| Forum Home | ||||
| Press F1 | ||||
| Thread ID: 56654 | 2005-04-11 13:20:00 | Fire damage to PC | myke (7862) | Press F1 |
| Post ID | Timestamp | Content | User | ||
| 343820 | 2005-04-11 13:20:00 | I like the new look of this discuss board... I've been away for a while. Anyway :help: Later today I will be catching up with a relative that has possibly had computer equipment damaged by fire. Is it possible for computers to be smoke damaged? I'm just thinking in terms of insurance claims. Basically a factory has had a major fire, plenty of chemicals and fumes around. At this stage I'm not sure whether the computers have been toasted. But even if there is no obvious fire/heat damage can thick black smoke make a computer a potential stability problem down the track? Poor bloke had flooding from the roof onto PCs only 3-4 months ago. |
myke (7862) | ||
| 343821 | 2005-04-11 13:47:00 | As a understand it can be bad particulary to your hard drives. Here is an interesting link (www.treasury.govt.nz) You obviously want to clean any soot off the motherboard etc as carbon can conduct (though poorly). If it got damaged you'd notice straight away, run some burn-in programs (ok poor pun)... If the insurance company will pay then I'd take it myself, unless it is some really specialised hardware. |
gibler (49) | ||
| 343822 | 2005-04-11 21:56:00 | I have had experience in this regard. In many cases, the smoke and fumes leave a highly corrosive layer on everything, which will over time cause significant damage and failure. Particularly the printed circuit boards. It depends what chemicals were in the fire, plastics etc are very bad. The affected items should be written off if contaminated. |
godfather (25) | ||
| 343823 | 2005-04-11 22:45:00 | I agree with Godfather. Also check out the Keyboard, mouse and screen for heat damage. Heat damage normally affects the front of the keyboard and top of monitor since the a lot of PC's are up against a wall. The heat moves up the wall and affects these areas first. If these items show any sign of damage then claim insurance. Also look on the internal walls of the area where the PC's are for a smoke/heat line. This will give you an idea of how hot it got in the room. Basically if you can see a heat/smoke line then the PC's are buggered. |
berryb (99) | ||
| 343824 | 2005-04-11 23:18:00 | big printing firm in wellington had a fire late last year, all computers had smoke damage, all written off, very lucky they had a rigurous backup program | plod (107) | ||
| 1 | |||||