Distilled Water.

gainer · May 7, 2006

firecracker said:
I'm assuming if the water is provided as drinkable water whether it's straight out of your tap or not, it's okay for photographic materials for the most part.

Maybe not. :confused:

It is for the most part. Many commercial developers contain chelating agents to keep calcium and magnesium water hardness from clouding up solutions and/or precipitating on your film or prints. If you don't see any of this, don't worry.
Hard water is supposed to be better for your health, the incidence of heart attacks being lower where water has calcium-magnesium hardness. My well water should keep me alive another 100 years if that is true. A traveling salesman once tried to sell me a water softener. He said my well was "Very polluted" with Ca and Mg. I went and got my bottle of Ca & Mg supplements and said "You mean if I drink enough of my water I wont have to take these?"

jim appleyard · May 7, 2006

The "distilled" water I buy says "steam distilled" on the label. I assume this is true and is not simply de-ionised. I think it's about $1.09/gallon.

I had an old girlfriend who used to rinse and clean her contact lenses in distilled water. I believe this is a must-do for contact wearers and these folks may just be a major user of distilled water. Speaking of ironing, her father insisted that her mother iron his pj's!

Papa Tango · May 7, 2006

America, home of cheap distilled water

Looks like here in the USA, distilled water is cheap. Looks like in Britain and other places it costs more than milk. With this in mind, maybe y'all need a distilled water cow!!!

I noted on ebay that good quality, small volume (a few gallons at a time) water distillers are running under $200. Would not take long at the prices quoted here to recoup the expense... Do a search under "distiller"

Dave Miller · May 8, 2006

Pragmatist said:
Looks like here in the USA, distilled water is cheap. Looks like in Britain and other places it costs more than milk. With this in mind, maybe y'all need a distilled water cow!!!

I noted on ebay that good quality, small volume (a few gallons at a time) water distillers are running under $200. Would not take long at the prices quoted here to recoup the expense... Do a search under "distiller"

You are quite right Patrick, even plain bottled water costs more here than milk. Maybe we should look for a milk/developer formular, and investigate milk rinses for our films.

markbb · May 8, 2006

A minor point, but don't forget, when comparing prices, that a US gallon is 3.76 litres, whereas a UK gallon is 4.55 litres.

I use the distilled water from Halfords (a UK Car accessory chain) to mix up chemicals and as a final rinse for both E6 and B&W processing, using the normal tap water for rinses etc. As we have quite hard water in South London I find I don't get streaky negatives and less likely to get spots from tiny bits of crap that seem to appear in tap water when you least expect it.

Mick Fagan · May 8, 2006

Our local supermarkets all carry distilled water, auto outlets, optical shops and iron suppliers, to name a few.

My one litre bottle in the garage cost $0.75 on special when I bought it at Christmas time. You can easily get 1, 5, 10, 25 litre bottles of distilled water around here and if you really wish to get it cheaply, it is available in 50 litre clear plastic drums at about $0.3897 a litre, there is a catch though, minimum purchase is 20 x 50 litre drums.

PROPERTIES OF DISTILLED WATER

Distilled water is literally water that has been boiled, evaporated and condensed - leaving all chemicals, toxins and waste behind and creating pure, clean water. Distillation will remove bacteria, viruses, cysts, heavy metals, radionuclides, organics, inorganics, and particulates.

Distillation is literally the method seen in nature, whereby: the sun heats the
water on the earth's surface, the water is turned into a vapour (evaporation) and
rises, leaving contaminants behind, to form clouds. As the upper atmosphere
drops in temperature the vapours cool and convert back to water to form water droplets. Then once the droplets fall as rain (precipitation) the cycle starts over
again.

This is exactly the same process in a water distiller - the tap water is heated to boiling point so the impurities are separated from the water, and the water then becomes steam. This is then condensed back into pure liquid form.
The impurities remain as residue and are removed leaving 100% pure, pH
balanced water.

I knocked this bit off the website of one of the local distilled water sites.

Mick.

Keith Tapscott. · May 8, 2006

Dave Miller said:
You are quite right Patrick, even plain bottled water costs more here than milk. Maybe we should look for a milk/developer formular, and investigate milk rinses for our films.

I`ve heard of `creamy`tonality Dave, but isn`t this going a bit too far?

Keith Tapscott. · May 8, 2006

Mick Fagan said:
Our local supermarkets all carry distilled water, auto outlets, optical shops and iron suppliers, to name a few.

My one litre bottle in the garage cost $0.75 on special when I bought it at Christmas time. You can easily get 1, 5, 10, 25 litre bottles of distilled water around here and if you really wish to get it cheaply, it is available in 50 litre clear plastic drums at about $0.3897 a litre, there is a catch though, minimum purchase is 20 x 50 litre drums.

PROPERTIES OF DISTILLED WATER

Distilled water is literally water that has been boiled, evaporated and condensed - leaving all chemicals, toxins and waste behind and creating pure, clean water. Distillation will remove bacteria, viruses, cysts, heavy metals, radionuclides, organics, inorganics, and particulates.

Distillation is literally the method seen in nature, whereby: the sun heats the
water on the earth's surface, the water is turned into a vapour (evaporation) and
rises, leaving contaminants behind, to form clouds. As the upper atmosphere
drops in temperature the vapours cool and convert back to water to form water droplets. Then once the droplets fall as rain (precipitation) the cycle starts over
again.

This is exactly the same process in a water distiller - the tap water is heated to boiling point so the impurities are separated from the water, and the water then becomes steam. This is then condensed back into pure liquid form.
The impurities remain as residue and are removed leaving 100% pure, pH
balanced water.

I knocked this bit off the website of one of the local distilled water sites.

Mick.

I guess I`ll just stick with filtered and boiled tap water. A bit of a pain trying to find distilled water in convenient sizes over here at a reasonable price. (sigh!) :rolleyes:

Keith Tapscott. · May 8, 2006

Thanks to all who replied.
Cheers.

Photo Engineer · May 8, 2006

Mick Fagan said:
PROPERTIES OF DISTILLED WATER

Distilled water is literally water that has been boiled, evaporated and condensed - leaving all chemicals, toxins and waste behind and creating pure, clean water. Distillation will remove bacteria, viruses, cysts, heavy metals, radionuclides, organics, inorganics, and particulates.

Distillation is literally the method seen in nature, whereby: the sun heats the
water on the earth's surface, the water is turned into a vapour (evaporation) and
rises, leaving contaminants behind, to form clouds. As the upper atmosphere
drops in temperature the vapours cool and convert back to water to form water droplets. Then once the droplets fall as rain (precipitation) the cycle starts over
again.

Mick.

Guys;

Unfortunately, this is only true if the water is distilled in an inert atmosphere and using quartz glass equipment.

Most distilled water contains atmostpheric contaminants, volatile organics present from the source water including perhaps some chlorine residues, and metals from the distillation equipent. Many places use galvanized iron leading to iron and zinc contamination.

This is why deionized water or distilled deionized is often better.

Even so, distilled water is better than tap water for making emulsions, but I see no difference whatsoever using distilled water for processing!

So, I say again, why use it if you see no difference. If you do, then just use it for the final photo flo rinse!

It will save you a lot of money.

PE

Distilled Water.

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