Refurbishing a galley stove that's been underwater

[bbboat]

I've been looking for a new stove for our E39 and have an opportunity to buy (for next to nothing) a 2-year old Force 10 stainless steel stove/oven that was on a boat that sank in the slip. The stove was supposedly underwater for 4 hours.

Does anyone know what would need to be addressed with refurbishing this stove? Is there someplace that does this type of work, or is it something I should be able to do myself? I'm concerned about safety, of course, so given the nature of propane stoves, is this a deal or a dead-end? Thanks!

 

[Greg Ross]

Force 10 Propane Stove

Dan,
I would think it's a cleaning and drying process The catch, there's oven insulation that's going to be saturated.
I would be inclined to re-sumburge it in fresh water, plug the propane inlet fitting prior to doing this. Since there are no electrical components in the stove all the mechanical components (excepting the insulation noted above) should survive this just fine and were designed to live in the marine environment anyway. If there happens to be a built-in spark ignition I would buy a replacement.
Next would be to totally dismantle the stove and all the burners, including the oven burner. Best to blow these items out with compressed air. Removal of the lining panels of the oven should gain you acces to the insulation, typically fibreglass material. Left in open atmosphere these will eventually dry out.
The other option for drying, with the Force 10 disassembled down to the Oven box (all plastic and rubbber/ comustibles removed) might be to try and find an oven large enough to put the stove box in to bake at about 125 - 150 deg.F. A couple of days at that temp. should do it!
Likely not as easy to find for another drying option is a vaccuum chamber. That's the way they dry valuable books that have gotten wet-from library fires, etc.

 

[Glyn Judson]

Bringing your Force 10 stove back to life.

Dan, Greg offers excellent points but there might be some electrical hidden in there he doesn't know about, namely the electric start mechanism, AA battery powered on mine. But before doing anything, get the model number then contact Force 10 at http://www.force10.com/contact.html and talk to them all about it. Ask if critical spare parts are available and at what cost, etc. These are expensive stoves and one pricey part could sour the whole deal and become a nightmare to get out of once you're too far in financially and with your own labor. Good luck, Glyn Judson, E31 hull #55, Marina del Rey, CA.

 

[bbboat]

As it turns out, this stove isn't going to fit my galley. For anyone else who's interested, it's on ebay here (ends 11/7/08).

Also in case anyone's interested, I emailed Brad Clark at Force 10, and his comments are below:

The best way to determine if there are issues with the stove is to dry it
out completely, and then fire up each burner to see if it will operate.

The potential problem area is the control valves and possibly the burners.
It will depend if the water was salt or fresh and the amount of ingress in
the unit.


He added that if it was in salt water (which it was), it would most likely affect the aluminum burner components.