[kwlug-disc] fire damage to electronic equipment

[William Park]

Pros would have more up-to-date knowledge about how to clean circuit 
boards from fire and water damages.  I would try "contact cleaners". 
Even if that may work, problem (old and new) might show up later.  So, 
claim everything that can be claimed now, not later.

On 2023-12-13 12:01, Steve Izma wrote:
> Hi folks,
> 
> We had a serious fire in our house on 2 December. We lost one of
> our two cats but the rest of us are fine and living in a house
> across the street from our home. It looks like the insurance
> process is working fine in respect to most things.
> 
> A lot of my computer equipment, including several laptops, a
> couple of desktops and two printers were in my office directly
> above the garage, where the fire started and was most intense. It
> turned out that the dry-walled ceiling of the garage prevented
> the upper room from catching fire, but there is considerable
> water and smoke damage.
> 
> I grabbed two of my laptops before leaving the house, although
> without the power supplies, and I got my main desktop out the day
> after the fire. I cleaned the outside and used compressed air on
> all the exposed internal electronics. It didn't boot until I
> removed the NVME card, sort-of cleaned it, and re-seated it.
> I thoroughly cleaned the keyboard (an Ultimate Hackers split
> keyboard, which is easy to disassemble and clean). Just the same,
> it took me four or five days to piece together a reliable setup
> and Internet connection.
> 
> Monitors in particular seem to be a problem. My newest one got
> thrown to the floor when the firefighters needed to tear open the
> ceiling looking for a hidden fire in the house's roof, and there
> is considerable water damage to anything that was on the floor
> (my main machine, under a desk, seemed unaffected by that). Over
> the first two or three days after the fire, I couldn't get any of
> the monitors to work, and the best one would turn on then rapidly
> cycle through all the settings of the monitor's menu, as if the
> touch-buttons (which I dislike anyway) were being continually
> pressed. I figured that smoke and soot had seeped in and shorted
> out the "switches". A week after that, desperately needing
> another monitor for family members, I tried it again and it
> started working as if completely unaffected by the fire. I've
> never tried to open up a modern monitor, and it appears to me
> that any cleaning would require prying the front and back pieces
> apart. Is that a worthwhile thing to try?
> 
> Also, some power bricks seem not to be working, and I'm having
> difficulty determining whether cables are okay, especially USB
> and HDMI.
> 
> Has anyone had experience with equipment damaged in this way? I
> could leave everything up to the insurance and restoration
> people, but I think they will tend to discard older equipment
> rather than fix those things up.
> 
> I'm particularly worried about several printers I have, e.g.,
> Xerox Phaser solid-ink printers, still the best thing around for
> printing in quantity, but they've been off the market for years
> and are likely irreplaceable. They are largely mechanical (and
> thus easily cleaned and re-adjusted), but have some circuit
> boards that may need treating. Would an anti-oxidizing spray be
> worthwhile here? I haven't been able to find this at Canada
> Computers or hardware stores, but I suspect I can get it from
> Orion Electronics.
> 
> Any advice here would be appreciated. And don't worry about our
> living situation, we rescued almost 200 jars of preserves that I
> had been working on since August, and quite a bit of other food;
> our neighbours filled the fridge with donations, and the house
> we've got is fully furnished. We realize that we're extremely
> lucky, especially as we follow the news about Gaza.
> 
> 	Thanks.
> 	-- Steve
>