New Darkroom Design suggestions request

[CCLA]

Just remember that almost anything can be over-designed into obsolescence. I remember once an engineer in our firm designed a potable water booster station with so many backups to the backups, that it just didn't work. I ripped out all that garbage in a redesign it with a simple, single backup. If you need to expand your piping in the future, that's what hack saws are for. You're looking to build a roughly 9x11.5 darkroom. There is a very limited amount of "stuff" you can cram into that space. I also would not be without my California Customs drying cabinet seen in my post #28, both for film and paper, but you can run wire lines over your sink if that's what you want to do.

Luis,

you are absolutely right! Also another consideration is money. At some point I would run out of it!!

claudio

 

[Ken Nadvornick]

If you need to expand your piping in the future, that's what hack saws are for.

It's a risk/reward calculation.

In this particular case, the risk (of installing unions, then never needing them) is very small in terms of the added effort and expense during the construction phase. But the potential reward (of having unions installed when an inline piece of equipment needs removal for servicing, then reinstallation after servicing) may be very large if the task can then be accomplished much more quickly and easily, and without also destroying the system with hack saws...

My darkroom is full of those little risk/reward design calculations. As a result, when change has to happen (as it always will at some point) the process itself of doing the changing has always been relatively painless for me.



Ken

 

[Luis-F-S]

My tank was getting so bad (18 years old, on a 10 year warranty) that my hot line filter was clogged with rust particulates and needed to be changed every month or less, while the cold line filter was barely discolored.

I finally bit the bullet and installed a brand new non-metal fiberglass-and-resin lifetime heater tank. One with real heating elements, before the DOE outlawed that technology in favor of heat pump designs. My tank is inside the darkroom, so a heat pump would have turned the space in a de-facto human refrigerator.

Ken are these available in a 10 Gal or so size? Brands?

 

[scheimfluger_77]

View attachment 151911 Claudio, here's the sink side of my darkroom. You'll notice a long white shelf. About 20 inches above the sink. That is actually and air duct hooked up to an exhaust fan. On the bottom of that duct are vents that are positioned over the dev, stop/fixer and toner trays. Due to it's close proximity to ALL the chemical trays it's does;t allow fumes to build up in the room and you draw the fumes out right off the trays.

I'll send some jpegs of the line over the sink, if you go that route you have to make sure you screw the end brackets into a stud or have them span two studs, because when you tighten up the cable to make it level there's significant tension on it.
Also if you can go to a 96" sink instead of a 84" you might be better off.

What color do you call your darkroom? That's the nicest shade of gray I've seen.

 

[Ken Nadvornick]

Ken are these available in a 10 Gal or so size? Brands?

Maybe, but likely not for much longer. The US Department of Energy (DOE) has been phasing out traditional water heaters (the electric resistance heating element type) in favor of new technology heat pump designs. These try to heat the water by reverse refrigeration, pulling the heat out of the air inside your house. On paper that's a good thing. It's part of the larger critical reaction to global warming.*

Unfortunately, while the idea is commendable, the implementation is a bit of a head-scratcher. Consider, by placing a heat pump inside one's house, the heat being concentrated also comes from inside the house. That means the house cools down. And that means, especially in winter, one must turn up the house heater to compensate. I read that one fellow's basement dropped by 5F after installing his new heat pump water heater.

In my case, I'm one of the few nationally that heats by renewable wood (a wood pellet stove). So that means I would be, in effect, indirectly heating my water by burning wood. Just like they did in the 1800s. Except far less efficiently, since I would first be dissipating and transferring that heat through the air, only to then be using more electricity to reconcentrate it back into the tank.

Plus I've also read that it take forever to heat a tank full of water via a heat pump. So the new recommendation is to set the tank thermostat to only 90F, instead of the traditional 120F. YMMV, but for me that's a cold shower...

