Darkroom Construction

Some of my best mates live in Alaska, I'm regularly regaled with tales of leaving the drinks on the front porch to keep them cold only to find them frozen later, and the state bird - the mosquito. I'd be more sympathetic if it wasn't summer here in Australia, but the best of luck to you, you sound like you're doing pretty good - I'll be keeping an eye on this topic.

Well...still mucking around getting things going...put up shelves tonight which is a good thing. A good activity to work off some thanksgiving repast. I need a bit more in supplies before I can finalize the shelf project, but I traded out my little shelves for longer and more shelves, and put the little shelves on the wall next to where the kids play. They will probably knock them off the wall until I finally give up and take them down, but they might not and they're excited to have a place to put more toys...pretty soon they'll be asking to go to the 'playroom' instead of the 'darkroom'.

The water pump hasn't arrived, but I haven't been ready to use it yet. But as of tomorrow, I'm ready. It is still cold here. As soon as the water pump arrives, it will warm up, but as long as the pump isn't here, I'm sure the forecast will be for cold weather...

Well, I didn't make it to the post office today, but I know the water pump arrived because the temperature hit 33 F today! I spent the morning trying to get water hooked up to the darkroom. Everything seemed like it was working, but the water wasn't making it in. Strange...I checked every step of the way and finally realized what the problem was. I had blown excess water out of the j-trap under the sink before I let everything freeze. But I hadn't blown excess water out of the line that brings water in from the outside. I have a spigot outside the darkroom that is reverse threaded so I can run a hose from the house and attach it. The pipe runs at a slight incline to an elbow that brings it up through the floor to another spigot under the laundry tub in the darkroom. I thought that this spigot would be draining itself down through the outside spigot without any problem. Apparently not. Somewhere in that section of pipe it was blocked. A lot of encouragement in the form of heat finally melted things, and then we were good to go.

The pipe under the floor is inside an insulated zone, insulation at the end around where the spigot goes through the wall and insulation below the floor joists. The pipe is between the joists. I found my left over fiberglass and packed it up past the elbow, then added extra foam on top of the foam that is beneath the floor joists. So extra insulation may help on the next round. I was sure glad that I had thought to make a cutout for access to the little plumbing section. Otherwise I would have been pulling a whole section of foam off.

So I filled the 200 gallon tank, mixed chemicals, filled the wash tray, and then blew out all the water lines that I could, so I won't have to fight that demon the next time. I wonder whether the gravity drain might have actually worked. It might be that since I left the spigot open, cold air infiltration accompanied with sweating led to condensation freezing it shut? Seems like this would require hot air infiltration into a cold zone instead of vice versa, but not sure that wouldn't also have been possible. Can't remember if any of the valves were open.

Anyway, for now I'm ready to go tomorrow and the next day. Might get another couple days beyond that out of the current tank, and then I should have a lift pump for the days when the weather never warms up. I feel like I almost have this figured out.

Next year when I build the skirting, I think I'm going to go ahead and insulate it after all. I dont' think it's possible to overinsulate...

Troy Hamon said:

.....I dont' think it's possible to overinsulate...

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Ah, the joys of living in Alaska. We have a “Guest Cabin” for summer guests that we shut down in the winter. Regardless of how well we plan it out--blowing the lines, draining the tanks and traps, and leaving all valves open--it’s always exciting turning the water back on in June. Good Luck!

Ever thought of contacting NASA to sign on with them? You could be their consultant for the Mars Base darkroom.

Murray

P.S. It's a balmy -15 celsius (5 degrees F) here right now , and getting colder...thanks for sending the cold snap my way ! !

I do enjoy this talk of cold weather. Here in Norwich, UK, when we get our annual 2 weeks (if that) of 10-15cm snow half the schools shut down and people forget how to drive!

