Looking for cheap way to wash prints without ruining septic tank

RLangham · Mar 15, 2020

So I'm just setting up my first darkroom. I still have to replace the pinion gears on my 23c II, as well as buy a bulb for it, a safelight, and all the consumables (paper and solutions), as well as light-proof my downstairs room. Now, I understand that an ideal dark-room would have a sink, but there are only two sinks in my house and neither of those rooms are candidates for even temporary darkroom operations.

Additionally, I'm on a septic tank-and-field far outside the city, so I am very wary of putting even residual chemicals down my drain--I am mortally terrified of my septic tank backing up on me. (Shudders.) When I develop film in a daylight tank, I've always kept a bucket next to the sink and drained the wash stage into the bucket, then taken that bucket out in a forest far from any creek and dumped it. Take issue with this if you will, but it's my only feasible option. Used chemicals go back in the bottle and I take them to a film lab for disposal.

My question is, can I wash my prints outside in like a tray or something, with a hose? Eventually I want to build an outdoor cascade washer that would sit on my deck, hose-fed, draining into a bucket. But in the meantime, what method of washing should I use?

The first box of paper that I'm going to use is a box of recently-expired 5x7 Kodak Polycontrast RC that my lab gave me for free. I understand that that's one of the ones that doesn't get washed for very long?

Alan9940 · Mar 15, 2020

Using RC paper is certainly your fastest and easiest substrate to wash properly. You don't necessarily have to use a wash aid, but, if you do, you can follow this procedure and even obtain archival (as much as RC paper is archival) wash standards:

1. Initial wash for 1 minute
2. Hypo Clear for 3 minutes
3. Final wash for 3 minutes

And, washing can simply be dumping fresh water over the print in a tray multiple times. I would strongly recommend a "better" washing method, if you decide to use FB paper.

removed account4 · Mar 15, 2020

you don't need running water for a final wash, just let the prints sit in fresh water and leech the fixer out there are threads here on this site ( wish I could find them ! ) regarding passive washing like this. then you save your wash waters in a 5gallon bucket and bring it to either a mini lab you have agreed to take your photochemistry, or your local household waste day at your public works department...

canuhead · Mar 15, 2020

jnantz said:
then you save your wash waters in a 5gallon bucket and bring it to either a mini lab you have agreed to take your photochemistry, or your local household waste day at your public works department...

irrc, there's nothing in wash water that can be recovered. There should be no silver there, just excess fixer. afaik...

RLangham · Mar 15, 2020

canuhead said:
irrc, there's nothing in wash water that can be recovered. There should be no silver there, just excess fixer. afaik...

I'm not an expert but I would imagine you're correct: A very small amount of fixer with an even smaller amount of dissolved silver. Thiosulfate isn't very efficient at dissolving silver halide, or so I am told.

koraks · Mar 15, 2020

RLangham said:
I'm not an expert but I would imagine you're correct: A very small amount of fixer with an even smaller amount of dissolved silver. Thiosulfate isn't very efficient at dissolving silver halide, or so I am told.

Consequently, your septic tank will survive some wash water as long as it's not more than, say, the amount of a few showers a day.

RLangham · Mar 15, 2020

koraks said:
Consequently, your septic tank will survive some wash water as long as it's not more than, say, the amount of a few showers a day.

Do you have experience with this? I want to be as sure as possible. Easier to be too prudent than to clean a backed-up toilet...

removed account4 · Mar 15, 2020

canuhead said:
irrc, there's nothing in wash water that can be recovered. There should be no silver there, just excess fixer. afaik...

maybe ? I don't know, all I know is the folks that monitor darkrooms around here told me no wash water down the drain because of silver/spent fixer carry over or something like that.. I just put it all through the trickle tank whether it needs to go through it, or not...

last thing you want to do is flood your septic system it will push undigested effluent out into your galley tanks / leech field.
you might want to talk to the people who pump your tank to get advised from them how much water your tank &c can deal with.