So all of that said, the tank I ended up purchasing was made by the commercial tank manufacturer Rheem. They also have a residential products division. It was not a heat pump design. It was the final year of (US) availability of the heating element design for the larger household tanks. I purchased the 85-gallon version of one of these lifetime guaranteed designs:

Rheem Marathon Full-Size Residential Electric Water Heaters

I see that they are still available, but now only in Canada. The tank you may be interested in looking at might be one of these smaller versions of the same lifetime design:

Rheem Marathon Point-of-Use Residential Electric Water Heaters

Note that Rheem also makes a line of gas water heaters, but I am not familiar with those as I haven't lived in a house with natural gas service in 30 years. Worth checking out, though, if you do.

Ken

* To all of the political disbelievers reading along, cool your jets. The science is there, and has been for a long time. Numbers don't lie. It doesn't really matter why it's happening, only that it is happening. And needs to be addressed and mitigated as best and as fast as we can before we're all royally screwed...

 

[Early Riser]

What color do you call your darkroom? That's the nicest shade of gray I've seen.

It's Benjamin Moore HC-165 Booth Bay Gray, I use it at 75% strength.

 

[paul ron]

It's a risk/reward calculation.

In this particular case, the risk (of installing unions, then never needing them) is very small in terms of the added effort and expense during the construction phase. But the potential reward (of having unions installed when an inline piece of equipment needs removal for servicing, then reinstallation after servicing) may be very large if the task can then be accomplished much more quickly and easily, and without also destroying the system with hack saws...

My darkroom is full of those little risk/reward design calculations. As a result, when change has to happen (as it always will at some point) the process itself of doing the changing has always been relatively painless for me.



Ken

unions and ball valves so the controller can be serviced without interupting water sercice to the home.... or at least shut offs to the darkroom.

as a home owner for 40 years i can tell you unions are a beautiful thing. my water heater has been changed 4 times... its so nice to pull it out and reinstall this way instead of cutting pipes. i can get my water heater in n out in just an hour.

 

[Luis-F-S]

unions and ball valves so the controller can be serviced without interupting water sercice to the home.... or at least shut offs to the darkroom.....as a home owner for 40 years i can tell you unions are a beautiful thing. my water heater has been changed 4 times... its so nice to pull it out and reinstall this way instead of cutting pipes. i can get my water heater in n out in just an hour.

As a design engineer for some 40 years, I'd bet the first time it was changed the plumber cut it out and then installed the unions. Every time I ask a plumber to install a union, they tell me they'd rather just cut it out. Since I have no interest in doing plumbing work, I frankly don't care. It will be their problem in the future and I won't be the one tackling it.

 

[paul ron]

hahahahahahaha thats why they get the big bucks.

they dont like putting them in so you cant fix a simple problem by yourself.

 

[CCLA]

I have made some progress in designing the darkroom in Sketchup. Here are the results:

 

[CCLA]

Next I will do the plumbing and the electrical design.

claudio

 

[Ken Nadvornick]

Nice... One additional minor suggestion.

You might consider rounding off those exposed hard corners on the countertops. I gave each of mine a very generous radius of curvature (Maybe large coffee can sized?). That way you will suffer no inadvertently impaled arms and legs when the room is totally dark. Mine also act as nice tactile "waypoints" to physically and mentally establish my position in the room when all of the lights are turned off.

Ken

 

[Luis-F-S]

Suggest you get off the computer and start building. Otherwise you'll just have a virtual darkroom.......

 

[Sirius Glass]

... and virtual light leaks, virtual chemical spills, virtual dust.

 

[paul ron]

and lots of virtual friends

chalk line the floor?

 

[mbmarks]

Claudio,

Just saw this thread. I have a darkroom that measures approximately 15X9. I use a Jobo, have space for two enlargers, a 10 foot sink, drying racks, proper ventilation, etc. I see that you live in Central NJ. I live not far away in Doylestown, PA, and would be happy to show you my set up. I think it would answer a lot of questions for you and help to get things moving.