Before we moved to Alaska, we were living in Seattle (I was one of those eternal graduate students...). I grew up on the other side of the mountains in Washington, where there really is a winter. We would always think it was just beyond funny how the entire city of Seattle went into crisis mode if there was a snowstorm and an inch of snow fell. But people just didn't have good tires, the city had all of two (2!) snowplows for the 700,000 people that lived there. Comical, but it really was pretty dangerous. Just watching people drive was dangerous, as when they slid off the road they might hit you...

Of course, when we moved to the Alaska bush, it was a bit different. Anchorage, despite being somewhat like a city (or, in an alternative view, a huge unplanned expansion of poorly planned housing developments and stripmalls...) gets lots of snow and keeps functioning. One time we were in Anchorage for a few days and as we prepared to leave we woke up to 12 inches of new snow and more falling...and we were stuck as was everyone else in town. Took about 4 hours to get the car out of the parking space it was snowed into, let alone out of the parking lot at the hotel.

And where we live, snow is pretty much a cosmetic improvement to the winter viewshed, as well as a way to make some use of all the winter toys that don't work without it. A couple days ago, one of the people from the National Weather Service, who is new here, said that the weather was warming up, but that it wasn't good news. Why not? Well...it looks like it's going to snow. You're kidding, right? Of course that's good news. Everybody here would love to have snow, it's free insulation, for one thing. Oh.

And it is free insulation. I'll pile it all around my skirting if it really does come. But right now I'm happy to announce that it is warm out there and I'll be working with the water hose hooked up today...

Will heat tape work to keep a water line unfrozen inside proper insulation in that climate? Or does it not have the heating capacity for that?

Heat tape should work fine, but this brings up another problem...outlets. In order to install the heat tape, I would need to put another hole through the floor or bring power from outside the darkroom. I have two exterior sockets wired, but haven't managed to get them working. It appears as though the GFCI outlet doesn't quite fit in the exterior boxes. I know that isn't true, but I have a heck of a time getting it to fit and after I get it in, I can't make the outlet work. Another project for next summer. But for right now, I don't have an exterior outlet to use and I am trying not to carve more holes in my floor...if it doesn't work this way, I'll have to cut the hole and be done with it.

So far so good with the water. Worked with the hose hooked up for a couple days while it was pretty warm. It's warmed back up again, but I have a bunch of water in the tank I wouldn't mind draining...

The door doesn't open as smoothly as it did a year ago. I thought perhaps the pads were not level after a year of the freeze/thaw cycle, but they appear not to be the problem. The real problem is that the large beams they sent for skids are saggin slightly in the middle. The package I bought was designed for a 12x16, and when I extended it to 12x20 they didn't add in an extra set of material for more ground contact pads under the beams. So I pulled out the car jack and had at it. Lifted the beam in the center until the 2-ton car jack failed, as in wouldn't go any higher. That height would have been perfect, but of course I can't support it at the maximum height I can raise it to. Instead, that controls what I can get under it and then as it settles down there is some sagging again. I worked to get a good solid base of concrete pavers up as close as possible, and then a piece of wood that I could barely slide in. Not perfect, but the door works better. More fun to fix in the future. But I was thinking if I drain the 1600 lbs of water in the tank, the 2-ton jack might have a bit more to offer...maybe.

I also saw in the thread about floating lids blansky's (I think it was him, sorry for the lazy research if it was somebody else) plexiglass tray covers. I've been thinking about this for a while, and it gave me the extra push to go get them. I need 23.5x28 inch to cover the 20x24 trays I'm using, so I found some 28x30 sheets that only had to be cut one direction. Brought them home, cut them, sanded the edges, and don't know why I didn't do it eons ago. I like to minimize my need for venting the darkroom due to the fact that the air coming in is COLD! Well, tonight it isn't even quite freezing, but some days... Thanks to blansky for helping me save energy and, therefore, cash.

