Flood Damage Advice

[Dave Doremus]

At 3:11 PM -0500 6/12/01, Avery Todd wrote:
>Am I wrong in recommending that they write it off and get
>a new one? They do have flood insurance and my understanding
>is that that means replacement cost, not depreciated cost.


Avery, you are totally right, but, they may have a fight with the 
insurance co. unless replacement value is in the contract. My 
experiences after the 95 flood here was that flood insurance is for a 
dollar value of house and contents and most people turned out to 
underinsured. When you consider the cost of gutting and restoring the 
house by the time all is said and done there is often not a lot left 
over for the piano. The best thing you can do is write it off as a 
loss and put as high a value on replacemnt as you can justify (ie go 
with MSRP) and hope they can pry enough out the insurer to get 
another one in their (new) house. Good luck.

On a more positive note, as Lance suggests, flooded pianos that were 
not that bad, often emerge fairly well.One customer with a D got 2' 
in his house, and refused to total the piano, we refinished the legs, 
cleaned strings and luckily he had got it open and drying before 
mildew set in, and to this day it is fine. On the other hand some 
makes just melted in high humidity with all felt coming unglued along 
with ribs, bridges etc.

Hope all is well as can be in Houston, we were watching you nervously 
on the news, waiting for it to hit us. We had 18" of water in the 
street in my neighborhood but all the houses are raised so no real 
problem, just had to move my wife's car to higher ground at 2am and 
wade back...the joys of coastal living...