for a "true" home theater. *eyerolls*
Also, why waste your time, simply collect on your insurance and buy all new. You had homeowners insurance right?
Yes, of course. However if you read your fine print, you'll see that you can't buy flood insurance in the US from your insurance company unless you are in a flood plain (this is what I was told when I asked about it awhile back). If you want to get flood insurance, you need to get it through a federal program. Again, re-read the original post.
homeowner's insurance (at least in the US) is that it, by default, does not cover damage due to flooding
When I was a kid our foundation wall caved in from too much water pressure after heavy rains (the yard sloped slightly down towards the house). The insurance ruled it a flood issue and didn't cover it because even though my parents told their agent they wanted coverage for "everything". He didn't include flood insurance because he thought since we weren't next to a river we didn't really want that. His response to not including it after we were flooded was to say you have to ask for flood insurance specifically, sorry. Guess he missed elementary school the day 'everything' was on the vocabulary quiz.
I encourage everyone who thinks they have 'everything' coverage to enquire specifically about flood insurance.
If you fsck with the stuff and it then does not work then it could be considered willful damage.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Bitch, you have a home theater and an office in your basement. I can't even afford gas money right now, so count your blessings that your family is alive, get your needs taken care of and buy a new toy after that's done. You should have had better insurance. I know how difficult a policy can be to decipher, and that you probably never counted on being flooded, but cash is always the optimal insurance. Always. Cash > empty promises. You rich people with home theaters should have savings, and this is what it's for. Salvage what you can, sure, but you're probably going to replace most if not all of it.
10. Use alcohol (not the stuff from step 5) to remove any pain and attachment to lost items.
11. Call flood insurance provider.
12. Repeat step 10 if you were like me (no flood insurance).
13. Go shopping.
This is a hacked account, for which the owner can not be held responsible.
Unless you open up whatever you want to save. You can need to get inside the actual items, whether it be that direct TV box, or the amp, or whatever. There are many different ways to clean the electronics. The issue arises with the mold. Nothing will remove it completely without a little scrubbing (a nylon brush will work great for this). And secondly, the only way to verify that the mold is gone is to give it a visual. It WILL grow back if you do not remove it all. It WILL make your items inoperable, if it hasn't already.
The mold isn't even your biggest concern. It's the corrosion that occurs. It will eat through the PCB and any electrical traces along the way. Components? It loves eating those. The faster you act, the better chances of recovery and minimal damage, if any.
I work at the component level with electronics for a living. I've seen all sorts of... messes people have made with their stuff. If you do not get to the mess that was made as soon as possible, the more likely that it is lost.
Simple really: Gamma burst.
The "Nuke it from orbit" approach.
I am the unwilling control for my Origin.
a cleaner I use is Protek but I never used it on electronics before. It is green technology and based on enzymes to clean things. It eats mold and mildew and stops it from coming back for six months. The MSDS sheet will have more information on it.
It has a warning not to use it on brass, but as long as your electronics don't use brass it should be alright. Caution as it removes paint from wallpaper.
If you cannot use it on electronics, you can use it to clean up the rest of your house. It does not smell bad or really strong.
I would suggest a paint brush or tooth brush to apply it to circuit boards. Most circuit boards have copper, gold, silver, etc so it should be safe. Better test it out on a cheap electronic device first before you test it out on something majorly expensive. Like a remote control or something that can easily be replaced. If it fixes a remote control, chances are it will fix some of the other electronics as well.
Good luck.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
dry out by warming with a warm air stream and then by packing in a container with dried rice.
the rice will absorb moisture that you cannot get to.
If anyone has said this, forgive me for saying it all over again. But I have used this technique before. I purchased a high-end air-purifier. It ionizes the air in the room. I've had a computer get flooded on once. And I simply cranked up the purifier and put the p.c. next to it in a small room. Ozone is a great way to kill off that stuff and it doesn't harm the electronics. Just make sure you and any pets aren't around when you're using it (the purifier)
I spilled a cola into a calculator 10 years ago. I washed the electronics out with warm water, then isopropyl alcohol to absorb the water, then dry air to dry the alcohol. The calculator still works as good as new.
Mold might actually kill YOU, not your electronics. You should be very careful.
Wet electronics, can be repaired most of the time.
Things to check for, corrosion on contact points, this can be cleaned using "Deoxit" and a toothbrush. I have repaired professional sound equipment left in the rain, 90% of the time the issues are found on connections.
make sure its dry, really dry. after you let it dry for a while. wait a few more days and let it dry more.
best of luck
Hey I actually have experience with this! I work for a little computer store in New Orleans and we were able to rescue data from wet computers for about three weeks after Katrina. After three weeks the rust and other chemical junk ate up boards and components.
First, open the devices up as much as you can, and get them in a climate controlled room. If you have a dehumidifier use it to suck every drop of moisture out of the air and dry the electronics to the bone.
The next step is to blow out as much garbage as possible with compressed air or use a static free vacuum (for electronics) if you can.
After that your odds are somewhere around 50/50. Getting the parts bone dry is the key.
We had some nasty computers power up, even some that were 100% under. The drives stayed sealed, their was no power, and no chemicals ate up the boards. Now the case was all rusty, but we popped out the drive and it spun up on a test machine to do a data dump. Once we had the data we went for it and the old pc powered up! It happened alot, but after about three weeks the rust and corrosion was so bad it just was not possible anymore. good luck
I worked for Solectronics and a water bath followed by a nice LARGE blowing of HOT air was sufficient
Since you had them off the chances are pretty good
they will work with a COMPLETE dry period
Granted this has been said
I moved into an apartment that was flooded and a microwave was left. My landlord said it was sitting for a year. I plugged it in and had myself microwave dinners from there on out.
This stuff works like magic. Use distilled water to wash off the stuff after you clean them and LET DRY COMPLETELY. What have you got to lose? Most electronics are cleaned in water after soldering anyway. But you need to remember that they must be 100% dry to fire them up or it's toast.
Seems pretty straightforward to me. Add 'em up - photograph the lot in detail - store for possible examination and then send your insurance claim in. No insurance! An expensive lesson learned the hard way.
Recommend you use a hybrid, multi-phase approach of clean water (distilled or Reverse Osmosis filtered = less minerals to possibly deposit) 1. Good bath with some force behind it. (not a fire hose.) 2. Use higher-grade isopropyl alcohol 90% or better. 3. Let dry, consider more alcohol. You could use pure grain (190 proof) ethanol but that would be expensive. However, might make the misery less. :)
The theory is the same as using alcohol in your ear-canal when water is stuck.
The water and the alcohol "bond" and evaporate more easily.
If you know anyone who works for a company that still manufactures PCAs, call them and see if the can run your circuit boards through their wash. These things are rather specialized with huge water filter / de-ionizer systems that supply their water and air knives that sound like jet engines which force the water out from under surface mount components. While you have the cases gutted they could be scrubbed with a mild detergent, rinsed and dried. I'm not sure what to do with things like optical drives or floppies, they might go through the wash whole, don't put the hard drives through whole though, some of them have air vents and the high pressure air might force moisture into the drive. Take the PCA off of the drive and wash it. The hard drive itself could be wiped down with alcohol. Power supplies could be fun, I bet they could go through the was as well, but you should check with a manufacturing engineer who is familiar with wash processes.
You should ask again about flood insurance, particularly now that you've been flooded. We were once told the same thing, but there have been a number of incidents like yours since 1995 or so when we got to experience one of the first on record (Yay Louisiana! We're #1!) You should be able to buy flood insurance now, at appropriately cheap rates, even if you're in a non flood area.
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
I've recovered electronics from immersion in both fresh and salt water (don't ask). The salt water equipment was HV pulse generators that were set up in a room with flowing seawater which escaped its plumbing. I would do two rinses in distilled water (get a big container at your local big grocery store), swish things around for a minute or so for each rinse. Follow by two dips in 99% isopropyl alcohol. This is the alcohol in rubbing alcohol. Get the highest % of iso-PrOH you can find. Safeway here in CA carries a 99% product in pints. You can find 99.9% isopropanol at Fry's in the area that deals with circuit board etching, etc. You want the high % because you're removing water from the prior step. After the alcohol dips, blow-dry the equipment. Use a hair dryer (on COLD, don't light off the alcohol!) or a vacuum cleaner hose hooked to the exhaust on the vacuum. Good luck.
