FLOOD! Now what?

I went on the shortest twin tank dive of my life this morning. Ten minutes into my dive the moisture indicator went off.

The bad news is my DX D200 leaked , the good new is that the moisture indicator works, and the great news is that the water did not get to my new camera !!!

But there is still the matter of the two to three tablespoons of salt water that got into my housing.

What is the best way to clean and dry the inside of a housing?

Thanks for the help,

Semper Dive,

Brian

can you simply rinse it out and dry it ? or would that mess up the moisture alarm. I don't have a moisture alarm in my housing and nothing inside when the camera isn't in it to worry about. So when i had a minor flood I was able to take everything apart and dunk it and let it dry .. everything was fine.

I'd suggest you follow this procedure:

1) Use a clean, damp cloth to clean off the salt deposits inside the housing.

2) Thoroughly clean the contacts of the moisture indicator. If there's any trace of corrosion on the contacts, you can use some vinegar or lemon juice to rub it off.

3) Change the detector battery if any water got to it.

4) Try and identify where the leak came from. Thoroughly inspect all the accessible o-rings. Main culprits are generally the housing perimeter o-ring, or the port o-ring. Look out for sand, hair, nicks or scratches on the o-ring.

5) If the previous step is unsuccessful, try putting everything back together as it was (minus the camera), immerse the whole lot in a tub of clean water, and look out for a string of bubbles.

6) Once you've identified the faulty o-ring, clean it or change it as appropriate, and try again.

Good luck!

Thanks sooooo much for your quick advice, this had to be one of my most stressful dives in a long time!! This was my first leak with a D-SLR, I had one a few years back with a cheap point and shoot.

I just got the housing taken apart and I inspected all of the o-rings. I could not find any definitive evidence to what caused the leak. My suspicions were a very small deformity (some excess o-ring materiel) stuck to the one side of the o-ring for the compact wide port. It scraped off easily but I am going replace it anyways. I also had to replace the battery on the moisture indicator. The vinegar worked great to take off the corrosion on the battery terminals. Everything is drying off right now, but I am very apprehensive to take it out again. I guess it’s like falling of a really expensive bike…..

Thanks again!!

Semper Dive,

Brian

If you cannot see any bubbles by putting it in a bath tub to chec if it leaks, and you are still apprehensive, you can always take it for a dive without the camera in .. rather than put a camera in in put some paper towel in it, if it does leak it will give you a clue as to wehre it came from.

Giles

In my experiance, S&S housing get flooded from 2 sources.

1.Port. check o-rings & replace as necessary.

2.Sync connector. I would like to suggest to clean the sync connector thoroughly using WD-40 & electronic contact splay cleaner. If not, 2 spring pins of 5 pin in connector will get corroded & it stay pushed down when you connect sync cable next time & you will end up sending the housing to service center to replace it. I have seen this happen on several S&S housing.

Sam