Well, we're in the middle of a major cold snap. Right now my thermometer reads -27. I've had to redo the support in the middle of the sagging beam, and the door is again pretty hard to open and close. I'm going to get a couple of wedges cut to deal with the problem. That way, the two wedges, which are basically 2x4s that are cut on a long sloping angle, are wedged against each other from opposite sides. Hammering them in toward each other horizontally raises the building incrementally. This way, I won't have to repeatedly try to jack the building up, but will be able to keep raising the center support as the support base sinks into the ground and finds its level. I may not get this done for a few months though, because it is COLD!!!!

I've also had the problem that my drain is freezing. I haven't yet determined the full nature of the problem, but I'm hopeful it is not too serious yet. The long flexible tube that comes out of my silver recovery chamber and then goes down my floor drain is what is freezing. What I find surprising is that it is holding fluid. The tube goes down the drain, which goes down through a bunch of rocks into a five gallon bucket full of rocks, which has holes in the bottom and sits on sand about 6 feet below the surface. I'm wondering from the feel of it whether the tube is down far enough that it is resting on a rock in the bucket, and surface tension is keeping some fluid in the tube. I'm going to try to have it a little less far down and see if it freezes up.

But I fear it may be a bit more than that. The reason...there's a cold wind blowing up through the floor drain. Just noticed a week ago. The floor drain should not have any air passage from outside, so this is a bit disconcerting. The pipe that goes down from the drain is completely packed around with fiberglass between the floor joists and foam below that, so there shouldn't be air sneaking up along the edges. I wonder whether the glue joint partly down the drain has broken and gapped...not sure what else could account for the air movement. Or maybe my expectation of the foam/fiberglass arrangement impeding airflow is not so accurate as it should be, in which case I really need to put in a lot more floor insulation. Also a job for next spring.

One of my fears, with the kind of cold we've been getting, is that the ground will freeze so far down that my drain doesn't drain. As in the sand will freeze. As long as I keep working out there and running water down, it will probably keep it from freezing too hard. But we put rocks instead of dirt on top of the drain because we didn't want dirt falling down in and filling in the rocks below the drain, or the sand, or the rocks in the bucket (though that is capped). We put a plastic tarp on top of the rocks, and then dirt on top of the tarp. So there is a lot of open air space above the drain below ground surface. Not sure exactly what that does, but it seems like it would allow cold to penetrate faster.

So that's the present situation on two fronts: drain and level.

The third front is the heating. I originally started with a plan to use propane because handling propane is much cleaner than handling fuel oil, and I didn't want to have to worry so much about the fuel storage area. I then decided to use an infrared propane heater because I found a good one on sale, it didn't require venting which amounts to lost energy, and I expected to need to run the vent a bunch anyway. In fact, one of the things I really wanted in this darkroom was a good ventilation system because I have had trouble with insufficient ventilation before and I get pretty good reactions to darkroom chemicals.

I had a question earlier in the thread about whether the condensation from the infrared heater would be a problem. I didn't know, and was interested to find out. Well, the experience so far is that it isn't a big problem for working. In fact, it really knocks the dust down, and can be a major help in that regard. Much quicker negative cleaning and preparation when the infrared heat has been on a while.

On the other hand, with insufficient ventilation, the infrared heat starts to get my eyes pretty upset. Not sure if it is some byproduct from the combustion or what, but I have to vent pretty heavily while the heater is running. And if I leave the infrared heater on without the vent running overnight, it sets off the CO detector on the unit and the heater turns off. Apparently the drainhole air leak isn't enough to keep that balanced. I also have two in-line ventilation fans. One, on the outgoing air line, stopped working a couple months ago. I'm curious whether that had to do with the amount of vapor passing through it causing trouble. Or maybe the dumb thing still works but the blades are frozen in place? Meanwhile, I've had to go out and clear condensation off of the incoming vent, which must mean that after pumping air in, air is escaping back out after the fan is turned off. It was almost completely blocked by ice crystals and the ventilation was becoming a problem, which prompted me going to look.

The irony of all this is that, I now have to use a little electric space heater inside the building to keep from having the place freeze up. The other alternative, running the vent and the propane heater, sucks propane out like nobody's business, and just isn't sustainable. Meanwhile, we don't want to talk about my electric bill the past couple months...

