Thursday, July 17, 2008

Flood Damage Revisited

You remember how my parent's house flooded in the spring and how mom's ceramic business was flooded.
She is finally assessing the damage. The farm needed to be cleaned up and set back in order first. And then the garden needed to dealt with. Now she has time to haul all of her damaged molds out of the basement and catalogue them for insurance purposes. What a monumental job. What you see below is a small sample of the molds that she had damaged during the flood.
As you can see they are stacked quite deep along the garage. I was surprised at how much damage the water did to them. The detail on some of them was really eroded. You could even see where the rubber straps had prevented the water from coming in contact with the plaster as it was the only place on the outside of some of them that was not worn away.

The insurance company wants her to list all of the molds that were damaged by the flood, when and where she purchased them, and their current replacement value. So while she is recovering from her surgery (she has been told to not lift anything heavier than a cup of tea!) she is attempting to put all of her molds in order by hunting up current price lists (you should see the stack of papers that cover that!) and looking for approximate dates of purchases. Some she knows, but others are a little harder to find. A lot of her papers were in the flood too. She is doing a lot of detective work by looking through stacks and stacks of receipt books for the first mention of some of the more elusive molds.

What a job!

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow, that's an extensive collection of (damaged) molds. That's such a shame they are all ruined. I hope she can get her claim taken care of soon.

Anonymous said...

There are over 770 molds in the pile you see and more in the basement that have not yet been checked yet . I will not be able to check them until the end of August unless someone can help me open them and carry them upstairs.

What has made the job difficult is that most of the mold companies have been sold to other mold companies. There is a complete restructure of the industry.
For example the Gare company was a big mold manufacturing company. They also sold a line of products. They have ceased producing molds and could not provide me with today prices. Fortunately a 1995 Gare catalogue survived the flood as it was not where it was supposed to be, so I used the catalogue price list of 1995.

For example Starlight company now manufactures about 7 mold company designs and Macky are manufacturing about 30. Some large molds company like Ceramichrome I have not been able to find on line.

Some price lists are very printer unfriendly.
So far I have a 2 inch stack of price list to go through.
Mamoo

David T. Macknet said...

But you should be looking for replacement values, not sale value, right? You're not interested in the money you spent 12 years ago, you're interested in what they're worth today. If the companies have gone out of business, then the molds are worth more ... and you should be paid more, right?

Of course, I may be imagining that the insurance company would do that, huh?

Anonymous said...

I don't know what they are worth. They were in the basement where they got kind of moldy.

Anonymous said...

That is exactly what I am looking for, REPLACEMENT
VALUE.

Most of the molds you see in the pile were almost new or very little used. The details were very crisp ( that is before the flood) A lot of them had been bought at a distributor price ( half price) from the Vitrex Canadian manufacturer based in Burlington Ontario, who was manufacturing under license, molds from American companies. I was ordering them by the ton. I took advantage of sales prices from time to time.

With Gare molds all I have is the 1995 price. I am sure that the insurance adjusters will take the increased value because those molds are no longer available and that all I have is the old price.

I am hoping that the insurance adjusters will take into consideration their increased value because they are no longer available.

Mamoo

Anonymous said...

Oops! I guess I repeated myself about the insurance adjusters. Thats what happens when I get interrupted in the middle of my comment,

Nice pun, Mira's papa.

Mamoo

KansasA said...

Holy moly! She could build/brick a house with that amount of molds! lol

I hope everything gets cleared up fast for her :)