[c-nsp] smoke and condensation damage to routers

[mack]

Having lived in south Louisiana and south east Texas,
I am very familiar with condensation and high humidity.
It is generally not harmful to solid state gear that is unpowered.
Condensation is usually pure H2O which evaporates without residue.
Water and electricity do not mix well.
Long term exposure to moisture will cause corrosion which is of course bad.
But short term exposure should be OK.
I wouldn't recommend it exposing equipment to condensation as standard practice though.

Smoke is another matter.
Graphite is a moderately good conductor.
Soot is made of carbon in the graphite polymorh (well mostly).
A thin layer on a switch can have catastrophic effects in a production environment.
Even if it doesn't cause a short, it may cause stray capacitance which will result in
flaky operation.

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Message: 1
Date: Wed, 20 Aug 2008 16:44:39 -0700
From: Darrell Root <darrellroot at mac.com>
Subject: [c-nsp] smoke and condensation damage to routers
To: cisco-nsp at puck.nether.net
Cc: Darrell Root <ciscotraining at mac.com>
Message-ID: <A0444C04-F5AA-4B39-A55C-9F4832CCEE53 at mac.com>
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We had a fire in a building where we stored a significant quantity of gear and are attempting to determine whether any of the gear in the vicinity can be trusted (and dealing with the insurance adjustor).

Stuff sprayed with water or in dense smoke (everything on the floor of the fire) is thrown out of course.

I've got some switches which were 1 floor downstairs from the fire.
They were in moderate smoke.
They are dry, although the building was very humid (3 inches of water on floor).  Most of them smell smoky.

My worst judgement call is a pair of ASA5580-40's in the original packaging 1 floor down from the fire.  They were inside a plastic bag inside a box on a pallet.  The box is dry.
Some condensation was noticed inside the plastic bag when it was opened up.

 From my standpoint I don't want to trust any of this gear in production.  Of course, the insurance adjustor sees gear that appears undamaged and is now completely dry.

Anyone have experience running gear that was subjected to smoke, and possibly some condensation?  Did it result in abnormal outages in the future?

Darrell Root
ciscotraining at mac.com

--
LR Mack McBride
Network Administrator
Alpha Red, Inc.