my records came within inches of their lives today
hcrink
8,729 Posts
dude... I found mold growing behind my expedit today.
It's been cold & rainy here & I guess condensation had been building up behing my shelf. I had 1,000+ lp's & 500+ books in & around that thing. some of the books at the bottom were starting to get mold. the wall was growing mold. I had to move all that shit. in another week my fucking records would have been one giant living organism.
fuck.
It's been cold & rainy here & I guess condensation had been building up behing my shelf. I had 1,000+ lp's & 500+ books in & around that thing. some of the books at the bottom were starting to get mold. the wall was growing mold. I had to move all that shit. in another week my fucking records would have been one giant living organism.
fuck.
Comments
Strange, I can't say I've ever had any problem like that except in unfinished basements.
I know. I'd never experienced anything like this. but, I'm from endless summer SoCal.
yeah i was going to ask, i moved my records down into the basement a few weeks ago (finally made room for them). but was this a bad idea? should i be checking up on the back and bottom of the shelving unit regularly? what it do?
No need to worry...yet. But, yes, you should definitely keep an eye on things. First step should probably be to invest in a quality dehumidifier.
where to get one & how much?
They sell them at most semi-hardware places, try Wal-Mart or Sears maybe.
I don't think they cost that much, like $50?
Dude - you could have ended up with a MOLD-MONSTER!!!
dehumidifiers arent $50, theyre $125 - $200 depending on size/quality. worth every penny, when you realize a single raer or two in your collection might be worth the same $....
this one looks decent and not too much $.
can also supplement it with a vornado on the floor on low, keeping the air moving underneath and behind the shelving..
careful, some of the vorndaos (heaters) were recalled
I think the units work fine as a fan though
I run a fan during summers in SoCal because I'm that paranoid
I've got a moister problem like this too, so I keep everythig away from the walls. So is the dehumidifier the answer? Home depot will have them right?
I remember grope posted his mold a few years ago. That shit was NASTY..
I'm gonna clear out some cubicals and check for molds now!
word is born - i meant the fan-only models, not the heater style.
the 510B rocks it for $39.99:
I wouldn't run a bunch of other heavy appliances at the same time though. They tend to sap a lot of power, like a furnace, washer & dryer, etc. It's amazing that such a small power can use so much energy.
yep
"It doesn't matter what you look like on the outside, whether you're white, black, or Sasquatch, even. As long as you follow your dream, no matter how crazy or against the law it is... except for Sasquatch. If you're Sasquatch, the rules are different."[/b]
Well, you hope so anyway. We have a sump pump in our basement too and I thought everything was cool. That was, until I went on vacation to New Orleans, came home, and on the day I came home we had severe thunderstorms going on. Nothing major or out of the ordinary. But, I went down in the basement and noticed the carpet was damp, looked in our back room and water was pooling back where the sump is. Sure enough the damned sump pump decided to die so even though we had one the damn basement still flooded. It didn't flood that much but it got the carpet damp, and of course records on the floor touching that carpet got wet on the bottom and the water seeped its way up the records.
In the end I had a couple hundred albums with wet covers to varying amounts. Some stuff on the periphery of the wetness just barely got wet and sustained next to no damage, but some stuff in the wettest spots just got soaked to death and ended up with wavy ugly covers. That's not taking into account the albums that decided to stick together so when I pulled them apart the covers would rip. Ugh. It was a total nightmare. Even worse was having to pull the vinyl out of each cover, dry it off with a towel and stack the vinyl. Then, I had to individually lay out each album cover, dust jacket, any other interior packaging, etc, on the floor so they could dry. I only have so much floorspace so while some stuff was drying I had to leave other things stacked together. After a day or two some mold started developing on some of the jackets. A lot of it could be wiped off with towels but in some cases the mold was just horrible and ruined the covers. It was a total nightmare. Eventually all the covers dried up though and then I had the fun of going through a few hundred records and matching them back up with their respective covers. Fun fun fun. And just to really kick me in the nuts, a good amount of what got damaged was stuff I'd set aside to sell on eBay so now I had a bunch of records I'd planned to make money on that were damaged and couldn't be sold.
So yeah, you better hope your sump pump doesn't decide to stop working. I guess you should just check it once every 6 months or once a year to make sure it's in good working order or else your first warning will be a wet basement. I keep most of my records on shelves that are a good foot off the floor but the eBay stuff I had over near my computer to prep for auctions and then other non-eBay stuff was over there just as overflow.
oh yes, been there done that on the floody flood killed records thing. Now, i talked to the guy i had installing the pump and explained my worry re: "Big T-storm kills power and adds mucho H20 = sump pump is no help" and he said never fear - the drain line he was tapping into was complex, and that worked to our advantage. He went thru all the lines and sorted out what was flowing where (from/to the yard/gutters etc) and did some wicked remixing, so that there are now 2 lines that leave the sump pit, totally seperate from the various inflow lines. these sort of act like the upper hole in your bathroom sink that takes water that goes too high. as they drain to a seperate line thats well downhill, according to the guy (who has done excellent work on the property for years so i have to trust his judgement), the tank will still drain (enough) in the event of a power outage killing the pump.
BUT
im still looking into a small generator that kicks in to supply sump power, when the main power croaks, just in case.