Will you listen to them? I find my records sound best out of the sleeve ;-)
500 albums in a basement flood--worth saving?
Hi--just had 6' high (relatively clean) water fill basement during recent hurricane/tropical storm. Lost everything down there including 500 albums: some late 60's rock, 70's & early 80's rock, some jazz and a few classical, most in pretty good shape prior to this. Couple of Original Master Recordings. No turntable at the moment. Insurance not covering. Question: is it worth peeling/discarding album covers, buying 500 new sleeves, buying record cleaning machine (lots of time & labor), or just toss the lot? Are they worth anything without the covers, just inner sleeves (what type are best, paper or plastic?)? What is average value? TIA.
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I had a pipe burst, and do a number. The difference was the water quality for me. Mine was clean city water. They were under water though. I've cleaned 300 or so out of the 1200 that were down there. Pics, then in the soaker, then ultrasound, test and, relabel.. All have worked well for what they were. I had about 200 or so I would have had a heart attack (again), if they would have been down there. They were promos for radio stations, in the mid 60s-70s. And all my 78 mono jazz collections. Another 250-300 or so.. late 20s-50s. ALL were upstairs. No damage.. Regards |
No such thing as relatively clean flood water. What you will find, huge amount of grit got in there. No record cleaners on the market are designed to clean records that have fine grit caked on from being soaked in sludge. The problem is being covered with incredibly fine grit abrasive particles that will be hard if not impossible to clean off without scratching the vinyl in the process. If you have a few treasures it might be worth a try and who knows you might get lucky, might be only a ten minute multi-step process to do each one, and they might even come out fairly quiet. But odds are, complete loss. |
None of mine warped. Took about 4 days in the garage, with fans after a couple days of dripping. It was 80-90 degree weather here. I didn’t have flood water though, I never did get any molds. There were a few that were pretty dirty too. Bubbler tank, just like an aquarium, until they look good,hand wash UNDERWATER with mild dish soap, inspect, then ultrasound, test and label.. Work pretty good, Actually real good.. Some of those records, were NEVER used, maybe twice in there whole life. Polka music, native Irish, and Highland music.. Regards |
No. An LP won't warp just from getting wet. That's why RCMs don't warp LPs. Extremes of heat and cold and storing LPs incorrectly will warp them. To the OP: It depends entirely on how precious these LPs are to you. Since it was fresh water, and since presumably the jackets protected the LPs from extremes of dirt and debris in the water, I doubt they are damaged. But the work of salvaging them will take a couple of days and ought to be done ASAP. That's where you have to decide whether the work of removing all of the LPs from their sleeves and re-storing them in fresh sleeves is worth your time an effort. It wouldn't hurt to rinse each LP in an RCM, or even just under clean cold water from a tap, before re-packaging them for storage. |
Thank you all for your comments and helpful suggestions. I decided to start removing them and discarding the wet jackets and sleeves to start...didn't have the heart (yet) to just toss everything. Next step, if this task doesn't overwhelm me with the other major basement cleanup and restoration issues at hand, would be to borrow or buy a record cleaner. Any reasonably priced volume/speed capable units out there? Is an ultrasonic tank also needed? Which type of replacement liner is best: plastic, paper, combo? BTW, still freaked out from this incident which nearly did me in. Went down to the basement during the heavy storm to check for water as our entire backyard was a deep lake (all our stacked firewood had floated away like an Oregon logging camp). As I approached the steel door to the outside (6.5' below grade in a stairwell) it, with the door frame, exploded inward and shot towards me like a surfboard barely missing my chest. Torrents of water poured in from the backyard over and into the stairwell like Niagara Falls instantly filling the basement. Shocked, my first thought was the electric outlets quickly getting soaked (electrocution), so instead of making a run (swim) upstairs, stepped back and up on a table. As the water kept rising to the tabletop with everything floating and jammed together I made decision to jump in hoping not to get zapped. Barely made it to the stairways up to the house (picture Creature from the Black Lagoon). Water reached to step 9 of 12--6' high. Unbeknownst to us, our 120 gallon water heater had toppled over severing the hot and main cold water feed. Sump pumps were either out of commission and/or overwhelmed, Next day I rented an industrial pump and began pumping outside from the stairwell, but all the time (2 days) ~ 55,000 gallons of water (7,000 cubic feet) were pouring in from the overhead pipe keeping everything filled. Water Co. guy finally made it in to discover this and shut the valve. The water reached halfway up the main electric 200 Amp service box, but somehow(?) only 3 GFCI breakers tripped, so we still had some electric upstairs. Electrician couldn't explain it. |
tt1man: The following link is to a "label saver" that I use when hosing down LP's with with either the water tap or a Waterpik (the teeth cleaning gizmo). The link is to the "Groovmaster" on Amazon, but there are other like items offered as well. https://www.amazon.com/Groovmaster-Label-Saver-Record-Cleaner/dp/B00NP0QAOW I always rinse used LP's with water, before applying a brush, in the event that there are small hard particles which would otherwise scratch the vinyl if I started out with a brush or cloth. It takes more time (the Groovmaster), but then I don't have to worry about mucking up the labels with water or my DIY cleaner. I use this with tap water followed with the DIY cleaner (made with filtered tap water) and brushes (rinse with filtered tap water as well). No RCM (can't stand the noise) and still get excellent results. DeKay |
