Recirculating wash water

Water restrictions being what they are in this day and age i'm looking for anyone who has any thoughts on or may be using a recirculating system on there print or film washers. I always feel a little guilty when i have the water running for extended periods and besides that my water utilty will triple my cost if i go over my set limit.

I've thought about the dump system but it seems very time consuming and time is something that i don't have alot of.

Thanks in advance

Kevin

KEK said:

Water restrictions being what they are in this day and age i'm looking for anyone who has any thoughts on or may be using a recirculating system on there print or film washers. I always feel a little guilty when i have the water running for extended periods and besides that my water utilty will triple my cost if i go over my set limit.

I've thought about the dump system but it seems very time consuming and time is something that i don't have alot of.

Thanks in advance

Kevin

Click to expand...

Dear Kevin,

Dump or cascade are the only options, as it is a question of equilibrium between the material and the water. Film washing is easy -- use the Ilford system, discussed at nauseam here on APUG -- and RC doesn't need much washing either, but for FB you need either a cascade (prints moving upsream through, say, 3 cascades until they are washed) or an auto-dump. Of course a wash aid (2% sulphite, 0.2-0.4% EDTA) helps.

Cheers,

Roger

Dear KEK,

A good print washer does not require a high flow of water. I set mine so the water just drips out. Film requires very little water for washing. Follow the Ilford guidelines and your water bill will be fine.

Neal Wydra

Kevin -

The dump approach is the most economical approach both in terms of water usage and time.

For example - two rolls of 35mm film in a small tank. Volume = 400 ml, or about 13.5 ounces of liquid. The post-fix sequence I use is -

Soak - 400ml for 5 min with occasional agitation.
Hypoclear - 400ml for 2 minutes with continuous agitation
Soak - 400 ml for 5 min with very occasional agitation
Soak - 400 ml for 5 min with very occasional agitation
Soak - 400 ml for 5 min with very occasional agitation
Soak - 400 ml for 5 min with very occasional agitation
Soak - Photoflo in RO water for about a minute (solution is saved for reuse)
Hang to dry

That's a total of 2400ml (0.63 gal) of water used in the wash cycle, with an elapsed time of around 30 minutes. And I can be doing other things during that 30 minutes of wash time.

Similar process applies to prints (without the Photoflo, of course) although the total volume is more like 10 liters, or 2.6 gallons. Time is a bit longer - because it takes longer to squeegee prints than it does to hang a roll of negatives.

What means RO water??
Anscojohn, Mount Vernon, Virginia USA

RO water is water that has been processed through a reverse osmosis filtration system. The purity of the water with respect to particulates is equivalent to that of distilled water but it still may contain dissolved minerals.

Roger Hicks said:

Dear Kevin,

Dump or cascade are the only options, as it is a question of equilibrium between the material and the water. Film washing is easy -- use the Ilford system, discussed at nauseam here on APUG -- and RC doesn't need much washing either, but for FB you need either a cascade (prints moving upsream through, say, 3 cascades until they are washed) or an auto-dump. Of course a wash aid (2% sulphite, 0.2-0.4% EDTA) helps.

Cheers,

Roger

Click to expand...

Roger, are you sure this is entirely an equilibrium process? I'm suspicious that it starts that way and them become more like a random event of capturing a stray molecule when it is released from the paper/film, much like pulling a high vacuum on a vessel. With vacuums, there is a time in the beginning when everywhere within in the vessel has the same concentration and the gas flows like a fluid, but after a shrot while there are only a relative few particles left bouncing around within the vessel. At this point the problem changes. The pump cannot pull any harder and it becomes a waiting game. As the particles eventually bounce towards the vacuum pump, they are trapped and taken away almost one-by-one. I should think this time might happen fairly quickly washing prints/film and after this it would be fine to have a recirculating bath trapping the stray molecule followed a final clean rinse.

Loose Gravel said:

Roger, are you sure this is entirely an equilibrium process?

Click to expand...

No, not sure, but then, that's also how a dump or cascade process works: very fast at first, then much slower, hence the 5-10-20 inversions of the Ilford process. With dumps you could almost certainly go 1 min -- 5 min -- 10min. Add 20 min and you'd be well placed.

Cheers,

Roger

I don't water the grass, seldom wash the car, wash two loads or less of laundry per week. For those reasons if it takes 30 minutes to wash the fibre prints, then 30 minutes it is.

Mike

Monophoto said:

The dump approach is the most economical
approach both in terms of water usage and time.
The post-fix sequence I use is -

Soak - 400ml for 5 min with occasional agitation.
Hypoclear - 400ml for 2 minutes with continuous agitation
Soak - 400 ml for 5 min with very occasional agitation
Soak - 400 ml for 5 min with very occasional agitation
Soak - 400 ml for 5 min with very occasional agitation
Soak - 400 ml for 5 min with very occasional agitation
Soak - Photoflo in RO water for about a minute
(solution is saved for reuse) Hang to dry

That's a total of 2400ml (0.63 gal) of water used ... an elapsed
time of around 30 minutes.

Similar process applies to prints ... although the total volume
is more like 10 liters, or 2.6 gallons. Time is a bit longer -
because it takes longer to squeegee prints than it
does to hang a roll of negatives.

Click to expand...

From fix to an agitated two minute still water rinse. Then
with some agitation soak and dump; three wash cycles each
succeeding given more time. Then a one-shot Photo Flo. That
method is most water conservative. All in all 2000ml, Photo-Flo
included, and maybe fifteen minutes. Room temperature H2O
start to finish. Dan