Wet machinery question

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Randydb

Joined
Sep 27, 2014
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We are building a house and had a bunch of my machinery and tools in a storage container that was in a compound that flooded 5 feet deep. Water got in and it looks like there is a sllght dusty haze on all my stuff that was below the water line. So water but no significant silt/mud etc. Electrical equipment like bandsaw, thickness planer, belt grinder, table saw, lathe all were under water for almost 2 weeks.
Is any of this going to be salvageable? Will the motors all be shot? can I dry them out and safely plug em in and see if they work? No insurance on this!!Dang. The insurance company wanted an itemized list of everything in the container which was going to take a lot of time to figure out so after hearing how the storage compound had security and the shipping containers were pretty water tight against rain/wind, storms etc I decided not to bother with insurance. Never expected record rainfalls, broken dyke and flood 5 feet deep though. Container wasn't water tight against being dunked for 2 weeks.
Sooo? Any advice with the tools?
 
I'm sorry to hear that and hope that you can salvage the equipment. I'd clean the machines and make sure there is no debris in it and it's really dry inside. Plug in and see what happens. If you see smoke or smell anything bad, turn off/unplug immediately. Keep a fire extinguisher handy.
 
Perhaps give the motors some time in a woodworkers vacuum bag and centrifugal vacuum pump?
 
If it were me, I'd set up some fans and make sure as much of the moisture was dried up as possible. Circuit boards and electrical components can be sprayed with alcohol or some dielectric spray and some compressed air. Anything with a sealed bearing MIGHT be okay, though you may have to re-oil or grease some things. Make sure everything moves freely by hand before you put the power to it.
 
I will dry things out well then and see what happens. I'll rent a couple heaters and big fans and see how it goes. I'd sure like it if some of it survives. There's other stuff that is done like couches, chairs and boxes of clothes and the sort. I'm a bit sad at what is lost and kicking myself for not getting insurance. BUT I can't complain either because I have it a lot better than the people that had houses in that area. They couldn't get flood insurance because the area is a flood plain and they have lost hundreds and hundreds of thousands of $$. I didn't even know where the container yard was until I got an email from the company about 3 days into the flooding. Life goes on.
 
Drew Riley said:
If it were me, I'd set up some fans and make sure as much of the moisture was dried up as possible. Circuit boards and electrical components can be sprayed with alcohol or some dielectric spray and some compressed air. Anything with a sealed bearing MIGHT be okay, though you may have to re-oil or grease some things. Make sure everything moves freely by hand before you put the power to it.
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Yes...I may get some extra practice replacing bearings and lubricating things. I am off for 2 weeks over Christmas so I have some time to work at saving the machinery. I am interested to see if my VFD will still work.
 
Randydb said:
Yes...I may get some extra practice replacing bearings and lubricating things. I am off for 2 weeks over Christmas so I have some time to work at saving the machinery. I am interested to see if my VFD will still work.
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Water can easy get inside , but it is hard to get it out without opening motors.You must disassemble all motors if you want to dry them .Same for all other electronic , open them and dry them with hair dryer .Pay special attention to the contacts, they oxidize easily in the presence of water, especially for so long under water.
There are no water-resistant bearings so you will need to open them to clean from water , if they were well lubricated, they would not be rusted.....maybe .
Since electrical devices was not under power, they will all work flawlessly if you dry them 100% before you plug them in.....
 
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Natlek said:
Water can easy get inside , but it is hard to get it out without opening motors.You must disassemble all motors if you want to dry them .Same for all other electronic , open them and dry them with hair dryer .Pay special attention to the contacts, they oxidize easily in the presence of water, especially for so long under water.
There are no water-resistant bearings so you will need to open them to clean from water , if they were well lubricated, they would not be rusted.....maybe .
Since electrical devices was not under power, they will all work flawlessly if you dry them 100% before you plug them in.....
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I opened up a motor with help from this forum a few years ago to change the wiring to make it run the other direction. So I'm capable of that too. From what I am reading from you guys I think I just need to take my time, pull stuff apart, carefully dry it out, and I should be able to salvage a lot of my machines.

Thanks for the support and concern too. I'm disappointed that it happened but am honestly fine with it too. There are a lot of other people who got hit waaay worse than me and will lose a lifetime worth of stuff and their houses too.
 
I talked to a fellow who serviced and repaired welders.

