This is serious. This happened early this evening.

I fix PC's as a side business. Usually involves cleaning spyware, replacing
hard drives, setting up home/small office networks. One of my clients sons
pulled the side off of her computer and the 4 year old pissed into it. I've
washed keyboards and they have worked, but I have no idea where to start
here.

Searching google brought up more hits than I could imagine with none being
anything close to what I was looking for.

How can I clean urine off the internal parts of a desktop computer? Can a
network card, graphics card, motherboard be cleaned with some sort of
liquid?

Should I charge time and a half or double time for this?

On Wed, 29 Jun 2005 00:24:52 -0400, "yo" <a@b.com> wrote:


It may be gross, disgusting, etc, etc, but once it dries the
system would probably be fine. Not that it'd be "great",
but relatively speaking, there are worse things from an
electrical perspective than a single brief exposure to
urine.

It can be cleaned- most of it at least.
Pull the hard drive, it cannot be allowed to get wet (and
might be ruined depending on the lil squirter's aim.
Optical drives may be a PITA to get dry and alcohol or
detergent may be a problem for the grease/lube in them- they
should probably be dried thoroughly "as is" without any
further attempt to clean internally.

Take out the battery and EEPROM (bios) chip. Remove fans
from (anything wearing one). Pour alcohol down it or
submerge in a mild detergent solution. Either way, it has
to be 100% dry before reassembling, which may take several
days, or forced air, plus shaking out water/alcohol
initially. Typical PCI, video, and motherboard can be
cleaned like this. Large/heavy boards are subject to same
problems as always, stress cracks from mishandling or ESD
damage- particularly the EEPROM which is the reason to
remove it, as it may be scrambled if left in (though it is
water-tight, would potentially need reflashed out of the
board).

"yo" <a@b.com> wrote:
Charge regular time. It's no big deal. Wait till you have have
a kid... a week of diapers will make that seem like, well,
child's play!

Regardless, take it all apart. Fill the kitchen sink about
half full of warm water, mix in a little 409 Cleaner (or some
other brand of similar cleaner), and put things into the water.
Disk drives, CROM's, DVD's, and maybe a few other odd things I
can't think of, probably can't be washed that way. (I'd give it
a try with a disk drive before I'd toss the drive though. But
things like a CDROM where there are moving parts exposed are
hard to lubricate.)

The trick is to make sure this is all dried off before putting
it back together. If you live in a dry climate, a day on the
rack will do it. If you live in a damp climate you might have
to put it into a oven, leave the door open, put it on "warm" and
wait for several hours. Various ways to assist in drying are
different solutions for a "final" bath. Rubbing alcohol will
help get rid of the water. Another possible final wash is Photo
Flo, a water dispersant used in photographic darkrooms. Or,
just add a very little bit of the cleanser to the last wash.

BTW, you can use the spray hose in the kitchen sink to help
clean it too. No need to worry about static while it is wet!

--
Floyd L. Davidson <http://web.newsguy.com/floyd_davidson>
Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska) floyd@barrow.com

yo wrote:

Take it outdoors to blow out dust. Remove everything from inside the
case and unplug the cards. Remove the CMOS memory battery. Rinse case
and electronics a few times with isopropyl or ethyl alcohol (not methyl
-- can damage some plastics), using 90% or higher purity alcohol for
the final rinse to remove all water and prevent corrosion. The power
supply should be opened, dust blown out, and similarly rinsed. Allow
everything to dry at over 100F for several hours (car parked in sun
with windows almost completely rolled up works, but windows must be
kept slightly opened to vent moisture and possibly urine smell. Think
of using customer's own car). Don't rinse optical or hard drives,
especially the latter, which will be ruined if any liquid gets into the
dust-free chamber. Just wipe off those drives with towel moistened
with alcohol.

Water and liquid detergent will usually work but are more likely to
allow corrosion. At the very least, use distilled water for final
rinse. Thorough drying is always a must.

Competive pressures may prevent you, as some unusual technicians will
actually pay customers to work on equipment in that condition. Oddly,
they tend to do good work (I'm serious).

A follow up: Do not test the power supply except with its metal cover
put back in place and all its screws tightened since there is a
possibility of electrocution (over 300VDC is on the body of some parts,
including heatsinks) and explosion (electrolytic capacitor can
rupture).

We used to clean electronics with CFCs. Today that is not
environmentally acceptable. So today we put the electronic
board into a dishwasher to clean it with water.

Kony listed some examples of components not acceptable for
water washing. Another example can be the keyboard. If a key
is pressed while in water, the membrane switch can such in
water that would take weeks to remove - or require removal of
the membrane for drying.

The point is that most all electronic components on a
motherboard can be washed in water. Some of them require high
impedance isolation which would be compromised or even harmed
by urine salts. Wash PC boards in water while being careful
that water does not wash (conductive) particles beneath ICs.
If using mild detergent (ie dishwasher soap), then take care
to get all that soap rinsed off.

Be careful not to drive water into locations where that
water would not easily evaporate such as inside disk drives,
inside electric motors, inside some transformers, and beneath
keyboard membrane switches. Typically video card or network
card can be washed in water. That is how assembled PC boards
are cleaned after soldering.

yo wrote:

I didn't realize that all those components could actually be washed.

Thanks to all for the suggestions and tips.

"w_tom" <w_tom1@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:42C3147E.1F87699E@hotmail.com...

w_tom <w_tom1@hotmail.com> wrote:
I've been washing keyboards in water for decades. It simply
requires paying attention to the methods described to dry
the parts out. Same is true of everything else though...

Just wash them *well enough* to wash out everything benefth
IC's.

--
Floyd L. Davidson <http://web.newsguy.com/floyd_davidson>
Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska) floyd@barrow.com