The only safe way to clean electronics is by the dry ice blasting method. Expensive, but some high end electronics are worth saving.
GL
First factor is how much electrolyte content the water had. I.e. Distilled water is a perfect insulator, no electrolytic content also known as chemically inert. Salt water is at the other end of the spectrum. The reason I know this is from years working on Military electronics in the Navy. The first thing that should have happened would be to immerse the items in as clean of water as possible. This would have reduced the electrolytic properties of the contaminated water by distilling it with the fresh water in a container. Not having that available, then the next step would have been to attempt to clean with any water displacing compount. I.e. WD 40 would work, however that would still need to be removed before operation. The goal would be to break the galvanic corrosion cycle by reducing the electrolyte that provides the return path from the anode to cathode caused by the dissimilar metals. The electronics could still be salvaged if care is taken to thouroughly clean and then "THOUROUGHLY" dry them. I currently work in an industry where we have to repair electronics that are used in Poultry processing, and the rendering process leaves deposits on the electronics that can destroy them if not tended to in a timely manner. Isopropyl alcohol or denatured alcohol will work in cutting oils or other chemicals on a board, however they can also mar the surface of the PCB coatings and leave it prone to corrosive damage unless re-coated with a suitable humidity barrier. Having stated all that, Soap and water to clean is perfectly acceptable, but thourough rinsing to remove the soap and thourough drying is a must. Good luck in the salvage process.
Not sure how much this will help, but:
Run a dehumidifier or two non-stop until the air humidity is under 40%. You will likely draw several gallons of water from the air itself, and hopefully dry out the electronics. It will also make the basement liveable in short order.
Good luck, whatever you try.
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
Emphasis mine:
I learned the hard way a year or two ago exactly what "flood" means in insurance terms. It includes a flooded basement due to a failed sump pump. Fortunately in my case, the only loss was some 20-year-old carpet.
So here's my little PSA: Even if you don't live somewhere that can really "flood" in a traditional sense, buy flood insurance if you have a basement. At least the minimal "get the mold out" insurance.
I think the other lesson to take from your experience is not to put the home theater in the basement, if you can avoid it.
Aerosol freon. Used it back in the Navy on everything before it was banned. Spray it on any electronics, any corrosion just melted off.
Oh, its heavier than air, so only use in well-ventilated space, and not anywhere it is illegal, of course.
Your parents probably could have sued the insurance company for coverage and won. If they told the agent they wanted everything, he should have put in everything. If he was a broker, the insurance company would have claimed against the brokerage.
I encourage everybody who thinks they got screwed over by an idiot broker to consult a good lawyer.
Rule of Slashdot #0: You and people like you are not representative of the larger population. - A.C.
Huh? I'm guessing you're Indiana/Illinois midwest.
I don't live in a flood plan, but I do have a water rider on my insurance If the sewer backs up, or the rains flood my house, I'm insured.
i have State Farm if that helps any.
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
Most PCs now have bios batteries. Some are very hard to get to too. (macbook for example, UNDER the logic board) We get people that bring in things like that which got a drink spilled in them and told us they instantly removed the battery. It probably helped, but didn't save it. Water + electricity =. electrolysis, and that's a great way to grow shorts.
Water can be very hard to get out of modern electronics. Surface mount chip packages can hold water for weeks or months underneath them, and the closely spaced pins wick water like you would not believe. If you place a drop of water on the edge of a surface chip like that, the drop will just shrink and disappear, as it's sucked down under the chip. Getting that back out is just as hard as you can imagine.
You can try to bake the electronics, but you really have to watch the temperature. Lots of plastics in there. I've tossed around ideas like taking a big can of desiccant (like in the "do not eat" packets) and an airtight bag and let it sit that way under a sun lamp for a few days. The idea is the heat doesn't actually remove the water, it just helps keep the humidity mobile. The desiccant WILL pull the humidity out of the air which the warmth has helped free up, and lock it away. Moving air inside the bag would probably speed the process. Remember, more heat isn't necessarily better. Dryer IS pretty much always better. (hope your caps are sealed well...) It's not the heat that dries it out, it's the difference in humidity. (a process accelerated by heat and movement of air)
Certain things just plain can't be saved. LCD panels wick water into the panel, and there's no easy getting that out without actually disassembling the panel (LCD / polarizers / light spreader / etc) But that's more of a cosmetic thing than functional, so if you don't mind the weird effect it has on the panel, ok for you.
Home electronics don't often have a bios battery, but many have "supercaps" - high farad count capacitors that keep your settings alive for a few days if power is removed. Those work just like batteries, creating electrolysis in the presence of water. They're soldered down and usually tucked away, so not easy to unplug either.
Anything with a motor in it is going to be trouble to get water out of. Copper windings can trap water for a very long time. Wire wound and thin film pots can be greatly affected by corrosion and are usually sealed just well enough to hold in water but discourage drying out.
Even water that appears to be clean can bring in other problems. Grit and light film can form in places it does not belong, interfering with optical gates, clouding lenses in your optical disk players, etc. Optical pots can get their optics clouded or blocked.
Good luck. I doubt much you do will make a difference at this point - most of your gear was doomed from day 1. Most of what you manage to save probably didn't need your help to survive. (you didn't make a difference) But you can try - just don't blow too much time or expense in vain.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
However if you read your fine print, you'll see that you can't buy flood insurance in the US from your insurance company unless you are in a flood plain (this is what I was told when I asked about it awhile back). If you want to get flood insurance, you need to get it through a federal program. Again, re-read the original post.
Have you verified that this is true? Who told you this? My experience with insurance companies is that they are happy to insure you for stuff if you're willing to pay extra. If you were misled, you may want to talk to a lawyer about that.
Oh, and to the Anon: if you paid $3500 for a surround sound decoder for your home theater, you got ripped off.
Rule of Slashdot #0: You and people like you are not representative of the larger population. - A.C.
Ever had the experience of having your basement flood? With the backup from the main sewer line? You can't take enough showers to feel clean after you've been in that mess. Trust me. You got off easy!
My father was an electrician in the Navy. He said that when sea water would damage electronics they would soak the electronics in distilled water for a couple days and it would work like new.
Hmm. It's really hard to say. Circuit boards are fairly well protected and the metalic contacts and solder joints will be in good shape if the equipment was powered down (they would be corroded if the equipment was powered on, depending on how long). But the electrolytic capacitors are probably in very bad shape. If the electronics have mold on them that means the water wasn't as clean as you might have thought and organic matter got caught up in there. The electrolytics might be unrecoverable meaning the board would be unrecoverable or only work for a short period of time. Similar HDs might work for a short while but don't count on them staying working.
You can try washing the circuit boards carefully in fresh water (someone mentioned distilled water but a Brita filter will work just fine, disolved minerals don't really hurt anything), but then you have to dry it completely and the only way to do that is in a very low humidity environment... for example, place the board in an oven at its lowest setting (~120 degrees F) for at least four hours. Air conditioning also helps on the humidity front but you also need the heat. e.g. using an oven in an air-conditioned room. You would have to be very careful to protect the board from the oven's heating coils since they tend to turn full on and then full off. And even being careful you might still destroy it.
If the circuit board is powered on while still wet any metalic surfaces the water touches will corrode over time and destroy the board. The board might work for a short period of time but then it would just die.
-Matt
The easiest solution, of course, is to go back in time before the flood and get everything out of the basement.
This is exactly what home owners and renters insurance is for. Create backups of your hard drive disks, and throw the rest in the garbage.
Once it's dry, exposure to direct sunlight will help kill mould. Lots and lots of UV (remembering that window glass is a tolerable UV filter, so if you can expose it directly to sunlight, without any risk of rain falling on it, that's better).
In addition to the above stated solutions, you might speed the drying process with rice.
