[pianotech] Flood Damaged Pianos

[Delwin D Fandrich]

With pianos that are covered by some form of insurance I agree. If I'm going
to err I want it to be on the side of caution. I don't want the owner to end
up with problems I didn't find or that didn't show up until after the
settlement has been made. 

On the other hand many of the folks in our area whose homes flooded did not
have flood insurance--a whole separate thing from standard homeowner's
insurance--and they are going to have to stand the cost of either repairing
the piano or replacing it. Or not--they just have to go without a piano. In
some cases, of course, the piano hadn't been played at all since Aunt Marta
came to visit four Thanksgivings ago--or was it five?--so losing the piano
won't result is any great change of lifestyle. Now, it the TV had stopped
working.... In others, though, the piano represents a relatively important
part of their lives and I had a hard time simply telling the folks they had
to haul the thing to the dump. 

For some months after the last flood hit Centralia we had a couple of kids
coming in to our store every day after school to practice when their old
(animal hide glue) grand simply fell apart. It took the family a while to
recover. In other cases pianos that looked like a write off--and would have
been had they been insured--ended up being salvageable. Sometimes a little
worse for wear but better than no piano at all. And sometimes with no
visible aftereffects at all once they were dried out and cleaned up, a few
repairs made and they got tuned. What the future holds for some of these
pianos is uncertain but for the time being a surprising number of them seem
to be holding their own.

ddf

Delwin D Fandrich
Piano Design & Fabrication
6939 Foothill Court SW, Olympia, Washington 98512 USA
Phone  360.515.0119 — Cell  360.388.6525
del at fandrichpiano.com — ddfandrich at gmail.com

-----Original Message-----
From: pianotech-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:pianotech-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf
Of Ron Nossaman
Sent: Wednesday, November 07, 2012 6:03 AM
To: pianotech at ptg.org
Subject: Re: [pianotech] Flood Damaged Pianos

On 11/7/2012 7:15 AM, richarducci at comcast.net wrote:
> True, but that was 40yrs. later. If they had been rinsed and treated 
> with anti rust agent that might not have been the case?

Which magic anti rust agent might that be? And how does one rinse out a
water damaged piano without doing more damage?

Bottom line, as Del said, is that there is no way of anticipating what these
pianos will do in the future. Meanwhile, the insurance companies have a lot
of other people waiting to be screwed and won't wait three years to see what
the piano does. They want answers now. This leaves you with two options.
Condemn all pianos that have been wet, which is the only safe call, or
guess, which is on YOU. If I was pretending or presuming to do my customers
right, which is my first intent, I'd err on the safe side and write the
pianos off if there is any doubt whatsoever.

Ron N