[bbadmin]

Hi guys

I had my freeview box on my 5 year old 32" Sony CRT, and a couple of weeks ago rain water went through the coax cable and in to the freeview receiver. It then trickled through the vents in the bottom of the receiver and down in to the vents on the top of the TV.

I put this on a claim through my house contents who had a TV repair company take it away. The repair company have submitted a report to the insurer to say the freeview box (brand new with a 160GB hard disc in it) can't be repaired but the TV can be. Now personally I don't really care about trying to get some flush new TV out of my insurer (although it would be nice) but I'm worried about getting this TV back as, in my mind, water and electrics are never good together, and if the freeview box is screwed then I'm surprised to see that the TV isn't (seeing that the TV would probably, I would have thought, be more costly to repair). I'm also worried about getting the TV back and then having it die on me a couple of months down the line because of this and having no come back on the insurance.

Has anyone had any similar experience or any advise to pass on?

Thanks.

[JayCee]

Plain old clean water isn't as harmful as e.g. coke or any other sticky type of soft drink...cat pee etc.
When the water dries out...no doubt assisted by the repair company it doesn't leave too much damage...they wouldn't be giving it back to you unless they were satisfied with it...usually if a wee drop of water has entered a TV the set will work normally after a few days drying out.

[bbadmin]

That I get, but this wasn't a splash of volvic, it's a shed load of rain water with the debris from inside my rusty coax cable! And if the brand new digi box is a write off, how can they say the TV is fine?

[JayCee]

Originally Posted by bbadmin

And if the brand new digi box is a write off, how can they say the TV is fine?

Probably because maybe less water got into the TV...and where it landed didn't do too much damage whereas the rain obviously corroded the tuner in the Freeview box.

[bbadmin]

My worry with it is that I work in the mobile phone industry and see a lot of phones that suffer liquid ingress. In my industry phones often work fine once they've dried out, but more often than not start to become faulty soon after, which is what I'm afraid of.

[Gammy leg]

I suggest that you request a written report from the repair company that identifies all the parts that have been in contact with the water. Forward a copy to your insurance company for their information and also highlight your concerns re: future breakdowns. This would give you some ammo for the future if needed.

Gammy

[TVrepairman000]

Hi

Actually any water and electrics DO NOT mix, Cat pee is more corrosive due to acid content, the TV probably got away with it purely because the components were quite a way away from each other and the copper PCB tracks are on the underside of the main chassis.

Most modern sets use surface mount resistors transistors and some capacitors, so a small amount on the top of the chassis / PCB, provided it was not swimming or near the line / field output, EHT or mains PSU (high voltage) would probably survive with a basic clean up.

The reason why the free view / hard drive recorder is un-repairable is due to the fact its made from a multi layer track board meaning that there are copper tracks actually inside the PCB board its self, there can be up to 12 layers. The way they are all connected to each other is though copper / silver plated holes, called "though hole plating".


Water can and will get down these holes and basically corrode / rot the copper / silver especially if there is power still applied, once this has happened and some or all of the internal track connections to the though hole plating have corroded the board is basically useless and very difficult / impossible to repair.

Also the new style of surface mount chips with solder pads actually underneath the package with no normal legs get a build up of corrosion underneath and that’s a big problem to shift as this can be conductive.

I have been in the trade for 15 + years and have seen many many water damaged TV's and Satellite equipment (where the water has run down the inside of the Coax cable) the TV's were 90% of the time completely repairable, the satellite receivers sometimes were repairable depending on if it was a though hole plate board or a single sided track type.

The new flat screen plasma and TFT if they get too wet will most probably be stuffed!

TVrepairman000