Deep Cleaning Records With Steam?

You guys are choking me up ... I have never felt more honored that to know I have made brothers/sisters around the country/world that are enjoying there record collections more because of steam cleaning. Really, after attempting to share my ideas for sooo long and now to find so many who are learing to re-love there record collections... Money doesn't mean a thang ... Lets keep it going, Charlie

I've been using steaming as part of my record cleaning for a couple of years. (I have a VPI 16.5 which works well for me.)

Early on I realized one of the secrets to successful cleaning is to keep the scrubbing brushes and vacuum tube strips as clean as possible. I found the best frequency is to clean the brushes and strips after every 2 to 3 records. The water I use to clean and rinse the brushes is the same as I use to clean records.

For information I use different brushes and vacuum tubes for each cleaning step. I only routinely use steaming as a last step after I've rinsed with pure water. I used to steam as a first step but gave it up as the whole process was getting too time consuming.

Needless to say I use a lot of water, so I decided to undertake a little survey to find cheap pure quality water. First I bought a cheap meter to test for TDS (Total Dissolved Solids). I figured these are the nasties which one wants to avoid for record cleaning. Second I bought drinking water from supermarkets and also some battery water from auto parts store. I also bought a cheap distiller on e-bay to make my own water (Not really cheap at $130. But what the heck, it's all in the name of Sound Science;-)).

A few years ago I also installed an "under the kitchen sink" RO (Reverse osmosis) unit. So I added home brew RO water to the survey.

Here's what I found:
Municipal water(straight from the faucet)- 234 ppm TDS
R.O. water (Home made)- 10.1 ppm TDS
Peak Battery Water - 1.5 ppm TDS
Ozarka DISTILLED Drinking Water - 0.3 ppm TDS
My home made distilled water - 0.4ppm TDS

So I now purchase DISTILLED drinking water for my cleaning. Note: it must be distilled water. In my area the most easily available is Ozarka.

Hope this helps.

Regards

Tom

Tom what interesting info on water. I am a big drinker of Ozarka Spring water. Dont know if my local market has there Distilled water. Your tests dont lie and .3 TDS is i would think good enough. Like you i have two vac towers for my 16.5 and use 17h brushes for cleaning and rinsing.

Charlie again word of mouth and threads like this have made learning whats a better way in accomplishing things so easy and in this case money saving. Thanks again

Charlie, you very much deserve it!

TDS or Total Disolved Solids from Wickipidia..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_dissolved_solids