Get a bottle of isopropanol alcohol and a long paint brush with a ridgid set of bristles. You have to disassemble the electronics you want to clean and get down to the bare circuit board. Dip the brush into the alcohol and brush away at the surface of the circuit board. You need a hard enough brush so it can break the material you want to remove but not damage the surface mount components. The manufacturer or (contract or assembly shop) can routinely dunk finished boards into isopropanol to remove flux and other contaminants. Brush the board clean. You can load some into squirt bottle and apply it as needed to the area and brush it clean. Don't be alarmed if the board looks like its saturated with it. It will evaporate. Be sure to let the board dry for about 2-3 hours before you use it.
I'm not sure that I'm RECOMMENDING this, but it's something I've done in the past.
A friend and I, after a bout of drinking, decided to test the theory that ethylene glycol could serve as an effective liquid coolant for a computer motherboard. To this end we filled a plastic tub with the stuff (a.k.a. "antifreeze") and pulled the board from an old HP 486 desktop. We powered it on, grasped it with some wooden tongs, and lowered the board into the antifreeze path.
Well, it turns out that a mobo will NOT function while submerged in antifreeze. Disappointed, we took the board to the bathroom and blasted it off in the shower. We shook the water out, then gave it a good 15 minute session with a hair dryer. A few more drinks were consumed, and we decided to try powering it back up. To our surprise it POSTed and started up just fine.
One very noticable side effect of this treatment was that the board, which was previously grimy, gritty, and covered in dust bunnies, looked new like the day it was manufactured.
Now, I don't know if it was the ethylene glycol or the shower that cleaned the board so well, but I guess I have to say this: a quick dunk in antifreeze followed by a few quality moments in the shower with your rubber ducky might do the trick.
1) Get you some high-grade isopropyl alcohol (not the wussy 70% stuff -- the 97% stuff they use in cleanrooms)
2) Put it in a tub
3) Rinse your electronics in it -- vigorously, but briefly
4) Let dry for a couple of days (to play it safe)
And, voila! It should all just work. Maybe. DO NOTE: this stuff is flammable like nobody's business. Don't do this in an enclosed area, and don't do it if there's any chance of sparks.
P.S. If rust has set in, ain't much that's gonna fix that.
P.P.S. YMMV, etc.
Don't worry - your home theater is fine - when the OP said "screen sound control on the walls" he was likely talking about passive sound absorbtion.
So in his case, the 2'x3' piece of foam he got out of the Amazon shipment for his Bose Wave music system.
My definition of a home theater - if you're system is serious enough to warrant curtains, and you have them, you're in the club.
So here's my little PSA: Even if you don't live somewhere that can really "flood" in a traditional sense, buy flood insurance if you have a basement. At least the minimal "get the mold out" insurance.
I believe flood insurance is pretty cheap if you don't leave in a flood prone area. And nearly impossible to get if you really need it. So get it if you live somewhere that someone will sell it to you.
I had a similar thing happen to me in 2005. I had just moved in to a new place and was storing most of my things in the basement, including my RAID server.
Luckily everything was switched off when the basement flooded with rainwater, but the computer was completely submerged for about 24 hours. The motherboard battery completely corroded that part of the board (parts had actually come off).
What I really wanted was to get the data back from the drives. The drive logic boards all had dried crud and residue on them from the water. I tried cleaning one with a cloth and rubbing alcohol, but when I plugged it in, it burned out (actual smoke).
I took the boards off the three remaining drives (was sure not to mix them up) and gently washed them in warm water and a little dish soap. I rinsed them thoroughly and let them dry completely, re-attached them to the drives, and they all worked! Those drives still work today, although they don't hold any critical data.
Unix is mysterious, and ancient, and strong. It's made of cast iron and the bones of heroic programmers of old -
Take it to a data recovery specialist if you have anything valuable on any of the drives, and then get the lot recycled at Best Buy or any legit scrap dealer.
'He who has to break a thing to find out what it is, has left the path of wisdom.' -- Gandalf to Saruman
Large amounts of water are often ultimately less of a problem than small amounts of water. Large amounts cause the current to leak everywhere, so there isn't an area that the current is concentrated enough to burn a circuit. You just have to be sure to dry it out completely when you reapply the power, so that it doesn't have that small area that can concentrate the current.
Not quite the same as a stereo, or TV, but I left my Treo 700p on the seat of my lawn tractor when I was laying on the ground working on the mower deck. I forgot it, and it rained that night. It was a brick at the bottom of the pool of water in the seat. The battery was removed, the phone placed in a bag of kitty litter, and a week later, the battery replaced. Works like new.
Im not sure about all states but in NH you cant buy flood insurance unless you live in a flood plain. This is due to insurance companies scaring people into insurances they didnt need. However in cases like my town thats not a flood plain but floods every 25 years due to massive rain storms you end up on the short end of the stick.
However if you read your fine print, you'll see that you can't buy flood insurance in the US from your insurance company unless you are in a flood plain (this is what I was told when I asked about it awhile back)
I don't live in the USA, but this is just bizarre (if true). Insurance companies should be lining up to sell flood insurance in areas that floods don't occur (or are extremely rare). It's easy money.
If you live in a flood plain, it's understandable that insurance companies refuse to sell flood insurance since the risk of loss is so high.
Try placing some of the electronics in plastic containers with a generous amount of dry rice. I know it sounds stupid but a friend told me about it and we were able to save a blackberry that was dropped in a pool. The rice will absorb the water however I dont know what to tell you about the mold/grime.
Dry the items out good (like put in car on hot summer day with window just cracked to let the steam out). When the windows aren't fogged anymore then you can think they are dry. I get computer towers that have sometimes been left out overnight in rainstorms. Let them dry in the garage for a week or two is usually enough to to dry them out (especially during summer). Then carefully plug in and turn on.
Or accept the loss and retain karma.
Strip the equipment, take pictures as you do it. Set HDDs aside & consult HDD recovery companies. Or ask HDD maker how to clean & dry it. Except HDDs, all else can be cleaned with soap and water. Run dishwasher empty without soap. Run computer & other electronics PCBs thru dish washer with liquid soap, not powder soap. Run rinse cycle again. If dishwasher with soft water is available, use it. If DI or RO water is available, rinse each PCB with it. Repeated dips in DI water is good. Let dry 3 days in air conditioned room. Consider several hours in an oven at 120 to 150 degrees F. Minimum 3 days dry time. Transformers & enclosed power supplies may need longer dry times. I hope you removed all the clock and CMOS power cells long ago, if not you will probably have to remove corrosion products manually. All my PCB recovery work was pre surface mount component time, so you may have to use chemicals and spray pressures to remove last of water from under components. If all tap water is displaced by pure water, extended dry time may be all you need. Better you should locate a company specializing in electronics recovery & not rely on how we did it 20 years ago for industry and military. Oh, and like some one noted, keyboards are best cleaned in dishwasher, if you can wait till fully dried.
Keep your basement dry and don't worry too much about disinfecting your electronics (dry them out of course). Mold will proliferate again if the conditions are right.
Mold is incredibly resilient, and if even a little of it remains you will continue to have problems down the road. While I'm sure you could save the electronics, unless you are 99% thorough in removing the mold it will just come back. It might be better just to toss everything.
i have done this for years in my repair shop.. everything from coffee to toilet water to puppy pee. Carefully disassemble the components that need cleansing / restoring. Give them a nice alcohol bath and scrub them all over with a soft, nylon bristled toothbrush. let them dry fully, and if they look like they need it do it again. You want to be careful not to damage any caps or pots. when I say 'bath' I mean dip the brush in a cup of the alcohol, not let it soak.
I have found that you can buy 90% or better alcohol if you look for it at the pharmacy. Alcohol evaporates quicker than water, and is a better solvent for any mineral residue.
I have recovered computers, monitors, laptops, DirectTV controllers, Stereo components that had rats die and decompose in them. You name it.
Good luck and happy recovery!
Lost cause! I work at U of Iowa surplus, and we received several flood damaged PCs. (Most, they had the sense to move to higher floors). It was clear the PC proper was a lost cause, the water was fairly dirty and the power supply, fans, hard disk, etc. were clearly not going to clean up enough to run. But, we tried the CPU and RAM out in a known-working board -- they were also DEAD AS A DOORNAIL.
