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Last weekend a fire broke out in an adjoining apartment and spread to part of my apartment. Luckily the room housing my audio gear escaped the worst of the effects, but as a result of smoke and water there was a thin film of damp deposit on everything in the room - not necessarily obvious to the eye in all places, but evident if you ran a finger over any surface.
Can anyone offer any advice on whether the gear is safe to use, what kind of damage may have resulted, and what I should do about cleaning or repair?
Many thanks,
Naun.
Follow Ups:
Belated thanks to everyone for the advice. After talking with the insurance company, I took the gear to a local shop where they checked everything out for smoke- and moisture-related damage, and to my reilief they gave it a clean bill of health.
Naun- apartment living can be very dangerous in these times.
Have your gear checked out by a service tech.
When you wipe on this deposit with a clean cloth or paper towel, does it come up clear, or is it sooty?
If it is a dirty deposit, it's entirely possible that there's semi conductive carbon suspended in the liquid, which would likely damage your gear. I'm sure it can be cleaned off, but your renter's insurance should cover that.
And are you thinking of making a claim? If so I wouldn't clean the items up or have them serviced until seen by the insurer's assessor (if insurance works the same way in the USA as it does in the UK).You may wish to carefully check basic switch on and functionality first though when and if the items are fully dry. So first visually check the insides of the items as your description of the circumstances seems to only fit the exterior surfaces. If the latter is the only situation then get some foam component cleaner e.g. Servisol if available in your country, and DIY.
Edits: 02/07/16
First thing you should do is report this to your insurance company if you have fire smoke coverge.
Either way what you or the insurance company would do is put you in touch with a restoration company. The companies use fans and chemical treatment for the general household. Then they they would use ultrasonic equipment to renew any electronic equipment.
Do a search in your locale for ultrasonic restoration cleaning services. Ultra sonic equipment is usually used for anything from stereo to hospital grade equipment.
One other thing to consider is symptoms may not appear until years down the road. So it is good to address this sooner than later.
A final resort is for you or a technician to dissassemble the equipment and manually clean and check everything.
Sorry to hear about your situation.
Cheers!
Jonesy
"I know just enough to get into trouble. But not enough to get out of it."
Unplug everything. Then, contact your insurance company for instructions on what to do. They will likely want to photograph and inspect so don't mess with the "evidence" until then...If you are not insured, wipe-clean all exterior surfaces according to manufacturers recommendations for surface dirt removal. If the components do not appear to be waterlogged, try arranging them neatly inside of a small closet along with a few open canisters of Damp-Rid. Close the closet door and wait at least a few days for the drying action to work.
After the Damp-Rid has had some time to work, take the components over to a qualified electronics tech for inspection.
Edits: 02/07/16
In my younger days when I worked at Radio Shack we had a fire hydrant outside the store rupture overnight. Not a lot, but enough for the water to seep inside the store and make the entire carpet soggy.After the store's district manager brought in the insurance investigators, the entire store was deemed a total loss. Every piece of unboxed equipment was sold at fraction of the cost (pennies on the dollar) or tossed completely away (remember- no fire had occurred, only water on the carpet). We can joke about the quality of equipment but I believe their Realistic receivers were made by Pioneer back in the 90s, and there were also hi-fi VCRs,old school cell phones, satellite receivers and even a couple DAT players.
Obviously your scenario compared to this one is completely different, and I would have them checked out by a qualified service tech.
Edits: 02/07/16 02/07/16 02/07/16
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