Showing posts with label electronics water damage. Show all posts
Showing posts with label electronics water damage. Show all posts

Thursday, January 31, 2008

Fires Caused By Electric Appliances

The last thing that any person who has a home wants to experience would be a fire in the house, but the fact is that these occur a lot more often than some individuals may think and it is typically due to carelessness in the house with heat and electricity. There happen to be a number of appliances inside your household that are dangerous and have to have special attention, however many individuals usually pay no mind to some of the warnings and care suggestions that go with these appliances and they do not look over them at all.

A dangerous, yet useful items that you can have within your house is a space heater. They are useful if you cannot afford to have gas heat or the extra cost on the electric bill to heat the house when it is cold, but when used incorrectly or in an inappropriate area of the home, they could start fires extremely quickly. You should always pay close attention while having electric heaters within the house and if possible, you must not use these within houses with toddlers because of the risk of injury.

Electric heaters ought not be used on carpet or on rugs unless the heated part is somewhere around half a foot away from the floor.

Space heaters should not be plugged up during the night unless it is too cold. Make use of these just when there is someone around to watch them. A large number of fires happen after dark and when people are away from home, so making sure these are off and unplugging them when you are out of the house could be a good thing to consider.

Fires are also created electric blankets. Too many have woken up at night with their bed in flames because they let the blanket stay on while they were sleeping and leaving them on might be a bad thing to do because of very reason. Try to store these in places where they have no chance of being soaked, as well, such as the top part of the closet.

Preventing Water Damaging in Electronics

People would not get as bent out of shape about their cell phone getting wet if it wasn’t for the reason that they were probably using it at the time. Often is the case that electronics cease to function once they make contact with water because the device is powered on when it hits the liquid. If you are one of the unfortunate many who has dropped a electronic device in the drink, don’t worry about it. Just make sure that it wasn’t on when you dropped it in. While water can cause damage to electronics, the electricity that causes it to work is what causes the machine to fry like an egg on the windshield of your car in triple digit weather. Turning on your device after it has been submerged will cause the electric current to run through it and will usually render the device useless.

There are obvious ways to prevent your device from being submerged in water. One such way is called being careful. But this method isn’t always effective. If your device is, let’s say, a cell phone, a cover for it is your best bet. While a cover won’t always, well, cover it, it will be a great way to prevent a good deal of moisture. If, say, your computer has some water spilled on it (and just what are you doing with liquids around your computer, anyway?) you should IMMEDIATELY unplug it and wait for roughly two weeks so that it has dried out, and there is no water to cause its very unpleasant death. It is very important that you keep the device in a cool, dry area that won’t pick up condensation, because that will cause the device to take longer to dry, and additional water damage can be done. It is also important to wait for a week or two, and to make sure that you do NOT shake the device to see if there is still water in it. This can just cause damage to the device, and then you will have waited for probably nothing.

Now, if you are the kind of person who doubts their repertoire of electronics knowledge, it’s best to simply take the device to an electronics repairman. You will have to shell out a few bucks, but not as many as you paid for the device. This can also be taken as a chance to make sure there is nothing else wrong with the device that should be fixed before it is used again.

Repair Water Damaged Electronics Quick For better Results

A lot of people have had their electronic devices come into contact with liquid, whether it’s a glass of milk or a bathtub full of water, but most people do not know what they are supposed to do with these items afterward. Can they be fixed? Is there really anything wrong with them?

Well, depending on how long they were in the water and whether they were on at the time, they can probably be fixed. It also depends on what kind of liquid you drop the device into. A lot of electronic devices switch of automatically as soon as they come into contact with a liquid and this is important, because it is not the liquid itself that causes the damage to the device. It is the electric current running through it when the water hits it. Even if you put a device that is not on in a puddle of clean water and let it stay in it overnight, it is not likely to be irreparably damaged as long as the power was off. You can most likely pull the item out of the water, allow it to dry completely, and it should power back on fine. I would not advise trying this as an experiment, though, because not every electronic device is made of the same material. As long as you do not attempt to power on the device while it is still wet, it should be alright. Allow the device to dry in a dry, cool area, but not so cool that it will let the device pick up any condensation.

Anything that has been submerged in dirty water, such as flood water, will probably require a bit more attention than that. Flood waters have been known to contain just about any kind of pollution that you can imagine. Silt, mud, sewage, and other chemicals could be getting inside your electronic device and it will take a lot more than simply drying the device out to get it to work properly again.

Even computer hard drives have been known to be restored with the proper cleaning procedures after having been flooded. The particle debris that has made its way inside the hard drive has to be cleaned out first and quite thoroughly before the drive will work again. Simply plugging the hard drive back into the computer after it is dry will NOT work and will damage the drive irreparably.

Unless you know a lot about electronics, your best bet is to take whatever water damaged device you have on your hands to a specialist. Depending on what the value of the device is or if it is a hard drive, the importance of the information stored on it, you might want to fork over the cash necessary to have it repaired.