Deep Cleaning Records With Steam?

I also believe that a double rinse with lab grade water is more than enough to remove with vacuuming any left over contaminates. The difference in the sound of steamed lps is what tells me that the surface of my lps are as clean as it gets.
I only use distilled water in my steamer not lab grade due to the fact of seeing what it looks like after being inside after hear up. If anything this water seems like it would do more harm than what could come off of any of the attachments.
I have accepted this as part of the process and i am going with it.
Like most things we have the last say in what we accept. And for now a am very happy with the results i'm getting with my vinyl collection steam cleaning with my method.

S: Enjoy & good night.

But what about folks like me with 5,000 + LPs or friends that own 15,000 or more of the rarest LPs in the world. How about them? I have several friends (including me) that pay for music advisors to search the world for only the most significant recordings.

I have to ask, do you also pay someone to clean your records?

If you spent 2 hours a day every single day cleaning records and took 10 minutes per record it would take over 3 years to clean 15,000.

If a typical record is 40 minutes long and you somehow manage to listen an average of 4 hours a day every single day it would take about 7 years to listen to 15,000 if you never repeated.

I do have a steamer and clean special records, but at some point the effort outstrips the reward. I find it impossible to believe that anyone would clean 5,000 records much less 15,000, and who can ever expect to clean 100,000 or ever listen to them.

I have probably over 3,000 myself but would never consider cleaning all of them. The time it takes to do so takes away from the limited time I have to listen. The amount of time spent in this thread on the minutia of the process is time wasted that could have been spent listening. I propose that you have become so eaten up with the process of cleaning that you have detracted from the joy of listening.

Herman your distorting what I ment but you have a point, even if your needle is gouging into the vinyl . Had I understood how far reaching & insiteful you are I would have never given you the time of day much less taken 100's of hours of my time to carefully doctument the process & testing Steam Cleaners to save YOU money. Herman, I plead guilty for misunderstanding the creatant thinking. You have a perfect right to be a lug and your right again. Responding takes away from my precious time that I NEED TO STEAM !! So why waste your time sending me tripe? Oh Herman thanks I think I'll listen to the needle slaming into the label full tilt , thanks again, Hey gang what a guy...Oh Doctor, Doctor do you have any little green pills to make him go away ? Thanks, Doctor I FEEL so much better...Herman get a life. Ha, Ha Ha .... Ah, just one question before I go ... What have you ever done to advance the SOTA in record enjoyment besides writing this ? Now, I'll have another pill Doc... All the best & don't be too insulted , you already did that to me.

Rsrex,
I think it can be debated whether plain distilled water is good enough for the steamer. It probably is. As far as the rince goes though, I think it's best to stay as pure as is feasible. I accidently splashed some of my reagent grade water on my bathroom mirror, didn't wipe it off and when it dried it left no trace of water mark at all. This little incident gives me the peace of mind that after a double rince the residual water after vacuuming is leaving as little residue on the surface as it dries as possible. Try leaving some of your RO water on glass to dry and see if it leaves a residue. If it doesn't it's probably as effective as the reagent grade for the purpose of cleaning records. Of course, the sonic effects of any residue left by water may be another area of debate.