YMMV

pentaxuser · Mar 15, 2020

If you let the fixer drip off the surface of the print before placing it into the wash then I'd have thought that the amount of fixer in the wash water was a small enough percentage to either pour into a septic tank or at least a 50 gallon waste water container which you can then use wash a car, patio slabs, water the garden etc

pentaxuser

GRHazelton · Mar 15, 2020

For several years during my teens my Father and I had an active darkroom using fiber papers - that's what there was! We processed to the archival standards of the day, and our house was on a septic tank system. No problems. At one time Kodak, AKA the Great Yellow Father, had a series of publications dealing with best darkroom practices, I'd imagine that they had one dealing with septic tanks.

RLangham · Mar 15, 2020

jnantz said:
maybe ? I don't know, all I know is the folks that monitor darkrooms around here told me no wash water down the drain because of silver/spent fixer carry over or something like that.. I just put it all through the trickle tank whether it needs to go through it, or not...

Where does your trickle tank empty to?

glbeas · Mar 15, 2020

If you are worried about the silver getting into the septic system you could construct an ion exchange tank with steel wool in it. The resulting sulfates are actually used for fertilizer so you can water your lawn with it.

Vaughn · Mar 15, 2020

The worry about silver is that is is anti-bactorial and might slow down or kill beneficial organisms in your septic system. However, silver will combine with sulfur to make silver sulfide...as in sepia toning. Sepia toning is archival because silver sulfide is just about geologically stable...it does not react with anything and will not harm your septic system.

RLangham · Mar 15, 2020

Vaughn said:
The worry about silver is that is is anti-bactorial and might slow down or kill beneficial organisms in your septic system. However, silver will combine with sulfur to make silver sulfide...as in sepia toning. Sepia toning is archival because silver sulfide is just about geologically stable...it does not react with anything and will not harm your septic system.

Now that's something. I am interested in sepia as an artistic effect... if I do sepia toning, though, it still seems like fixer will get in my tank and mess with that biome.

mgb74 · Mar 15, 2020

You can damage your septic's operation by killing the bacteria essential to it's operation with too much bacteria killing chemicals (silver, but also bleach and toilet bowl cleaner) and by putting so much water through that those essential bacteria are washed out of the tank. There are other chemicals that you don't necessarily want going into the ground water but they won't harm your septic.

I think you're being far, far too cautious with your wash water unless you're processing commercial quantities of film and paper. Capture your chemicals (especially used fixer) as you described and wash away as so many of us on septic systems do.

Pieter12 · Mar 15, 2020

I have no running water in my garage darkroom. I let my prints soak in a tray of plain water until I have enough for the archival washer. I put them in a tray of hypo rinse for about 5 to ten minutes, then wash the prints in an archival washer, letting it drain into the ground near the garage. I figure the amount of fix in the water runoff is minimal.

AgX · Mar 15, 2020

pentaxuser said:
If you let the fixer drip off the surface of the print before placing it into the wash ...

Or wipe ot with a squegee, or pull it through two rollers.

BradS · Mar 15, 2020

I didn’t read all this but, I wonder if the op has ever lived at a place with septic tank and drain field. The tank needs to be pumped out once in a while. It’s just part of the joys of living in the boonies.

Vaughn · Mar 15, 2020

RLangham said:
Now that's something. I am interested in sepia as an artistic effect... if I do sepia toning, though, it still seems like fixer will get in my tank and mess with that biome.

It is not the fixer that will present any problems -- just the silver it carries. But again, the amount of silver you will be sending to your septic tank is minimal, and there will be plenty of sulfur to react with it to make nice, stable, sepia-toned shit. What you don't want to do is something like taking 20 gallons of exhausted fixer and dumping it into a septic system at one time.

PS -- In sepia toning, the silver stays right where it is at on the paper. You don't have to fix after sepia toning, tho the emulsion can be a little soft until it has a chance to dry and age a day or two..

removed account4 · Mar 15, 2020

RLangham said:
Where does your trickle tank empty to?