My friends and I bought a number of records from a similar situation. They all came out fine after ultrasonic cleaning. Thing about US cleaning is that solids just come off the surface and drop to the bottom. No damage at all. I use a very fine product from Louisiana if I remember correctly. Vinyl Stack has a stand, motor, and spindle for use with just about anybody’s US tank. I went with an ElmaSonic tank (German) because I have several thousand records and an expensive cartridge to protect, but you can use any tank, and just about any tank is better than the next best cleaning alternative. IMO. There are several good threads on US record cleaning here and on DIY Audio. You can get a variety of sleeves online from many record stores. Elusive Disk is good - I prefer MOFI sleeves, for what it's worth. Good luck! May your records stay safe! |
@dekay --thanks for the Groovemaster link and other stuff@bigkidz --know Michael. Was going to call him about another subject soon, but good idea to discuss this personal "rekkid" problem@lewm - good points, debating that save vs. toss right now due to time constraints. Just don't want to regret it later on when I get a TT down the road@oldhvymec--helpful cleaning tips. The outside water was mixed with the house water and I'm not seeing too much, if any, apparent silt or dirt on them so far, just some moisture@millercarbon--see above about water mix@stereo5 --all staying flat so far@pjr801--the plan is to save, but best laid plans can go astray@gary7--hope the big wind never hits. Think about separate rider on your policy covering them if not already, and if your insurance company would accept. Do you need flood insurance in your area?@jjs49-- thanks for the thought @three_easy_payments-- mine sound best when I hold them up to my ears at a 45 degree angle. |
ElmaSonic is pretty much a Mercedes product, so you might find it to be overkill. But it is among the best and easiest to use. The 80KHz option gives better cleaning and quieter operation - at a price. Tell the wife that you bought it to clean her jewelry, oh, and to use it yourself when she didn't need it. |
Back in 1977 I went into the Service and was stationed in Germany. I had maybe 750 records at the time which I was going to put into storage, along with a bunch of antiques and other belongings. My sister insisted I store the stuff down her basement, a no cost option, so I did. While I was away for three years, unbeknownst to me, a hose on their washer burst and flooded their basement, soaking about two hundred of the records in the bottom two stacked orange crates. Nothing was done to inform me, dry the record jackets out, or remove the vinyl from the jackets. So you can imagine what these records looked like a year or two after the fact, when I got home after finishing my tour of duty. The antique furniture was a complete loss and he jackets and their inner sleeves were moldy and disgusting to say the least. But miraculously, as a fledgling audiophile, as I purchased each record new, I had replaced almost all the original paper jackets with vinyl lined paper inner sleeves . So most of the records themselves within the sleeve's plastic liner were dry and okay, although the jackets and paper portion of the sleeves were goners. Only one record was a complete loss, the old Buddy Holly "Reminiscing" LP which was in it’s original paper inner jacket. For years, whenever shopping at antique stores, flea markets, garage sales or wherever, I always scoured the used record bins to find original replacement jackets. Drove my late wife crazy. Forty- seven years later, this past Winter I finally gave up and purchased eighty plain white jackets to finally get the remaining records back on the shelves where they belonged. So my advice to you is try to save your records. It’s greatly satisfying to do so, even almost half a century later. The white outer jackets can be found relatively inexpensively in bulk online if you look around. I’ve about twenty left over you can have if you live anywhere near Roanoke, VA. An ultrasonic or any good cleaner would be a great thing to have in any event. Wish I had one. Take it easy. Mike |
500 of Anything is more than 'a couple of hours' to do properly... ...especially 'manually'.... Triage time: Decide what you really want to keep. Take pics of the covers if they're not too shot. Labels too, unless you've got the leisure to drag the net for the info. Do 10~20 a day. You already have a life, and you're not a pro curator. Used to live in Houston....been there, did that. Fortunately, not that many.... |
Keep the records. I had minimal flood damage to the covers of records stored on the bottom shelves in my music room. If I would have had each album in clear plastic outer sleeves there would have been no covers wet and no damage. Fortunately I had most of the records themselves in Mo-Fi plastic inner sleeves and not paper sleeves. I never liked paper sleeves. Every wet-cover-record played perfectly. My wife toweled off each of a couple hundred lps and opened every gatefold lp and set out all lps all over the house to dry out. She is golden! After drying out the outer covers there was minimal damage. Keep those records!😁 |
I lived in Miami for 5 years. Hurricanes cause massive flooding and due to the humidity it is the mildew capital of the USA. I fortunately lived with the cockroaches on the 17th floor but a friend lived in a single story house and he kept his records sandwiched between two cabinets on the floor. Needless to say what happened. By the time the water had receded the stench of mildew was already present. We moved all his records to my flat where we removed them one at a time sprayed them off with tap water, used a spray bottle to rinse them off with distilled water, dried them off gently on a cotton towel then let them air. We stacked them gently in groups of 40 and wrapped them in plastic wrap with a few small holes for aeration. There were maybe 300 records. Eventually he got new sleeves and blank covers for them. Fortunately, his gear was up in the air. The records sounded fine. |
Don't like either toothbrush (too harsh) or dish detergent (full of contaminants). Member antinn is a first class expert on cleaning, and has contributed extensively to the thread "thumbs up for ultrasonic cleaning". His contributions alone raise the discussion above the level achieved in the 'Rushton' thread and its derivatives. |