Someone posted saying e
Just install Vista on it. If it farks up, nobody will know the difference.
Table-ized A.I.
Interesting. Could you do me a favor and recheck your policy. We had the "sewer backup" rider, but that only covers when the place is flooded due to toilet/drains backing up. We were told (at the time) that that was the extent of possible coverage.
We have State Farm, too.
Recovering laptops from spills, electronics from moisture, etc. I even recovered my brother-in-law's equipment out of hurricane Katrina.
Step 1) Wash in distilled water. Distilled water does not conduct electricity, but it will cause oxidizaiton. You need H20 to dissolve the water soluble contaminants. Feel free to immerse the products in the distilled water.
Step 2) Get 99.9% isopropyl alcohol and rinse away the water.
Step 3) Get a couple cans of Chemtronics DPL - Spray the surface, it will return all electrical properties back to original.
http://www.all-spec.com/1/viewitem/ES1626/ALLSPEC/prodinfo/i=rss
The DPL® ES1626 is a Deep Penetrating Lubricant.
* Chemtronics ES1626 Features:Safe for use on plastics
* Non-flammable
* Displaces moisture from electrical and electronic components
* Special corrosion inhibitors prevent corrosion under high humidity and salt spray conditions
* Minimizes friction and metal wear
* Protects metal surfaces; works on most metals including aluminum
* Excellent dielectric properties
* Cleans, protects, and lubricates all electrical and electronic switches, contacts, relays, plugs, and sockets
* Fine for use in applications exposed to extreme weather conditions
* Loosens rusted cabinets and hinges
* RoHS Compliant
* 11 oz. aerosol can
This is how I restore all water damaged electronics. Steps 1 and 2 alone will result in corrosion.
Good security is based upon reality and common sense. Common sense is a function of having common knowledge.
Has someone mentioned isopropyl alcohol yet? I hear it can clean electronics.
If there is any residue, start with mild soap, clean water, super thorough drying, you can also try Corrosion Block ( http://www.nocorrosion.com/corrosion-control.htm )but use it VERY SPARINGLY its industrial stuff. Can't over emphasize the thorough drying part. Good Luck!
We dealt with this problem in 2001-2002 when we moved into a house with severe toxic mold. We tried everything to recover our possessions after moving out, and nothing worked. Bleach and ozone can kill spores and prevent active spread of the mold, but mycotoxins are nonpolar molecules that tend to dissolve into plastics, making them impossible to decontaminate. The odor may disappear briefly after cleaning, but will return in a few days once the mycotoxins start to diffuse out again. Electronics were the most difficult items to clean, since they are highly porous, filled with plastics, and cannot be subjected to extreme cleaning methods (like boiling in bleach solution, or baking at 400 degrees). If I were you, I would give up. It isn't worth the effort. Despite all our work, we lost everything except smooth metal and glassware.
I am a geek attorney, but not your geek attorney unless you've already retained me. This is not legal advice.
Most of the problems of a wet PCB and electronic parts come from the "mud" left behind. These often invisible deposits can cause short circuits. I had a similar problem a while back involving an old radio that had been left in a humid garage for years. I used an "electronics wash" that was just flooded over the parts (outside the house) and left to dry. It essentially washed off the electronic parts without harming them. I believe a current product is "Electro-Wash" produced by Chemtronics. If you can't find a local distributor, you can order it by mail from Altex Electronics in San Antonio, TX (www.altex.com) Dunno about the mold... perhaps the wash will take care of it too.
First, you MUST use a cleanser that leaves nothing behind. If it is anti-corrosion, it leaves something behind and that will conduct. Perhaps not very much now, but later it will conduct more as it attracts stuff, and it will. I have found that Dow Scrubbing Bubbles in the can that foams up gets into the components well and using a brush (toobrush works fine) this will clean the board nicely. Then rinse with clean water and place on a warm area with good air movement (a furnace vent, computer output fan area or so on) and let it dry completely. I used to work on pagers for a living and I have resurrected them using this method from being dumped in a "honey wagon" (yep, raw sewage), an oil truck, and other places one would never think of. This always worked.
I had a basement flood. It filled up about 3 feet deep because the drain plug in the basement of the house I was renting clogged while it was flooding. My entire studio was in the basement. I had a laptop on the floor, my computer, a bunch of Mackie SRM450 speakers, a mackie mixer, a bunch of guitar pedals. All of it was under water. After getting all the water out of the basement, tearing out the drywall, removing the carpet and dehumidifying everything in less than 72 hours I start looking at my electronics. I dismantled things just enough that air could get in and let them sit in the room for a week with the dehumidifier expecting the worst. At the end of the week I went and started turning stuff on. In the end I had to buy a new CMOS batter for my motherboard on my desktop PC. Literally every other thing (well over 30 various plugged-in-during-the-flood electronic devices) had no problems. I was expecting to have to get my insurance company involved but was stoked to find that even the cones on the mackie speakers were fine. I honestly think that in most cases you're inviting problems by trying to clean things out. Your electronics are not going to grow mold if you run an industrial dehumidifier for a week. If the water was filthy then it will be a different story, but I would say that if the boards look clean then don't put anything else on them. That's just my $.02.
If the chance of flood really is practically nil, flood insurance should be really, really cheap. There shouldn't be any reason *not* to get it.
If it's not cheap.. you probably need it anyway.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
I will tell you two methods
...
... dip the whole thing in a drum of WD40 (or spray profusely)... wash in distilled water. Let dry, put in oven
...
Wash in an ultrasonic bath. 10 minutes in isopropanol. 10 minutes in methanol. If you can only do one, use mathanol as it is a water dispersant. A warm oven would be a good next move
Now something that is also done professionally
Use
G
Bleach is probably not good for all the metal in electronics. However, vinegar is a very good mould and fungus killer. Using undilited normal shop stuff (4-5% acetic acid) is fine, maybe 10% if you could get it.
Yes it is an acid, but very mild so I would *think* it would be ok. And I wouldn't leave it longer than a few minutes. It should kill practically all the mould. The final alcohol wash should also make sure of it.
Then as suggested by others a very thorough wash of distilled water (get it in the hardware store).
Dry roughly and squirt down with some 95-100% alcohol. Alcohol will absorb moisture from the air so this is *not* to be relied upon. I would say pure rubbing alcohol (isoproponal), or ethanol (methylated spirits, denatured alcohol, 191 proof grain alcohol if you want to follow the "one for you one for me" philosophy of cooking/cleaning. We wont know how the alcohol will react with all the plastics and glues so dont soak in this, we just want to displace the bulk of the water trapped in all the hard to reach places.
Now take to it with a fan or cool (to start with)-hair dryer in a *very* well ventilated space. Dont want to spark a fire from setting the fumes alight!
**warning** Wear gloves and work in a very well ventilated space if you use "methylated/denatured spirits" of undetermined origin. The possibility of methanol in them *will* send you blind if you breath too much. 'Modern' metho doesnt always contain methanol because of this, but unless you are sure, be safe.
I don't know if it will help or not, but I've read of people using it on laptops that were dropped in boat bilges. It's basically a spray on wax developed for Boeing. It is a soft film wax surfactant that inhibits corrosion and it will also displace any moisture that might be left over.
http://www.boeshield.com/index.htm
For the record, I've not used it for that, only on my car.
-William Shatner can be neither created nor destroyed.
*Blowdryer*
It sounds like you are already prepared to disassemble so:
1) Remove all batteries
2) Use a toothbrush and isopropyl alcohol (97%) to wash the boards/components
3) Rinse using distilled water
4) Use an air compresssor to blow dry everything. Make sure that you dry under IC's and components.(if you don't own an air compressor, now is the time to buy one).
5) Let sit for at least 48 hours afterwards
6) Visually inspect
7) Let'er rip..
Ethylene Oxide. Kills everything. Use the Googles.
ultrasonic cleaning should not be used if crystal oscillators are present.