First thing he did was pressure wash them out with mild dish soap.
rinse stupid well, final rinsse distilled water, no mineral traces.

Then completely disassemble, compressed air blow out the water and dry out all the parts in what was a lab glassware dryer.
Basically it was a fridge sized fruit dryer/convection oven.
Maybe 80-100d degrees F with strong bottom to top airflow.

Bearings are cheap, replace them all, as the silt will kill them.


Lathe ?
What kind ?
That spindle bearing, if it's replaceable will be $$$
All bearing surfaces, the gearbox...it's all big work.

Unless it's a HF 7" Chinese lathe I'd be inclined to pull it all apart, even if you just clean and oil it for assembly later.
The devil you know...
SB9 has little oil passages filled with wool felt to distribute oil.
It would take full disassembly to clean that all out.

tossing and buying replacements ?
The whole area has had happen what you had happen.
There will be no good used equipment available.
If it is for sale, assume it got wet and dirty just like yours did.
 
12345678910 said:
I talked to a fellow who serviced and repaired welders.

First thing he did was pressure wash them out with mild dish soap.
rinse stupid well, final rinsse distilled water, no mineral traces.

Then completely disassemble, compressed air blow out the water and dry out all the parts in what was a lab glassware dryer.
Basically it was a fridge sized fruit dryer/convection oven.
Maybe 80-100d degrees F with strong bottom to top airflow.
Click to expand...

Those must have been old transformer welders, not IGBT or MOSFET welders. 😁
 
I got about a third of the container cleaned out today. Water was about 4 feet deep. I rented a couple big fans and a heater and have them going on the stuff I in a garage. I figure I will get it dry to start with and then power wash/clean up, tear down later. It was -5C today and I'm not going to do much power washing at that temperature.

The lathe is a Busy Bee lathe wood lathe. It is nothing special, got it second hand for cheap from a neighbour but it worked well and did everything I needed. I will clean it up and see what I have. Worst that happens is it dies pretty quickly.

Nice things is that a few machines were above the water line. My dewalt thickness planer, table saw and router and router table didn't get wet. Funny, my 2x72 belts all were underwater but don't look like they got wet at all...I'm a bit leery of keeping them because they were in soaking in contaminated water for a couple weeks.

I retire in July, so if I dry it all out now, I can take things apart over time when I retire. There were about 150 containers that flooded and are in a compound now. I visited with a number of other container renters who all had insurance....none of their insurance covered flooding.....just covered fire theft, vandalism, etc. So I guess I didn't really miss out on anything by not getting it. Apparently nobody including the insurance companies ever figured these containers might be in a flood.

So far maybe 1/4 of the items I have gone through in the container are salvageable. Majority is just stuff that I can buy again like couches, chairs and cabinets. But there were some sentimental things that were a bit hard to toss on the trash pile. Painting by a friend's dad who is no longer alive, my mother-in laws hand written cook book and her bible...things that might not be $$$ but can't be replaced.

Thanks for everyone's input. Put it all together and I think I will have a bunch of stuff that has a good chance of making it. Thanks

1 12345678910 for your new advice today. I will power wash with a bit of soap when I get going..​

 
UPDATE: So far I cleaned up my drill press, joiner, power hand plane, skil saw, shop vac, dust collector, drills and bandsaw and they all are working. I suppose the next question is for how long? I don't have the right 220v outlet to try my belt grinder out...I wonder if the vfd will still work.

I was able to salvage about 1/4 of the container in the end. Lost all our furniture, a bunch of cabinets, hand made slab dining table, beds, and hundreds of smaller items. Good part is that it won't break us to replace the stuff. Harder part is the unreplaceable keepsakes like photos of wife's parents who have passed and things like that. I still feel blessed and lucky when I look around at the people who lived in the flooded area and have lost everything...about 1000 residences/farms were flooded and none had flood insurance because they area is considered a flood plane.

Thanks for everyone's advice around cleaning and restoring my machinery. I had no experience with that sort of thing and really didn't think I was going to be able to save it.
 
Hi Randy.
you folks out west had a really rough time this past year. The weather gods gave you a hammering, for sure. I hope this year will be better for all of you.

Mike
 
Hi Randy, good to hear you are able to salvage something. Seems like if BC ain’t burning, it’s flood lately. Wishing all the best moving forward. Or you could move back to high ground in Alberta. 😂 we are only getting record cold lately.
 
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