So it looks like I'll be shopping for a vented propane heater, which I probably should have done in the first place. My to-do list at present now reads:
1. Vented propane heater.
2. Check drain pipe for joint breaks.
3. Insulate drain pipe. For this I'm going to put fiberglass in plastic hefty bags and seal them shut, then wrap them around the pipe under the building and tape the bag to itself to hold it in place. But not until I get a sense of the leakiness of the pipe.
4. Install permanent mid-span support pads with leveling wedges.
5. Blow-in insulation above foam floor insulation (if I can find somebody that does this here).
6. Insulated skirting.

Most of this is optional at present, as I'm already working away and doing well, but it would help if I could get these done before next winter!

Troy Hamon said:

I've also had the problem that my drain is freezing…… The long flexible tube that comes out of my silver recovery chamber and then goes down my floor drain is what is freezing. What I find surprising is that it is holding fluid. The tube goes down the drain, which goes down through a bunch of rocks into a five gallon bucket full of rocks, which has holes in the bottom and sits on sand about 6 feet below the surface. …..One of my fears, with the kind of cold we've been getting, is that the ground will freeze so far down that my drain doesn't drain. As in the sand will freeze. As long as I keep working out there and running water down, it will probably keep it from freezing too hard. But we put rocks instead of dirt on top of the drain because we didn't want dirt falling down in and filling in the rocks below the drain, or the sand, or the rocks in the bucket (though that is capped). We put a plastic tarp on top of the rocks, and then dirt on top of the tarp. So there is a lot of open air space above the drain below ground surface. Not sure exactly what that does, but it seems like it would allow cold to penetrate faster….

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In my 7 winters in south-central Alaska, the frost line has never gone below 6 feet, and then only in late February or March. So I doubt the sand is frozen in December. However, the drain line may freeze. I have successfully run a length of electric heat tape down the drain, and only plug it in when the drain freezes.

Troy Hamon said:

.....there's a cold wind blowing up through the floor drain. Just noticed a week ago. The floor drain should not have any air passage from outside, so this is a bit disconcerting. The pipe that goes down from the drain is completely packed around with fiberglass between the floor joists and foam below that, so there shouldn't be air sneaking up along the edges. I wonder whether the glue joint partly down the drain has broken and gapped...not sure what else could account for the air movement. Or maybe my expectation of the foam/fiberglass arrangement impeding airflow is not so accurate as it should be, in which case I really need to put in a lot more floor insulation……

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I have a footer drain with no outside outlet, but a capped opening inside the basement. When I uncap it inside, cold air will flow into the house. My theory is that the house has a negative pressure, due to the inside being warmer than outside, and the warm air leaking out through vents, etc. I don’t see any way to prevent this—my house is sealed extremely well, but we need vents for the dryer, cooking, etc.

That's somewhat reassuring about the cold air flowing in. I haven't had any reason to think there is a leak in the pipe, but I was having trouble explaining the air flow to myself.

Our frost line in the southwest corner of the state can reach past 8 feet some years...other years it doesn't come near to 6. Frost lines below 6 feet are uncommon, but we have had a pretty extended cold snap very early in the winter (for us). And we generally don't get a lot of snow, so that doesn't help much.

I have a heat tape that I may run down the drain overnight for the next couple weeks. After that I'm sealing up the darkroom for a month due to previously scheduled travel that makes it unlikely I'll be able to work in between mid-January and mid-February out there. That's one thing I am pleased with...I can drain the water and let the place freeze...that's a success story in this whole construction planning process. I already did it for the entire months of September and October, worked like a charm.

Okay...I've learned a few things in the past couple weeks.