As evanbd said think about ultra sonic (ultrasound) bath. It is profesional cleaning procedure for electronic equipment. For egsample profesional cell phone service for sure have ultra sonic bathtub for those cell phones that felt into water or other fluid even working! Ultra sonic works great especially for sticky fluids.
If you want to clean manually then use or distilled water or isopropyl alcohol (called also isopropanol or rubbing alcohol) which is also used widely for cleaning purposes. Uses of other alcohol can cause damage as alcohol can melt some materials like plastic. Isopropyl should be good for all materials that are used in electronic equipment.
As it was said some parts can be baked. Silicon can be damaged by temperature 125 Celsius but some other materials can have lower melting point (like some plastics). Therefore temperature should be choosen carefuly but for most eletronic circuits PCBs (Printed Circuit Board) temperature as high as 110 Celsius should make no damage.
As also was said it is more problematic for mechanical parts like dvd player because probably or you will choose to trash it or to dismantle mechanism which can be too complicated and you do not know if it will work after reassembly.
What ever You will do remember not to power up any electronics that You are not sure if it is entirely cleaned as some said. Doing so may cause unrepairable damage.
I've recovered from drenched electronics simply by dissassembling as far as the unit allows and letting the pieces dry in a warm, dry area. A week or two is usually enough. If you have the luxury of having an oven that goes to very low 'warming' temps you can put them in a 120-140 over for a few hours after you think they are dry for the final drying phase.
We had some audio amplifiers in a student theatre where I worked. One of my dimmer colleagues spilt a pint of milk into the amplifiers while they were running. We turned it off!
The next day we used industrial alcohol to clean it. This worked pretty well.
Anthony
-- Anthony Staines
I live in the tropics... during rainy season here everything gets moldy. How do people deal? As soon as we have a sunny day everyone puts everything that smells musky out in the sun for a few hours. Mold hates sunlight.
The direct hot tropical sun dries things out fast, which of course kills mold, but further, UV rays effectively sterilize fungal hyphae even some millimeters below the surface of textiles. After just a few hours of direct sunlight the mold is gone, there's not even a trace of moldy smell left, and it won't come back until the humidity stays high enough for long enough for spores (which are omnipresent) to develop into new fungi.
So, open everything up and put it out in the sun... since you probably live in the temperate North and it's Fall there now, the sun might not be strong enough (both in terms of drying power and UV) but it's a good first step. Then dry it out some more with hot air (blowdryer into a makeshift tunnel from trash-bags?), then rinse everything with alcohol (as close to 100% as possible, whether ethanol or isopropyl) and dry out some more.
Your best bet is to pull all the circuit boards out of the cases and bake the boards in an oven at 212 degrees or just under for 1 hour or more. This will kill off all the mold on the parts and evaporate all of the water. Electronics handle much high temperatures going through manufacturing processes.
I would advise that you put down silicon mats in the oven, so the boards are not in direct contact with any metal (hotspots).
This probably won't ever get read, but you are seriously in need of Sporaclean http://www.killmoldfast.com/. It's an insanely good product. You should get this stuff, dilute it and coat the room, and everything in it.
It's probably too late now. You needed to open them up immediately, rinse them out with a spray of clean water, place them in a dry location and evaporate the water with forced, cool air (e.g. with a fan). If they've been sitting wet and stagnant for a few days corrosion may have set in. If so, your chance of recovering them is practically nil.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
After an interesting match of chess played on the backseat of my car, there are now some horrible poo stains on the light fabric of the seat. How can I get these off?
Please spare me the jokes: I learned the lesson, and from now on will only play chess in the chess club, not in the backseat of my car.
First rule of recovering wet electronics... act fast. Don't wait for a good day to get around to it, this leaves time for oxidation.
Second rule. Take stuff apart. You've got to get that water out and you have got to do it quickly. You aren't going to get water out of the inside of a device quickly through the vent holes or the spaces around the knobs in the chasis. You need to take them apart and expose the boards.
If the inside is muddy you may consider putting the circuit boards in a dishwasher. I know people whom have done this with computer motherboards and expansion cards. I have not tried it myself though. If you do, skip the soap. You aren't going to eat off the thing anyway, listen to the people whom say chlorine is corrosive. That's what's in dishwasher detergent. Electronics rely on some very narrow copper channels. It doesn't take much to eat through one.
You may also put the chasis in the dishwasher. Sometimes it can be a little rough on ink labeling controls but usually not too bad unless the ink is almost worn off to begin with. It can make old yellowed plastic look much newer and can get the gunk out of ventilation slits much easier than by hand. I have used this method to make old items from garage sales or EBay look like new. For this you can use the soap. Again, taking things apart is good. Wherever two parts come together is a crack where water can hide and take a long time to dry. If you do this make sure to remove any wood, paper or cloth parts. You mentioned a home theatre, I imagine there might be grill cloth over speakers. If you had some old style equipment there might be wood trim to remove.
Make sure everything is completely dry before putting it back together. And of course, remember how it goes together when you take it apart! If it looks real difficult, do it in front of a video camera. Or, stop and take pictures at different steps of disassembly. If there are many different size/type of screw to keep track of, empty egg cartons can be good for that.
Again, the sooner you do this the better! I have to wonder about the fact they are currently under a tarp. Yes, that will keep additional water out but it also holds the current water in! If they have been sitting that way long it may have already done additional damage.
I used to recover electronics from saltwater and freshwater intrusion, as well as from toilet water, various chemicals both solid and liquid, mould and others for a living. Remove the device from its housing to the degree you find possible and soak it in 99% isopropyl alcohol (NOT rubbing alcohol, which is typically only 70% isopropyl - you want 99% pure). Swirl it around after a couple/few hours, repeat until it appears clean. Remove from the alcohol and allow to dry thoroughly - you can also use a brush to displace any crud during or after the soak. Give it at least a day or two to dry, then reassemble and test. CRITICAL NOTES: 1. 99% isopropyl alcohol is beyond flammable, it's explosive! No smoking, open flame, or anything capable of causing ignition in the room you use. 2. That alcohol evaporates extremely quickly at room temperature - ventilate the room well if you wish to live. 3. Any visible rust or corrosion evident after the above is an indicator that the device will likely not survive, or at least survive for long. Best action in that case is do NOT apply power, buy a new one.
cookiej: Honey, can we buy a new home theater setup?
wife: No, too expensive.
[some months later]
cookiej: Honey, can we buy a new home theater setup?
wife: I thought we were saving up for our kids to go to college.
[some months later]
cookiej: Honey, can we buy a new home theater setup?
wife: No, I need a new car. And some shoes.
[some months and a flash flood later]
wife: cookiej, the home theater setup is wrecked, I guess we'll have to buy some new gear.
cookiej: (if he has any sense) Halleluja, upgrades!
Oh no... it's the future.
Just get some everclear. It works great for cleaning electronics as it is so pure, and it is cheaper (depending where you buy it) than isopropyl alcohol. I use it to clean CPUs to get the old heatsink material off. Plus once you've found out that more than likely the capacitors in your equipment are dead you'll have some hard-core booze to make you stop caring for a little while.
..some things will be with some work. The question is whether it's worth it in terms of time and tedium.
A CRT type TV with deflection coils will be impossible to clean adequately. The impurities in rain water will eventually destroy things you can't get to.
The amp and video switch should be recoverable. Soak / rinse in 90% alcohol, brush away all visible debris. Several cans of contact cleaner (the kind that leaves no residue or film) could also work. After this step, dry it thoroughly in a warming oven (120 to 140 degrees F MAX!) for 24 hours to ensure all moisture is out of the circuit boards. Do not power up until all this is done. Then it might work, and don't count on it lasting more than a year.
Worth it? Not really, but if you have sentimental attachment to this gear it might be worth it to you.
I have successfully resurrected equipment from smoke / heat damage and floods, but only because the equipment had sentimental value to the owner.
HTH
Mike
Go to an auto parts store and get some Electrical Contact Cleaner. It's in a spray can, and is basically alcohol. It'll clean and dry out anything. I used it on a computer that I had poured a glass of water on. Use pipe cleaners to get all the gunk off, then use the electrical contact cleaner to dry it out. Still wait several days, and probably several applications of contact cleaner.
