When I came home yesterday my wife made a comment to me that I needed to change the water bottle (5 gal) again. Well, I had just changed it the day before and new it shouldn't be empty. Ran down stairs and sure enough the whole five gallons were right on top of my equipment. acoustic ceiling tile above bowed down and wet, Macbook Pro (2007) soaked, UAD apollo took bath, extra LCD monitor tipped over but not broken (box it was on got saturated), Blue sky monitors got hit on top but not cones and same with avantone speaker. Took pictures right away and called Poland Spring. They are sending a rep out tomorrow to take a look. I left everything pretty much as is aside from tilting the Macbook to get the water out and drying everything with paper towels etc. Question is what should I be looking at here? Even if everything dry s out and still works who knows for how long? Poland Spring knows that their machine was to blame. Does anyone have any experience with something like this.
Thanks
FM Stew

Bummer, but of all the things that could spill, water is probably the least harmful. Needs to dry out completely, obviously. Have had live sound gear rained on, used hair-dryers to help dry out, most things have survived OK. Good luck.

I worked for a water company for around a year. We had insurance for all instances like this. Just keep pressure on them and they will pay.

To be on the safe side tip your gear upside down and put some fans on.

Sorry for your trouble, fans saved my ass once from a total flood, all kinds of items saved including amps that had ~SOAKED~ for 8 hours.

Stick the laptop and Apollo in a sack of rice. It will act as a desiccant.

Nothing else sounded like it was horribly wrecked. Go rent a big dehumidifier. Should suck the moisture out of everything in the room.

If it's the fault of the water cooler and it's their responsibility - then I would have everything checked and present them with a bill for putting it all properly right.

Before you have it all done, of course, but their insurance should cover it all.

I would not risk anything else.

I would bet a whole lot of money that the company is properly indemnified against property damage. Especially if it's a user-serviced machine. They'd be stupid and remiss if they weren't. I'm interested to hear their response. is the machine rented or owned?

You should concurrently be calling your insurance company and initiating a claim, even if you end up not needing it. Don't wait with insurance; it's much more difficult when you wait.

Machine is rented. Will call my insurance agent today.
Thanks

that sucks ... ;-(

Pure water in and of itself is not detrimental to electronics. For many years circuit boards had the soldering flux washed off in large industrial aqueous washing machines. Developing electronic assembly technology is what I've done for a living for the last 32 years. Pot's and switches are an exception. If they are not open frame, or sealed, contaminants won't get flushed through, and will be trapped inside. Mechanical apparatus are similar. For example disk drive parts are washed in aqueous solution prior to manufacturing (9 years in this industry) but they are kept separate enough that they can be thoroughly rinsed out and dried.

Where the problem comes in is that water solublizes contaminants creating mobility. Meaning that contaminates can get spread around and create problems where previously there were none. Sometimes with consumer equipment, you can rinse and dry and recover the equipment. But after dripping though the floor of your place, the water was no longer clean. It was carrying everything from wood sap to particles of ceiling tile. And washing them all over your stuff.

Someone that knows what they are doing could disassemble the equipment, rinse and dry the cleanable parts, replace the compromised parts, and reassemble the equipment. It would probably exceed the cost of replacement.

Well you were and are correct Aeolian! A few days ago my USB ports stopped working. I tried everything I could think of hoping it was a software issue. Finally took it to the apple store and had a tech trouble shoot it. He brought it out from the back with it opened so I could see the corrosion on the board near the USB ports. He gave me an estimate of $1,250.00 to send it out and replace board. I sent it to the insurance adjuster for the water company. Now I need a new computer but I want either a Mac Mini or an imac both of which are soon to be updated. How soon? Nobody seems to know. In the meanwhile, my daughter has a MBP almost the same as mine. Can anyone suggest a way to link the MBP's? I use Logic. Is there a way to use my MBP as a HD or another way to use her USB ports? I need my iloks.
Moral of the story. Don't ever let any liquid near your equipment. Guess you all new that already. BTW: Now I'm looking at the Apollo wondering.
Thanks
FM

If you havent dried your stuff yet, now its time to do so. I would probably use some sort of electrical grade water displacement liquid (kinda like WD40 but safe with electronics and specially plastics) on the metal parts, pots, switches, connectors, etc to prevent further corrotion.

Aeolian is correct, a lot of stuff gets cleaned with water, like distiled water used on ultrasonic cleaners, but like Aeolian mentioned, the water that got inside your equipment is far from being distilled. So even if it may sound like fighting fire with fire, an ultrasonic bath with distilled water, perhaps mixed with some specialized electrical grade cleaning solution, followed by water displacer on the metal parts, connectors switches and pots, could fix everything.

Perhaps not the mac, but maybe the rest of the equipment. Well, if they pay, then forget everything I said.

You can put your MBP in target disk mode and use it as a boot drive for your daughter's laptop.

1. Both laptops off.
2. Connect the two laptops with a firewire cable.
3. Start up your MBP while holding down the T key
4. Start your daughter's MBP and immediately hold down the Option key
5. You should be presented with a boot volume selection. Choose your MBP.

Or pull the drive out of your MBP and stick in an external enclosure and just do steps 4 and 5.

You may have to reauthorize some of your applications and plugins because they are running on a different host computer.

Thanks for the help.
FM