Lime in the water . . is this a problem?

[Ozark Wolverine]

Hello everyone. Recently moved to The Ozarks region of Missouri.

The water here has quite a bit of lime in it. Enough so that we need to "De-Lime" the screens every few months in the faucets and it leaves a film on a pot with boiling water and leaves spots on the dishes and on glass.

Just getting my Darkroom set up. The shop has an apartment attached to it which I am using as my studio. Converting the largish bathroom to dual use as a darkroom. I do mostly B&W but have been known to do some c-41 and E6.

What are your experiences and or solutions for this potential problem?

 

[osella]

I have some pretty hard water from my well(and some iron), and have similar issues with buildup on faucets. I don’t find there are any issues with chemistry that I use one shot, or for short term use.

I use distilled water for anything that I intend to reuse like Fixer or HCA. This may not be necessary, but distilled water is relatively cheap insurance from failure. I’m not taking an chances with my 8x10 and 11x14 negatives.

I can not use the tap water for the final rinse, even with wash aid I get horrible mineral spots. I use a distilled water rinse with wash aid as the final step and end up with spot free negatives.

 

[Alan Johnson]

https://dnrservices.mo.gov/ccr/MO5010619.pdf
Your water has an alkalinity of 158-268 mg/L, not unusual. Commercial developing solutions generally contain enough of the relevant [sequestering] agents to cope with the amounts of calcium, magnesium to prevent any precipitation [calcium sulfite]. Distilled water [+photoflo] for the final rinse.

 

[Arthurwg]

Lots of lime from my well here in northern New Mexico. After more than a decade I have not seen any problems with my prints.

 

[Marcelo Paniagua]

I have some pretty hard water from my well(and some iron), and have similar issues with buildup on faucets. I don’t find there are any issues with chemistry that I use one shot, or for short term use.

I use distilled water for anything that I intend to reuse like Fixer or HCA. This may not be necessary, but distilled water is relatively cheap insurance from failure. I’m not taking an chances with my 8x10 and 11x14 negatives.

I can not use the tap water for the final rinse, even with wash aid I get horrible mineral spots. I use a distilled water rinse with wash aid as the final step and end up with spot free negatives.

My case exactly


I live on a city where the water has lime on it. If I wash with the tapwater, there is always marks left on the dried film. I need to either wash with distilled or bottle water (or photoflo). Aside from that no additional problems.

Marcelo

 

[Marcelo Paniagua]

Also on an additional note, I sometimes use tap water to prepare my developer. I've not notice any difference when using distilled water or bottle water at all. I commonly use bottle water lately since my wife always have a big package of those from Costco on the house so they are handy.

 

[MattKing]

Every time I see this thread title I have the almost overwhelming desire to be mischievous and observe that....


lime in the water provides a good defense against scurvy.

On the actual question you are asking, be cautious about trying to deal with the situation by using some sort of water softener. Some of those add more complexity to the issue of photo chemicals than they solve.
You definitely want to use an alternative from tap water for final rinses and photoflo steps.

 

[Marcelo Paniagua]

Every time I see this thread title I have the almost overwhelming desire to be mischievous and observe that....


lime in the water provides a good defense against scurvy.

On the actual question you are asking, be cautious about trying to deal with the situation by using some sort of water softener. Some of those add more complexity to the issue of photo chemicals than they solve.
You definitely want to use an alternative from tap water for final rinses and photoflo steps.

+1 on that. Stay away from water treatments. Could be unpredictable on photography.

Marcelo

 

[grat]

I thought you put the lime in the coconut......

 

[Ozark Wolverine]

Thank you Fellas . . . pretty much what I thought. I bought 10 gallons of distilled water this AM at 1.08 per gallon. Will move forward using the distilled water for developers, fixer etc. and the final photo flo rinse

 

[Doremus Scudder]

I lived in San Antonio for a while; really hard water. Water softeners were de rigueur there and added so much extra salt to the water that the softened water left a white, hard crust on negatives. So did the unsoftened water, but it was calcium carbonate instead of salt. Prints were affected too, unless they were carefully squeegeed before drying.