Just stay away from anything chlorinated. About 10 years ago I worked on a cordless phone that had been dropped in a swimming pool and dried out a couple of weeks before I got it. When I opened it the circuit boards were covered with what looked like fine white whiskers. I am presuming this was some kind of tin or lead whisker growth from reacting with the chlorine in the pool water. I washed everything first in tap water (we have very soft tap water here) and scrubbed all the growth off with a tooth brush. Then I rinsed in distilled water and after blotting off as much water as possible dried it for 20 or 30 minutes with a hair dryer on low. Then I let it sit in a dry warm place for a week and put it back together. Worked fine for several years until it was replaced.
Arcade Restoration Workshop
http://www.arcaderestoration.com/index.asp?OPT=3&DATA=292&CBT=4
I've read a lot of people with great advice on removing water and even sea water. They've got a lot more expertise than I do, although I find their stories interesting to read.
The OP mentions mold. As a resident of central Texas, I think I can safely say that mold is evil. Once you get a little, it's really hard to get rid of it all, and any mold infestation will have serious health implications in the short and long term. I realize that it may be painfully expensive, but if you suspect any mold on anything, you should either quarantine it until you can thoroughly kill it or just trash it. A basement with two sump pumps suggests to me that it's not a typically dry place. If this is the case, you're in pretty rough shape structurally -- I hope you can afford a good mold removal service. If there's any delay while you save up money or have to wait for service availability, get a good dehumidifier for the affected spaces and make sure that it either drains properly or is emptied regularly. Cutting down the humidity will hinder further mold growth, although it shouldn't harm what you already have.
Mold is evil. A little leads to a lot. Kill 99.9% of it, and that last 0.1% will grow a hundredfold while you recover from the effort of killing 99.9% of it.
P.S. You're an idiot and/or obsessive-compulsive who is being duped out of thousands of dollars by opportunists who are selling you the same made-in-China shit under different brand names and with flashier cases. But please go ahead and keep thinking that everybody is fawning over your giant money sink.
Most large hardware stores and home improvement stores sell isopropyl by the gallon in the paint department, for much cheaper than you would get it at a pharmacy or chem supply company.
I use it as fuel for homebuilt pulsejets so I go through a lot, and Home Depot is the cheapest source I've found.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
Sump pumps fail all the time. Install a second pump that has battery backup and place the float switch higher so it only works if the primary fails. Don't tee into the existing drain pipe, use a second independent pipe. I've had a check valve fail and jam the pipe so even the backup wouldn't work. You can even place a another float switch higher than the backup. Connect that one to your security system to report problems.
Some denatured alcohol and a toothbrush (or other nylon bristled brush with soft bristles) should do the trick. I saw bleach as a tag, but I wouldn't do that. Bleach is corrosive and may eat away at circuit packaging and stiffen/make brittle cable wrapping.
You are going to need a good sized tub and a lot of whatever liquid cleaner you use. You'll probably want a "wash" tub and a "rinse" tub to make sure you get any mold residue off the components. My sincere condolences on the flood, btw.
I have, on several occasions had water in my sensitive electronics both on and off (testing watercooler computers). The single best thing I've found to displace any water, is WD-40 (which stands for, ironically, Water Displacement 40).
I spray it on, let it sit for an hour or two and wipe it completely off. I've had 1.5" of water in the bottom of a RUNNING PC before and used this to bring it back to life.
Note: Just to nip this in the bud, it was all low end equipment testing prototype designs, I've never had a leak in my "proper" rigs.
Just another ignorant American.
Very informative, it is a pity the guy posted anon
See my journal, I write things there
Wow aren't you an arrogant little twat.
So here's my little PSA: Even if you don't live somewhere that can really "flood" in a traditional sense, buy flood insurance if you have a basement. At least the minimal "get the mold out" insurance.
As an added bonus, flood insurance in the U.S. is the absolute cheapest in areas outside of defined flood plains.
Check out your area at FEMA's website. They have a kludgey map viewer, but the info is there.
I live in Sacramento, the "River City," about 2 miles from the American River and about 3 miles from the Sacramento River. I'm just outside of the "Zone X" flood diagram, and my FEMA flood insurance is only a couple hundred US$ per year.
After Katrina in New Orleans, Sacramento's levees were widely identified as the next-most crappiest. Zone X or not, I snapped that policy right up!
House drains are usually well above the level of the street. Basement drains are lower but normally should have some kind of elementary non-return valve. We had a flood because of an intense downpour that backed up through the drains and the insurers said that without the non-return valve, they wouldn't pay.
See my journal, I write things there
Wow. You are an idiot.
Seriously.
I find it cute when people pretend to be important by trying to suggest that their knowledge in some obscure area of technology actually matters.
It looks like you only bothered to reply so that you could look down your nose at the hoi polloi milling about below your lofty pedestal.
Sorry if this is slightly off topic, but it always seemed strange to me how reliant we've become to sump pumps. The house I grew up in was built in the 1920s and had a basement as did most of the homes in the upper midwest. From 1850 to about 1970, none of these homes had or needed sump pumps. After about 1970 nearly all houses in the same area were built so that sump pumps are absolutely necessary. I suspect it has something to do with city laws regarding separation of storm sewers from sanitary sewers, and the fact that the sprawly post 1970 suburbs don't have any kind of sewers. But isn't it amazing to think of the amount of energy and environmental damage used to pump billions of gallons 8 feet to the surface so it can trickle back down again in about 5 minutes? If you think New Orleans/Netherlands is a bad design, have a look at state-of-art home design in the heart of America after almost a decade long housing bubble.
As for cleaning electronics, I had good success using canned air, the ozone-friendly liquid at the bottom of a can of air, to clean about 8 oz of baby puke out of a new Toshiba flash memory laptop.
For future reference, my parents found out from experience that a car battery powered backup pump won't do squat against a midwestern summer storm (do the math, how watt-hours required to lift a few hundred liters/minute 8 feet.) Gas, propane, gasoline and diesel powered generators and water powered venturi pumps are the best option until we figure out how to build houses so we aren't constantly trying to push water uphill.
Years ago I worked on the DSRV ALVIN(the sub that found Titanic) as an electronics technician. Occasionally we would get a small leak exposing electronics to salt water. This is NOT fatal if you promptly and throughly flush the equipment with lots of distilled water and immediately dry it. Alcohol will also help displace water. If it's not completely dry when you fire it up you will probably lose it.
Depending on the condition you may have got lucky, but odds are that if days have elapsed you will have corrosion buildup around the base of capacitors and other places which means it's going to be a crap shoot. Just get ready to pull the plug in a hurry if you get smoke.
Re:Corrosion Miracle.
CRC 2-26, #02005, 11(oz)/~$6.
I've used automotive CRC-2-26 on electrical/onic connectors since ~1990. It does NOT damage organics, displaces H2O, inhibits corrosion on Cu, brass, Stl,.. .
And we use it in the lab as a good tapping fluid for Al. Light lubricant, OK for DB9, etc
XLow tox MSDS
CRC 2-26, #02005, 11(oz)/~$6.
I've used automotive CRC-2-26 on electrical/onic connectors since ~1990. It does NOT damage organics, displaces H2O, inhibits corrosion on Cu, brass, Al, Stl,.. .
And we use it in the lab as a good tapping fluid for Al. Light lubricant, OK for DB9, etc
XLow tox MSDS. Fluid film remains: cured Puntium II heat transfer.
When I was in the computer repair business, we used a commercial solvent called "Blue Shower" for such applications. It's not cheap but works great. http://www.staticspecialists.com/techspray.html
A friend of mine recently had their iPod go through the wash. (No iPod versus other player comments please. Let's not distract people from the conversation at hand... ;) They were told to put the iPod into a sealed tub filled with dry rice to absorb the water. It did ending up working. You would probably need to go to a warehouse store to get enough rice and tubs but I don't see why it wouldn't work here. Or maybe buy enough pairs of new shoes to get lots of those little desiccant packets... or just buy the industrial size closet/basement tubs of it.
