For my third and best darkroom I insisted on no ventilation but air conditioning instead. The climate here in Noosa, Australia is sub-tropical and the darkroom can be too hot to work in for half the year. An extractor fan would pull expensive conditioned air out faster than the 2.5kw air-con can temper the fresh stuff coming in. Net result is electricity consumed but temperature control lost.
I've no direct experience of this but the cold climate answer to a comfortable darkroom is a reverse cycle air conditioner in heating mode. This is the most energy efficient way to heat a room. Again an air extraction system can defeat the heater and the room goes cold.
What about the fumes? By far the worst smell in my B&W darkroom was acetic acid stop bath so I've eliminated it; won't have it in the place. I use Fotospeed SB50 Odorless stop bath but there are other brands. That's one problem solved.
What about fixer? Acid fixer tends to give off sulfur dioxide, phew. Alkaline fixer tends to give off ammonia, phew. I use Fotospeed FX30 Odorless fixer which is strongly buffered to neutral: no SO2, no NH3.
Another problem solved.
The developers I use, mainly Dektol and Xtol, have negligible smell and the volatile they emit is water vapour; not a problem.
When I'm not running the air-con and I want a change of air in the darkroom I just open the door and go out for a walk. Works well, costs nothing.
hi kr236rk
ventilation is good. there are only 3 solutions.
ceiling fan and exhaust outside,
window fan and exhaust outside
door fan and exhaust inside
window fan seems like an easy option.
here is my setup
Are the light trap boxes necessary with the black tubing having two 90° bends anyway? Especially if you only deal with paper and can do film stuff without ventilation?
Looks very neat. Do you not get a lot of noise in those narrow pipes? My pipes are the full 10cm and direct through the wall (no bends). Light trapping is done by covers over the fans, attached by magnets. I realise this won’t help you, @kr236rk, since you can’t bore holes in the wall, but I’ll post some pics here in case it helps someone else.
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To take care of condensation/moisture, a dehumidifier can work. I placed a little one in a small room and works great. It only cost me like $30 bucks on amazon.
To take care of condensation/moisture, a dehumidifier can work. I placed a little one in a small room and works great. It only cost me like $30 bucks on amazon.
Hi,
Hey, there are new filmstocks!
I still have a darkroom-blind bathroom, but no ventilation.
So I just have to put in some DIY ventilation fans, to get my darkroom up & running again
- to take advantage of the new filmstocks!
Who would have thought that 'wet' processing was on the come-back?
Any ideas for ventilation would be very welcome - thank you!
KR
please see the attached article to find my effort to make ventilation airtight!
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