Deep Cleaning Records With Steam?

Drubin : Contamination appears to begin with the quatity of the water. The "cleaner" the water the less contamination to the heating tank. I have received emails from "steamers" that remark they clean out the tanks with every useage. I try to use the cleanest water available and worry about the heating tank later. So far I have found never use tap water and be carefull to determine if the quality of water meets established standards. Short of all that I use a water product "Peak Battery Water" purchased @ Pep Boys Auto, Peak Battery Water that $ for $ seems to be a best buy. I am certian other cleaner sources exist but the cost far exceeds $3.@ Gal.

You can drive yourself crazy with this stuff if you want to. I use ultrapure water myself. Bulk of it is in a 1 gallon glass lab container. I transfer it into an old RRL SVW plastic bottle that's more manageable when it comes to actually cleaning records. Load up the steamer with it and what doesn't get used sits in the steamer til next time when I usually just top it up.

Works for me. The results are excellent. As Crem says, it makes sense to start with the cleanest possible water and I know I have that, so I don't sweat the small stuff.

Thanks, both of you. Good advice.

I have found that a full tank will clean about 8-10 records for me. This will vary with each individual timing method. Just check your record avarage and use the neccesary water to adapt at your convinience. For example, if I want to clean just 4-5 records, I use half the water ( 4 oz). This way, your steamer tank will use every drop of water and you don't need to left any water that can be contaminated into your steamer tank.

Something to Consider: According to emails from "Analog Fanatics" , as they upgraded analog playback front ends into the maga-buck world , not only did they hear more from the LPs , but a new character (we shall label dust/grit) created a sonic signature to compete with the music. They said conventional RCMs did little to change the situation until ever so reluctantly a few started to steam clean LPs. Now, some of those AF'ers swear that without the gunk tamer (steam) the upgrades could have been a waste of $. Go figure.