I've never really thought about it until now, but now that I do, I can't help wondering why this is still an issue. How much could it cost to spray all circuit boards with some kind of solidifying sealant? Water damage is one of the more common causes of electronic equiment failure and water really is everywhere, you'd think someone would think of doing something about it.
I work in a cleanroom, and we use isopropyl alcohol to clean stuff. DO NOT use acetone, it will simply dissolve a bunch of stuff. Bleach will corrode stuff. Distilled or de-ionized water will take forever to do anything useful. For these reasons, IPA is the way to go. Ethyl alcohol is much better for drinking than cleaning.
Electronics are pretty hardy and sturdy, helped by the fact that most boards nowadays are covered with a skin that protects from a great many contaminants. When I worked repairing electronics, we used a simple procedure:
1) Replace all electrolytic capacitors which were older than 7 years or had been exposed to continue high heat. In your case it was submerged, so it's likely that water got inside of them (they're vented) and they should be replaced regardless.
2) Remove any old style power transformers before cleaning. Modern switching power supplies are ok, much more sturdy.
3) We scrubbed boards with a toothbrush or small paintbrush using a mixture of water and simple green, though orange based cleaners work well too. We used about a 3:1 (water:cleaner) ratio. Then rinse with water and let air dry. The worst caveat is buttons or other things with tiny space which can hold water. We typically unsoldered those before we cleaned the boards, but if that's not your strong point, just make sure to dry everything before applying power again. A hairdryer and a few days of airdrying works really well in this capacity. Plus it also gives you time to see if mold returns, indicating a spot you should focus on. (I also never came across anything that the cleaner actually damaged, but be watchful for foam or other potentially dissolvable items. We were working on industrial electronics, so the manufacturing process may be a little different.)
4) Did I mention to make sure everything was completely dry before reconnecting and applying power again?
I had a portable phone fall into a swimming pool (chlorinated water). I removed the battery and took the phone apart, then dried it out with a hair dryer. I left the phone apart for a week for it to continue to air dry. Then I reassembled it and installed the batteries. It still didn't work. I turned it off and left it on the charger. After another week it started to work but sections of the LCD display didn't work correctly. After ANOTHER week the LCD started to come back to life. That phone is STILL working about a year later. YMMV
I found out that my insurance company (american family) defines a flood as water covering so many square miles (I want to say 26 square miles). Water in your basement isn't a flood, and therefore wouldn't be covered by flood insurance.
Insurance is a racket. I had CDs stolen from my car and the auto insurance policy wouldn't pay for it (this was about $2000 worth of cds). They claimed that any property in the car would be covered by homeowner's or renter's insurance (which ostensibly covers your possessions). Well, it turns out that the property insurance doesn't cover *CDs* in cars because, as she put it, "they are likely to be stolen."
Good luck.
-b
No offense, but I've stopped responding to AC's.
My washer, dryer, and water heater got flooded when I lived in New Orleans. Let them dry out for a couple of weeks and then you can use them. You may want to put a portable heater in the room to speed up the drying. After the flood, i was able to use the washer and dryer for another 3 years. The water heater actually lasted 12 additional years. Can't comment on your furnace though.....
...but instead I'll add to the clamour pointing out how dangerous your suggestions are.
It shouldn't really damage tin solder or chip packages but who knows. You're probably better off with distilled water and bleach for mold. Maybe give it a wash with isopropyl afterwards, but use the 50-70% cheap stuff.
99% Isopropyl alcohol is the preferred method of cleaning chip packages. If you ever remove the heatsinks from your CPU/motherboard/gfx card then it's what you use to clean away all the old gunk. Don't use bleach, as everyone else says. It's corrosive. Don't use the 70% stuff, it's no good. It leaves water behind.
To clean electronics, you use 99% isopropyl alcohol. Wipe down with a non-static cloth until it evaporates without leaving any marks. The item will then be clean.
Nick
i think he means 24 inches. when there is flooding damage contractors will remove the drywall 24 inches up from the floor along the bases of the walls to reveal where the majority of the mold and water damage occurs.
I wouldn't advise using any further liquid solution on your electronics, alcohol, water, detergent, whatever. If you're really concerned about mold spores, then your best option is to simply replace everything you can. If the components are relatively new, and you purchased them from a large retail chain, you may be able to exchange them there. Same goes for DirecTV and the DTV box. Don't forget to check your credit card buyer protection programs as well. Alternatively, you can disassemble your electronics as best you can, and use a high capacity air compressor to blow off all the dust, etc. from the parts. Remember of course to wear a suitable protective mask and face shield while doing this. The internally generated heat from use of the components will probably kill off any remaining mold spores. Check them again in a month and three months, and again a few weeks after your next big rain. The life expectancy of your components will in all likelihood be shortened, but electronics typically work or don't work. When they don't work, you upgrade. As for your PC's, worst case I would take the hard drives out, follow the above procedure, and backup the data to another drive NOW.
Nothing to see here but us trolls...move along...
Isopropyl won't get rid of the mold though, and who knows what else is on the board which is NOT so friendly - someone said here quite rightly that 99% isopropyl will strip wire coatings.
Hence the two. I'd TRY the bleach. Not neat toilet bleach, but something diluted with distilled water, a very weak solution.
The whole point of bleach is that it denatures proteins.. any amount will do that, and it'll kill the mold so it won't grow back on the board after you wash it with isopropyl. And I'd use a weaker solution of isopropyl than 99% just so you're not going to eat away at anything that isn't as resilient as a chip package or the PCB.
Dealing with solvents and corrosive materials always has a risk, but sometimes the benefits outweigh them. He takes a dead board, covered in mold, and gets a clean, mold-free board which has been pretty well cleaned of what he wanted rid of. The chances of it working are better than they were.
If it's 100% clean afterwards and stil doesn't work, hey.. find the receipt and see if you can take it back to the store!
A buddy of mine was an electronics tech in the Navy on an Aircraft Carrier. He told me that on a few occasions aircraft ended up in the ocean but were recoverable. Often they were able to rescue the electronics that had not shorted out using de-ionized/distilled water and a brush. They had a dessicant oven on-board to COMPLETELY (as previous posters indicated) dry the components before re-using them.
OK, I didn't realise isopropyl was so bad for other parts, PCB and chip packages are pretty much the only things I've cleaned. I guess a mixture of approaches is needed for cleaning whole devices then!
Nick
I've done this too, but not as much as the parent, I'm sure!
I personally think mold is insidious and terrible, so I'd prioritize getting rid of mold over saving the electronics - but that doesn't mean I wouldn't try. (I rather imagine that most of the boater's stuff has to ALREADY be mold resistant, which does help stop the spread of mold.)
So I definitely recommend the mild bleach solution. This is increasing the death rate of the mold, but at the cost of reducing the life of your electronics. Since these things were submerged in water, ideally I'd recommend submerging them in a mild bleach solution for perhaps 20 min - ideally rotate/shake them a couple times during this bath.
If something has a ton of mold on it, you may want to actually WASH this - perhaps with mild soap or mild bleach, and scrubbing until there isn't a big pile of mold. Or it might be enough to let it soak longer (but with more corrosion) and shake it more.
Then to get RID of the bleach, I'd rinse them with two baths. (Because the first bath becomes bleachy just by the presence of the bleachy item you're rinsing.) In each case I'd give it some time to soak (~20 min) but esp in the first rinse, to make sure it gets all the bleach into solution.
Tap water is probably fine for the first one, but use distilled water for the second. After a couple items you should replace the second bath - and you might as well replace the first-bath with the water you just stopped using for the second bath.
Then I'd make sure they were quite dry as fast as possible, so any mold spores the bleach missed doesn't regrow on the damp you just created. The easiest way to do this is baking. 120 is pretty safe - most electronics can handle 140+ without a problem... the sensitive interior components get really hot while running, so the ones you're worried about damaging are usually the outside plastics.
40 min on one side (including getting it up to temp) and 20 min upside down is probably enough to stop further mold growth. I'd give them hours in the oven or days sitting before I turned them on, though.
Assuming you have a big pile of stuff to do this to, and 3 large buckets, and an oven as big as all 3 buckets combined, I've just described a 5 step assembly line process, where every 20 minutes you can move something ahead one step.
