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Any darkrooms on catchment water systems?

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shawner

Member
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Joined
Jun 18, 2005
Messages
4
Location
Volcano, Haw
Format
Large Format
I'm about to start building (in desperation) my third darkroom- (i've done no photography for 5 years since my twins were born!) Many of us in Hawaii are on catchment water systems, i.e, we catch rainwater in a big tank and is supplied to the house via a pump and fliters... does anyone else maintain a darkroom on catchement? Any particular issues to be concerned about? Any particular type of filtration for mixing the chemistry? I'm planning an ultr-violet and reverse osmosis filter system... any experiences or ideas will be much appreciated! Aloha-

Shawn
 
I don't do this, I'm on a well, but it shouldn't be a problem. With UV and RO, your water will be better than my distilled. You don't need much water in a darkroom, except for washing films and prints. The Navy figured out that these can be washed in sea water with a final rinse in fresh water. Something to consider if you're near the beach and it's not raining. I guess you wouldn't be in the darkroom on those days, anyway.
 
Loose Gravel said:
The Navy figured out that these can be washed in sea water with a final rinse in fresh water. Something to consider if you're near the beach and it's not raining. I guess you wouldn't be in the darkroom on those days, anyway.

Ah! I'm 4000' up on an active volcano...so no sea water, but maybe I could just wash with straight unfiltered rainwater- could set it up as a gravity feed so that my pump wouldn't be cycling on for 20+ minutes at a time...the darkroom will also be off grid, so saving that electricity will be good as well...

Shawn
 
Shawn -

I suspect that there are two issues. One is the chemical content/purity of the water. Between your UV scheme and the RO filter, you probably have that one totally under control.

The second is quanty of supply. Based on my very limited experience in Hawaii, I would expect that you probably have an almost unlimited source. But the fact that you are depending on rain rather than something that is more predictable (like a public supply), there is always the nagging concern about using a lot of water for washing prints.

I have a friend whose home is on a well with an erratic track record. His approach was to standardize on RC paper in order to reduce his washing requirements. Obviously, that could be an emotional subject.

The alternative is to consider one of the water-saving washing strategies. Certainly you will want to use a hypoclear bath. But you may also want to consider batch soaking in which prints dwell in trays of water for several minutes with intermittent agitation, and are then transferred to another tray of water for another soak, and so on. A number of people have described that process here and have reported that half a dozen cycles is usually enough to remove enough residual fixer. I do this with 11x14 trays using two quarter of water per tray, so the total water volume is only three gallons.
 
Youts! (North Coast British Columbia, Canada, Haisla First Nations greeting).

EEGAD LAD!!!! Living on a volcano? Large format?!? TWINS!!??!!

Welcome aboard APUG Shawn! You must play with amazing light.

Murray
 
Thanks for the input Monophoto- i think water quality is the biggest concern but it would make sense that if you can drink it, you can process with it... Volume should no be an issue as we get about 85" of rain a year up here and even if we have a dry spell, I just have to cut back on the black and white stuff for a while.. My darkroom catchment will be separated from the house system so no worries about using too much of the family water...

If I recall, there is a general rule of thumb that a 1000sq ft roof produces about 600 gallons of water from a 1" rain.

and Murray- Thanks for the enthusiastic welcome!

Shawn
 
Shawn, meaning no disrespect, but shouldn't the family cut down on water consumption in order to do more black & white? Sorry, but I know you're new here and priorities take a while to firm up. Welcome. tim
 
noseoil said:
Shawn, meaning no disrespect, but shouldn't the family cut down on water consumption in order to do more black & white? Sorry, but I know you're new here and priorities take a while to firm up. Welcome. tim

Ha! Indeed! At least my boys won't mind skipping a bath or two...
 
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