First, the drain is not broken, but I do need to work on it. Last spring when the ground thawed, the drain heaved up into the darkroom. I pulled the pipe up, then sawed off a little over an inch, pushed it back down, and then bedded it below the floor surface. That way, when (if) it heaved again, it would have a little way to go before reaching the surface. Problem with this scenario...what has happened is the earth heaving during the freeze-up has moved the building up in relation to the drain. So the drain is fine all the way into the ground, but the building is about an inch higher than it was and below the drain cap the pipe had pulled down and there was a gap. The gap was allowing wind to blow up from the imperfectly sealed insulation from outside into the darkroom.

The only structural connection into the ground is the drain. The drain pipe stems off a couple inches above ground, and another piece of pipe is connected to it from the darkroom floor. To solve this problem, I'm going to separate those two pieces again. Then, I'm going to connect the drain pipe more securely to the darkroom floor. Finally, I'm going to hook the two pipes together by a sleeve that clamps firmly to the ground pipe and less firmly to the pipe coming from the darkroom. This should allow the upper pipe to heave up and down a bit without separating. The lower connection is the one that needs to be most waterproof, so it will be clamped tight while the upper is free enough to slide when forced. That's the plan. If this doesn't work, I'll put in a couple 90 degree angles that aren't quite level to create movable space for the heave. I'd prefer not to do that though, so we'll see.

I've also installed the mid-span support on one side (the door side) of the building. But it keeps settling, so I need to redo it again already. I really need to get this settled fully this spring/summer so the entire building can be on the same heave rather than this constant revision of the leveling. That's going to have to be in summer though, so for now I intend to do it just one more time, then let it set until summer.

Some builder friends have talked me out of skirting. They say the skirting is a pain because it can end up picking up the building and causes problems. They recommend it only if your goal is to heat the area beneath the building, which is not my goal. I want a building I can let freeze when it's not in use. That being the case, the value of the skirting is only cosmetic and it brings more problems than solutions...

The new plan (based pretty much entirely on their advice): Follow through with the sprayfoam sealant on the foam floor insulation so the floor is totally protected from wind drafts. Forego the blow-in insulation in the floor, as the sealing of the space will be more effective than additional floor insulation (based on their experience). Perhaps put a very thin layer of ply below the floor foam as an outer skin to further reduce wind action on the insulation. No skirting.

I still intend to insulate the drain pipe after I get the drain revision completed.

Meantime, I just wrapped up the semi-final phase of a pretty extensive project yesterday evening, so today I'll be putting the darkroom to bed for the winter. Draining the water tank, disposing of chemicals, cleaning up, and perhaps even getting organized. We've had such a cold winter it will be a relief to turn off the electric heater. Next winter, hopefully won't be in the electric heat business out there at all.

Revised to-do list:
1. Install mid-span support pads under beams during summer.
2. Seal floor insulation with sprayfoam sealant.
3. Repair/revise floor drain to ground connection.
4. Insulate floor drain.
5. Vented propane heater with thermostat.

You might look at a pleated rubber radiator hose between the floor and the ground for the drain. That should allow for plenty of movement especially if the route is a slight S curve.

Gary, that's a great idea. Thanks, I'll see if I can get one of those. I like it. It is pretty much a straight shot right now (rather than an s-curve), but there is something like 18 inches between the ground and the bottom of the insulation, so plenty of space to work with.

Catching up...

So, at last report, my to-do list read:
1. Install mid-span support pads under beams during summer.
2. Seal floor insulation with sprayfoam sealant.
3. Repair/revise floor drain to ground connection.
4. Insulate floor drain.
5. Vented propane heater with thermostat.

Failed on #1, didn't get to it. The one mid-span support I put in last year is still there and doing okay, but didn't get it improved on. Accomplished #2 last month. Fixed drain (#3) so now I'll see how the next 12 months goes. For now it is good. Didn't get the floor drain insulated, but I'm expecting to do that soon, even in winter. And, failed to get a new heater as well. Argh.

Where does that leave me? Well, other than actually printing in the darkroom, which is what I've been doing all day...