For smaller items, or ones you're not taking apart, the last bath could be rubbing alcohol, which would make it dry much faster. But in volume it's considerably more expensive; even distilled H20 is only a dollar a gallon.
You can do all the above things as a wash instead of a bath, IF you can effectively get to all the surfaces...
Spraying on a nonconductive corrosion resistor (like the above mentioned products seem to be) sounds like it would tend to extend the life of the device; it might also seal in any remaining mold spores, which I'd consider to be a good thing - but I'd still do a bleach-bath first to kill as much as you can.
It's a lot of work.
Looking for freelance Actionscript (Flash/Flex) or ColdFusion work and/or freelance developers. Email me, put Slashdot
I think the cost is still prohibitive though.
I had a friend do this--most hair dryers put out too much heat and you'll end up melting the components on a sub-visible level. air dry with a fan aimed at it. One can also find spray bottles of "electronics" cleaners--which is some form of fast evaporating liquid (not alcohol which will strip some parts).
Decades ago I worked for Tektronix as repair tech in a field office. EVERY piece of gear that came into the shop first went into the wash rack. That entailed: 1) removing the side panels 2) hosing it down with a soap spray virtually identical to the one used at your local self-serve car wash 3) rinsing with water 4) Placing the device in the drying ovens for about 3 days. I'm not sure the temp, but it was relatively low, like 150 degrees I think. Care was needed to make sure the transformer devices, which were sometimes in cans, were positioned so they would drain, as they otherwise could pool water that wouldn't dry in 3 days.
We never had a failure due to water issues, and the devices included old vacuum tube gear with paper caps (waxed, so there's no problem), up to the latest integrated circuit equipment. Almost all of the devices had a CRT & associated high voltage supply as well.
The moral of the story is, water will generally not hurt electronics if they're powered off at the time. Making sure it's really DRY is critical though, as it may take longer than you think, and if you're not using a drying oven even longer. But soap and water is what we used everyday and it always did the trick. We had stuff coming in that had been in garages for years that had mouse-nests made in them, items that were in a fire and had been blackened and were hosed down by the fire department, gear that had oil spilled all over it, stuff in all sorts of conditions.
When I used to work at a company that assembled electronic prototype boards, we would always wash the circuit boards with water and soap. If you can, open up to expose the electronics, make sure it is clean in there, and let everything dry completely. If everything is completely dry, it should run fine.
This sounds pretty hairy despite all the above good advice. I suggest you experiment with many of these approaches, submerging and moldifying as many electronics as you have before performing the experimentally determined best approach to your entertainment system. You might even try new approaches like slathering electronics in motor oil or spraying on 409 if you happen to have a lot of, say, electric tooth brushes around. Check out that no-scrubbing required action! Its up to you.
Honestly, if I were you, i'd just buy a new TV and put it on stilts. You can afford it given that you have a house with walls at least 25 feet high.
I have to start off by saying, wow that sucks, and I really hate to hear that, I know how I'd feel if any portion of my electronics collection (especially the HT!) were damged. It really isn't right that just because floods don't USUALLY happen you can't be protected by insurance. Isn't their an "act of god" clause or something?
Anyways, this is a topic that has always fascinated me, my wife is a major clutz and has this distinct tendancy to damage electronics in the oddest ways. And what I'm reading here and what my experience tells is you've got a 50/50 shot with every component. My wife dropped her cell phone in a pitcher of grape juice, and without pulling out the battery immediately proceeded to soak it in tap water and then just turned it off... The phone functioned for over a year afterwards (then eventually failed in a most-definitely related way). On the other hand, we had PC's accumulate a little dew over night (while powered off and unplugged, in my office with the windows open...) and just refused to boot the next day. I had a customer who came to me with a PC he'd left on his porch for 2+ years (outside in the rainy northwest) and it worked perfectly.
The recommendations I've been reading on this post seem to mostly focus on very specific situations. Some people who work with marine electroncis, they may have some really good ideas, but keep in mind the equipment they work with is probably designed to be slightly more water tolerant (not to mention the response/treatment is faster), and the people who work for manufacturers, probably work with specialized hardware (and probably) build to more robust specifications. You have a wide variety of hardware to recover, and you have to treat it as such.
YMMV, and if I were you, I'd choose the procedures I felt both monetarily and philosophically confident in and spend as little time as is reasonable on each individual component. Dis-assemble everything, clean, do whatever you feel comfortable for drying. I'd invest in some testing hardware power supply testers etc... (may just be me) and systematically eliminate the components that are beyond salvage. EG You don't want to end up frying an entire motherboard/processor/memory because a power supply is dead and beyond rescue. To be safe I might even recommend just biting the bullet and replacing some of the ultra sensitive components... I can't tell you how many MoBo's I've killed in my shop because of a faulty power supply. Even then you will probably find that everything has a dramatically reduced lifespan and I'd start budgeting to replace it. But hopefully you don't have to replace it all at once!
I wish you the best of luck, I do thank you for the informative question, and I hope everything works out!
Sig: Do not judge me on how high UID is, but judge me on the content of my comments.
To dry these items out, ship them cross country and back. Aircraft cargo bays are unpresureized and I have had good fortune recovering a USB memory device that want thru the wash.
But don't eat the liver, as I hear it is bad (as in 'somewhat' toxic) for humans.
However, I do have some tasty recipes from my Panama days for canines.
Cat (all felines) is better IMHO, though, but here it truly is a 'matter of taste' issue.! :-)
*here goes my karma!*
I can recommend:
Short Loin, top sirloin, tender loin, sirloin, top round, and the 'top' of the bottom sirloin.
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Beef_cuts.svg" title="en.wikipedia.org">See here for reference.
Use any of these cuts after parboiling in onions, celery,(optional)black pepper, and water for 10 minutes.
*here is where taste/creativity come into play*
I like to use a charcoal grill, and after having marinated the dog in my 'orange juice'* mix for 12 hours minimum, throw the mutt on the grill, then baste with a favored BBQ sauce**, turning and basting frequently.
*'orange juice'== :
1. one each packet of 'lipton's cup of soup', french onion.
2. carve, shred, brutalize, or somehow or other render several celery stalks to pulp.
3. fold, spindle, or mutilate one each onion to the mix.
4. add 1 liter of your favorite/cheapest orange juice to the mix.
5. add any desired spices at this point. Thyme and rose petals both work with almost anything sweet, for pork....Be Bold!! with Beef!- Jack Daniels (think 'trace amounts') is your friend.
For canis familaris, I would suggest a 'pinch' of garlic, a teaspoon of vinegar, a 'slight' pinch of cumin, and a 'splash' of tobassco to the above mentioned.
BTW, don't be alarmed by your new-found urge to piss on fire hydrants and street posts...it's perfectly normal.
P.S.
The above recipe has been used and tasted by me. It really is quite good.
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
I've had good luck using the water trick. Even with equipment that went through a fire and got really wet from the fire department. Some of it looked like hell but it worked. Good luck.
The no power part is important. Water is non-conductive but all the mineral salts dissolved in it and left behind are conductive. This is why you must clean the electronics and then dry them completely before applying power. As mentioned alcohol can be used with a good scrubbing but some things that dissolve in water do not dissolve in alcohol. So be sure and do a good inspection of both sides of any boards before applying power. Because of the way electronic equipment is assembled this may be very difficult to do. If you attempt this be sure to apply power in a well ventilated area because there may be smoke.
"If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt,as far as possible
I've had a lot of success, if you have a dishwasher, you've already done half the work. Dismantle the pc's totally, remove any batteries, and wash them face down in the dish washer (motherboard) with a gentle soap. DO NOT use anything with clorine. Air dry over a register for a few days, rotating it often. I've done this repeatedly, and it works. Keyboards are known to withstand this well, along with other things. I heard stories about techs who dont touch scopes' and the like without a run through a dish washer first, as spills of pop and food and such can wipe out electronics, thus washing them fixes this.
Also if you dont feel comfortable with the dish washer, a gentle wash over with 90-100% alcohol will also do the trick. Its not very conductive, so dont worry as much.