Water Damaged IM3003

Water damage is one of the worst things that can happen to your IM3003 Master Station.  Usually this happens when the home has a leak of some type, either from your roof or a plumbing problem.

It also happens a lot of the time when you have wallpaper removed and the room repainted.  Removing wallpaper is done with water-based solutions and while washing down the wall, the water gets inside the IM3003.

Because of how the circuit boards are mounted on the back of the IM3003 faceplate, the display board and the amplifier board sit horizontality (like shelves) on the back of the faceplate.  The water will puddle up on these boards, causing all sorts of damage.

Electronic circuit boards that have been damaged by water will have a green corrosion around the electronic components on the circuit board.  If the corrosion is left for a long period of time (weeks) it can ruin the circuit board.

Master Stations with water damage will exhibit very different types of problems than master stations that just have the typical, common failures.  This is because the green corrosion is conductive (it can make small electrical connections) which create short circuits on the board, between different components.   These short circuits will cause random problems and can also damage or ruin components.

When a water-damaged Master Station is delivered to us for repair, it is almost never a typical repair.  There is additional work to clean the boards and additional time to troubleshoot components that are water damaged.  These units are almost always more expensive to repair.

This display board is from a IM3003 that has water damage from wallpaper removal.  The shiny coating on the board is from the wallpaper removal solution.  The red arrows point to the corrosion caused by the water.  In this case, the board will require a new display IC chip ( the large chip in the center of the board) because the corrosion has shorted out the chip.  The replacement components cost $24.00

This area of the power supply / amplifier board controls the intercom functions.  The red arrows point to more of the green corrosion.  

Another view of the same board.  This board will be cleaned in an ultra sonic cleaner to remove the corrosion before it is repaired.

More corrosion around the amplifier IC and voltage regulator.

Water stains on the amplifier insulator card are a good indication of what happened to this IM3003.

NuTone IM3003 Water Damage - Part 2

Sometimes water-damaged Intercoms will require extra effort to repair the damage caused by the circuit board corrosion.  This NuTone IM3003 was originally damaged 2-3 years ago and nothing was done about the problem.

The corrosion was so bad that it had eaten away the metal leads on many of the components.

The red arrows point to the leads of 2 diodes that were completely eaten away and were no longer connected to the circuit board.

The corrosion has also eaten away the leads from several capacitors on the board.

Here are the capacitors after they were removed from the board.  The leads are almost completely eaten away by the corrosion.

The only correct method to rebuild such a severally damaged board is to remove all of the components and clean the board.

Inside the red boxes you can see that all new diodes have been installed in place of the damaged parts.

The red arrows point to the new resistors that have been installed.  The blue arrow points to 4 ceramic capacitors that were also replaced.

New electrolytic capacitors are installed on the board.  These would have been replaced as part of the normal rebuild process of a IM3003 power supply board.

Finally, the amplifier IC and voltage regulator (mounted on the heat sink) are reinstalled.  The amplifier IC had to be replaced because its leads were eaten away just like the other components.  This is unfortunate because the amplifier IC is an expensive part.

After this initial repair work was completed, the IM3003 was reassembled and tested.  I found a few other problems with the Intercom Control section on this board.  These were not direct corrosion problems, but they may have been caused by some of the other failures on the board.

After all of the problems were solved, the entire IM3003 was rebuilt and it is now back in service.

If your IM3003 is in need of Repair, use this link to contact us

Use this link link to our Intercom Reapir Request Form.