I'm strongly considering taking out the ceiling and the glass insulation and putting foam insulation right on the underside of the roof. Then the fans and electrical connections will be more accessible for repair, and I'll be able to insulate the pipes for air intake without trying to figure out how to get around in an attic that is less than 24" at peak. The heater is likely not going to happen this year, so I'll be living with what I've got. I am considering putting a wind turbine on the darkroom though, and seeing how much that can generate. I really need to run some numbers. Could be interesting.

Much of this is still possibility rather than finished design or decision at this point, so my current true to-do list now really boils down to just insulating the drain pipe between the building and ground. And now...time to get back out there.

New list:
1. Insulate floor drain.

Glad to see you back on line. I have missed your construction updates over the summer and hoped everything was going OK. Glad to see you printing - I guess the nights will be getting a little longer now so more time to print.

regards
Gord

Troy - Buddeeeeee

Good to have you back from your ramblings about the Alaskan hinterlands!! I, like you have been doing, am about to embark upon the construction of my dream darkroom.

Good to have you back...what have you been doing?

Murray

P.S. I'm going to steal your idea for having a special area for our daughter to play in while she's in the darkroom, and I'll trump you by maybe coming up with a light-proof, double door entry so she can come and go at any time and not feel cut off from her dad. Thanks for that idea!

Thanks both of you for the welcome back. I have been frantic as always this summer. Much of it fieldwork for my day job (scientist for the National Park Service). Frantic enough that I hardly ever even carried a camera.

We had a very cold winter, so after I shut down the darkroom in January to go on vacation, I never started it back up until August. Our winter was so cold our water main froze in April and I didn't manage to get it reconnected until July...in mid-June it was still frozen. That's right, mid-June. Still frozen.

I have three or four photographic projects I'm working on, so I have a bit of trouble deciding to pull away and tear into anything semi-major, like the ceiling insulation/condensation issue, because it costs me darkroom time. But I'll have to own up to that sometime soon.

In my original naivete, I thought I would post my work to this thread until the darkroom was done, then the thread would die away. I've since realized, as with all projects, the darkroom will never be finished. So whenever I buckle under and actually do some work on it, I'll keep posting...

Murray, I'm thrilled to hear you're working on your dream darkroom. That is wonderful news. The light-tight play area seems like a lot of extra precaution, but you develop LF. Are you doing it in trays rather than drums? That would certainly be different. The most I have to deal with is loading roll film onto reels in total dark, the rest of the time is red lights or full light. The occasional film loading is a fun break. Probably not so much if it was more extended dark time. But who knows. I do know it is great to be able to go out and have company. I am probably out there with one or both kids more than I'm out there by myself. A lot more.

Yup, I'm a tray guy.

My dad was gone on business trips quite a bit when I was growing up, which probably has a lot to do with me not wanting locked doors between me and my daughter...

Murray

Having the kids in the darkroom has an ancillary benefit too. They already know more or less how to do stuff, they want to help manage print development (though they have a habit of dropping prints while they're supposed to be holding them up with tongs to drip off chemicals before the next bath...) and they generally feel as if every trip to the darkroom is an adventure. I grew up on a farm and you learn how to do an incredible amount of stuff just from being there. I think the darkroom has that same effect. Working in an office...not so much. The kids aren't really ever there or welcome during real work. And they would find data analysis boring, which is my favorite part. Although, to be honest, they might be nearing the point where I could get them interested in that.

Murray, as you develop plans and start working, please post your project. I have been a little surprised that nobody else has added a construction project to this thread. I felt like there was a significant lack of experience documented for building a darkroom when I started, and we can only fill in that void if we get it into a place people can look it up. My two cents.

Hmmmmmaybe...only if I don't have to post my bigger bonehead mistakes

Murray

Well, I've photographed my darkroom all the way from a pile of logs etc in a barn to a fully armed and operational photographers' den, so as soon as I can get some pics scanned in I'll try and post something (and send some to UK B&W too...). It's still ongoing but darkrooms are never finished are they?

Black Dog, I look forward to hearing about the project. Murray, just remember if you don't post the bonehead mistakes everybody else gets to repeat them...