I recapture and put it in a 15gallondrum and when its time I have it hauled away. my local does not like anything
going down the drain ( we are now on sewer we used to be on NEW septic system ( 10,000 (3 ) galley tanks ) but we are close to
wet lands and sandy soil so. .... there are test kits to see how low ( or high ) your silver content is. you can never get it to 0 but you can
get it below 1. steel wool / media buckets can do a great job in trading off iron for silver.. and you can do this with 1 shot fixer or stuff that has
50+ parts / million ...
good luck !
John

RLangham · Mar 15, 2020

Vaughn said:
It is not the fixer that will present any problems -- just the silver it carries. But again, the amount of silver you will be sending to your septic tank is minimal, and there will be plenty of sulfur to react with it to make nice, stable, sepia-toned shit. What you don't want to do is something like taking 20 gallons of exhausted fixer and dumping it into a septic system at one time.

PS -- In sepia toning, the silver stays right where it is at on the paper. You don't have to fix after sepia toning, tho the emulsion can be a little soft until it has a chance to dry and age a day or two..

Oh, that sounds fantastic. What chems do you recommend for doing sepia?

RLangham · Mar 15, 2020

BradS said:
I didn’t read all this but, I wonder if the op has ever lived at a place with septic tank and drain field. The tank needs to be pumped out once in a while. It’s just part of the joys of living in the boonies.

I do now. It gets pumped. Why?

BradS · Mar 15, 2020

RLangham said:
I do now. It gets pumped. Why?

ah...routine maintenance? I’m not really an expert on this but I’m sure there is at least one small business in your area that does it and nothing else. That is, the business exists to pump septic tanks. I’m sure they can explain it.

RLangham · Mar 15, 2020

BradS said:
ah...routine maintenance? I’m not really an expert on this but I’m sure there is at least one small business in your area that does it and nothing else. That is, the business exists to pump septic tanks. I’m sure they can explain it.

No, I meant why were you asking if I was on a septic tank with a field? I know why they pump it.

MattKing · Mar 15, 2020

There are two things you can do to damage a septic tank system - put stuff into it that will impair bacterial action, and run too much water through it.
One of the things that can impair bacterial action is silver. One of the things that darkroom work involves is dealing with silver.
But guess what, good darkroom practice results in silver either staying in the paper, or ending up in the fixer.
As long as you don't have huge volumes - commercial lab type volumes - prudent darkroom practice will mean that very little fixer will get into your wash water, which means very little silver will get into your wash water.
I trust that you understand that you should not dump silver laden, heavily used fixer into your septic system.
As for the other problem - too much water flushing through the septic system - it is important to understand that the problem is cumulative.
If you already are straining the capacity of your system with lots of showers, laundry, dishwasher use et al, there is a chance that adding a lot of darkroom wash water will cause problems.
There are solutions though. Many people wash using unnecessarily large volumes of running water. A very slow flow - enough to change the water once every five minutes - is excellent for washing fibre prints. RC prints only need to wash for a couple of minutes anyways, but you can still do so with quite low volumes of water

Vaughn · Mar 15, 2020

RLangham said:
Oh, that sounds fantastic. What chems do you recommend for doing sepia?

I always used the Kodak Sepia Toner kits -- two parts. The bleach is Potassium ferricyanide with Potassium bromide to control the bleach, I believe. One bleaches the print as desired. The second bath is sodium sulfide. Any silver bleached in the first bath gets changed into silver sulfide in the second bath. An archival toning process. Can be combined with selenium toning for color changes (Sepia first). I do not have any formulas laying around.

Looking for cheap way to wash prints without ruining septic tank

RLangham

Alan9940

removed account4

canuhead

RLangham

koraks

Moderator

RLangham

removed account4

pentaxuser

GRHazelton

RLangham

glbeas

Vaughn

RLangham

mgb74

Pieter12

AgX

BradS

Vaughn

removed account4

RLangham

RLangham

BradS

RLangham

MattKing

Moderator

Vaughn

Looking for cheap way to wash prints without ruining septic tank

Moderator

Moderator

Privacy & Transparency

Privacy & Transparency