What water actually does to an LED screen
Water rarely kills a screen outright. It starts a process:
- Corrosion starts immediately. Moisture on PCBs, connectors and IC legs begins oxidising within hours. The longer it sits, the more the damage spreads past where the water actually reached.
- Power turns water into burns. Energised while wet, tracks etch, driver ICs fail and neighbouring modules die in cascades. This is why repowering to test is the worst possible instinct.
- Surges ride the storm in. Lightning-induced surges on mains and data lines take out power supplies and receiver cards even in screens that never saw a drop of rain.
- Condensation is the slow version. Repeated condensation cycles inside enclosures corrode connections quietly and show up months later as intermittent faults nobody can pin down.
The first 24 hours: what to do
The first hour after storm damage decides whether the screen is repairable. In order:
Switch it off at the isolator
Turn the screen off at the DB board or dedicated isolator, not just from the media player. If water is near mains wiring, leave it to a qualified person.
Do not power it back on to test
This is the step that turns a repairable screen into a write-off. Water plus power burns tracks and takes out neighbouring modules in cascades. Leave it off until it has been assessed.
Photograph everything
Wide shots of the screen and site, close-ups of the fault, and photos of drainage, sealing and cabling around it. These matter for diagnosis and for insurance.
Note the timeline
When the storm hit, when the fault appeared, and what the screen was doing in between. Insurers ask, and so do we: how long the screen stayed powered while wet changes what is repairable.
Send the photos on WhatsApp
We triage from photos and tell you whether to leave it off, dry it out, or book an on-site assessment. Same-day triage in most cases.
Repair or replace: the honest factors
There is no universal answer, but there are five questions that decide it. We answer these from the strip down, not from the outside of the cabinet:
How far the water tracked
A few modules splashed through a gasket is a very different job from water running down inside a cabinet column. We open the affected area and map the real extent before quoting, because the outside of the screen hides most of it.
How long it stayed powered while wet
A screen switched off within minutes of water entry has a far better outlook than one that ran for hours. Power and water etch and burn copper tracks, and that damage spreads past the modules the water touched.
Whether replacement modules still exist
If your module batch is still manufactured, swapping the worst modules is straightforward. If the batch is discontinued, component-level repair of the existing modules is often the only way to keep the screen looking uniform.
What percentage of the screen is affected
Water damage concentrated in one corner or cabinet is usually worth repairing. Damage spread across most of the face, especially with corrosion on the structure itself, tips the scale towards replacement.
What the repair quote looks like against replacement
We quote the repair honestly, including the risk of late surprises behind corroded connectors. If replacement is the better spend, we say so. A repair that fails again in six months helps nobody.
How we repair water damaged modules
Water damage repair is bench work. Affected modules, power supplies and cards are opened up, cleaned and assessed for water entry, corrosion and surge damage. Failed components are replaced at board level, corroded connectors and contacts are treated or replaced, and everything is burn-in tested before it goes back. Repaired modules are colour matched against the rest of the screen so the repair does not stand out.
We have done this for kiosk screens written off by insurers, mall installations and outdoor signage across Cape Town. Two examples: a CBD kiosk screen with water damage and a mall LED screen repair that avoided a full replacement.
Stopping the next storm from winning
Most screens that fail in a winter storm already had a weakness the previous summer: a tired gasket, a blocked drain, no surge protection, ventilation drawing wet air in. Before the screen goes back into service we check all of it, and we recommend fixing the entry cause, not just the damage.
For a screen that lives outdoors, a screen health audit before the rainy season finds those weaknesses while they are still cheap. For screens that keep failing the same way, a maintenance SLA puts those checks on a schedule.