The solution (pun intended) was to use distilled water together with Photo Flo for the final rinse for film. The trick is to use a fresh solution and a rather generous volume let your negatives soak a bit in this solution - 3-5 minutes - not the 30 seconds or so needed for just the surfactant effects of the wetting agent. This gives the dissolved salts/calcium carbonate/etc. time to leach out of the emulsion enough not to leave any residue on dried negatives. Prints usually did alright with a good squeegee, but sometimes I would give them a final bath in "drinking water," which was widely available from vending machines there for 25-50 cents per gallon. Don't save and re-use the distilled water/wetting-agent solution. Try to use it "one session." Re-use can result in either salts or carbonate building up in the mix and negating the effect.

Most commercial pre-packaged developers (e.g., one-package developers from Kodak or Ilford) contain sequestering agents to deal with hard water components when mixed, so you don't need to worry about using tap water with them unless problems crop up. However, if you're mixing things from scratch or using kits from suppliers like Photographers' Formulary, etc., then it's almost a must to mix your developer with distilled water. I'd likely use distilled water to mix Xtol stock as well. Some stock solutions won't mix at all unless you use distilled water (think Stock Sol. B for PMK). When making a working solution from stock solutions, tap water should be fine. Note, however, that extremely hard water can affect your development time a bit. I had a 10% difference in time between using hard tap water and distilled.

Acidic stop baths can be mixed with tap water; they'll neutralize any carbonates by nature. Same with acid or neutral fixers. Alkaline fixers should be alright as well, since they are usually well-buffered, but I'd keep an eye on things. Washing in hard water is actually a bit more efficient than in soft water, but you definitely need the final rinse in distilled/wetting agent for negatives and it won't hurt prints to get a few minutes in softer water before squeegeeing and drying, especially if your water is really hard. I'd test a few and see if that were needed or not.

Best,

Doremus

 

[mshchem]

Softeners are for the plumbing and the dishwasher. I Need to use RO water purification for my darkroom chemistry. After softening there's no more Ca or Mg carbonate it's all converted to sodium carbonate. Bad news for developers etc.

 

[Donald Qualls]

The general rule I've used is to mix developer stock solutions, fixer, and stop bath with distilled, dilute with tap water, wash with tap water, but mix the PhotoFlo solution for that last rinse with distilled. If you still have mineral marks with this regimen, you can wash a 120 tank (one or two rolls on a single reel) with about one gallon of distilled or filtered water by using the Ilford method (fill, invert 5 times, optionally let stand 30 seconds, dump; fill, invert 10 times, dump, fill, invert 20 times, dump, and ready for PhotoFlo). This makes even diluting and washing with distilled cost-effective.

Another option is a small reverse osmosis deionization (RODI) filter set. One that will make 10+ gallons of better-than-distilled purity water in a day should cost around $100, and will need new filter cartridges only every several months. The water produced can cost half or less what you pay for distilled, though this method does waste something like 80-85% of the input water (the reverse osmosis membrane only passes a fraction of the input). More cost effective if you're on a well (paying only for electricity to pump your water), but still sensible even on city water if you're careful to turn the water off to the unit when the collection bucket/barrel is full.

 

[snusmumriken]

I live in a chalk area in southern England, and the water here is very hard. For film processing I filter all water through a domestic under-sink filter unit to capture any tiny specks of iron, and I add a little Calgon to my home-brew developer formula. Off the top of my head the dose is ~2g Calgon per litre - I can check that later if you want to be sure. To be honest I don't know how much it helps, but I adopted this measure in a general war against tiny white specks on my negatives, and overall I seem to have succeeded. I also use de-ionised water rather than tap water as my final rinse, to avoid drying marks on the negatives.

I don't filter or add Calgon to water for processing prints.

UPDATE - I have just checked: the recommended dose is 1 to 2 parts per thousand, so 1-2g Calgon per litre of solution.