Best regards,

Michael

www.michaelmarksphoto.com

 

[CCLA]

Michael,

That is a very generous offer and I think I will take you up on it.

I will PM you.

claudio

 

[CCLA]

Hello everybody,


it has been a while since I posted but I have been really busy the last few weeks. I had promised my wife to paint the inside of the house before tackling the darkroom. Man what a pain in the arse that job turned out to be. The ceiling are killers and having the walls a different color doubles the amount of work. I hate all the taping that needs to be done ahead of the actual painting!!

Well I finished painting the house two weekends ago and I spent the last weekend in preparing for the new darkroom. I had to clear the are which contained my servers and networking equipment and move all of the Ethernet cabling to the new location. I also ran several dedicated power lines and purchased a sump pump for the evacuation of the drain water. This coming weekend I will start with the framing.

In the meanwhile I acquired more equipment from a very nice lady in Almonte, Canada.


Here are a couple of pictures of the basement and of some of the equipment:

 

[mehguy]

Good luck, it looks like it'll be a very nice darkroom!

 

[CCLA]

Ok,

here is two weekends (around other family activities) of work in the basement. Here is the space cleaned out:

And here is the space after some framing:

It is hard work and it goes slowly since it is the first time I am trying to build a room, but it keeps me out of trouble. I am expecting to be done with the framing and door installation by the end of this week. After that I think I will build the sink and plumbing.

claudio

 

[CCLA]

All right the electrical work is done (well almost, I still have to staple a few cables). Here are a few pictures:

There are three circuits in the room, one for the dry side, one for the wet side, and one for the ceiling outlets, the preview light, the fan, and the drying cabinet. In this picture you can see the main switches that control power to all the circuits. I can turn off the power to each circuit independently. Below each outlet there is the GFCI protected outlet. Each other outlet is on the load side of the GFCI outlet.
On each end there is also an ethernet connection.

Below is the dry side.

On the lower row there is a power outlet and a dummy outlet. The dummy outlet feeds the upper outlet and then goes on to another outlet in the ceiling.

Below are two picture of the wet side.

In the first image we have low power outlets and dummy outlets that feed upper and ceiling outlets like on the dry side. In the second image I only have high power outlets (this is where the sink will go). In the second image you can also see the preview light and its dimmer. The second dimmer will be used for the fan.

The last picture shows the ceiling light outlets and all of the dummy outlets connected to the dry and wet side.

Sorry for the picture quality. By the time I was done it was already getting dark and my phone camera is not too good.

claudio

 

[CCLA]

More work has been done yesterday night and today. First I added another dimmer by the door to dim the ceiling lights. Also the preview light dimmer was moved next to the dimmer light. I was afraid that having the two dimmers so close to each other would be trouble.

Then I switched gears and started working on the sink. The first picture shows the sink bottom. After the picture was taken I added two lengthwise reinforcements between the edge ones.

In the second picture I put a tray in the sink to make sure my biggest trays would fit.

In the last picture you see the finished sink.

After the picture was taken, I puttied all the screw holes. Tomorrow I am planning to drill the hole for drain, sand the putty, and if the weather permits I will put two layers of fiberglass followed by gel coat.

claudio

 

[Luis-F-S]

Ok, I think you've got enough electrical outlets, switches! Is the fur down for A/C in, or for exhaust out over the sink? L

 

[CCLA]

Luis,

Actually it is to go around existing ac ducts but it will also be over the sink, so it will contain the exhaust ducts.

claudio

 

[CCLA]

Ok more progress. Here are a few picture of the sink being built. First the picture of the sink with the first coat of fiberglass:

The second image is the picture of the last layer of fiberglass ready for the epoxy:

And finally the finished sink with the gel coat all done (I still have to gel coat the bottom of the sink):

In addition I build a water panel that will hang on the wall above the sink:

Now I have to get started building the base for the sink. Once that is done I will put in the plumbing and then I can start dry walling the room.

claudio