Water availability in France for alt process

ole-squint · Jun 3, 2024

Hello. Any alt printers in France having problems with price/availability of water? I make salt prints/VDBs/kallitypes and am concerned about sufficient water without being charged an exorbitant rate when I move there.

thanks,
ole squint

Dali · Jun 3, 2024

Is it a joke? Where are you currently living?

fgorga · Jun 3, 2024

I am not sure what you think that the issue might be.

My main alt process is salted paper. I also occasionally print Pt/Pd, cyanotype and cuprotype.

I use distilled water to make up any stock solutions used for sensitizing paper. All the other solutions (for processing/washing) are made using tap water either from a municipal water system or from a private well depending on location.

The only time I have had a problem with tap water was one particularly dry summer when the water from the well at our house became more alkaline than usual. This caused problems with cyanotypes fading as they were washed. Prussian Blue is susceptible to alkaline hydrolysis. Adding a small amount of vinegar to my wash water solved the problem. I don't think that I was printing with other processes at that time so I can't say if this would have caused trouble with them.

koraks · Jun 4, 2024

ole-squint said:
being charged an exorbitant rate

Prices of drinking/tap water apparently vary from roughly € 3 to roughly € 6 per m3 (1000l). Half of this you pay for supply, the other half for wastewater treatment. Like in many countries, both activities are administered in tandem. If you can manage the purchase of silver nitrate, I think you'll manage the water as well.

Btw, French people also need to bathe, make coffee etc. So like in virtually every country on the planet, access to affordable drinking water is pretty high at the top of the list of priorities.

pentaxuser · Jun 4, 2024

Maybe we need to ask the OP how much water he thinks he has to use per print process? If it is the cost of water involved in the process that concerns him then it suggests he may be using a lot more than maybe he needs to

So here goes: ole-squint, can I ask you where you have moved from and how much water you expect to use and what is the cost of water in your area of France that you plan to move to ?

Thanks

pentaxuser

koraks · Jun 4, 2024

pentaxuser said:
Maybe we need to ask the OP how much water he thinks he has to use per print process?

If he uses 100 liters per print, it'd boil down to €0.30 to €0.60 per print. That's a LOT of money to waste on water and I don't really see how you'd manage to dump THAT much water down the drain for a single print to begin with, but it'll be in the ballpark of the same amount you spend on silver, maybe a little gold chloride for toning (actually that would bump you way beyond this figure), etc.

I just received our water bill and we're by no means economic with water, and there's of course my darkroom that's used fairly frequently. Our total water use was 93m3 (93,000 liters, ca. 25,000 gallons) - this includes all my printing for the year, not to mention watering the backyard on hot days, occasionally washing the car - and the main consumers: showering & flushing toilets. We're still below the national average per capita with this. I'm saying this because I have a hard time seeing how you're going to run into financial trouble due to water use in a domestic darkroom printing operation. I wonder if it's even possible in the first place.

Orders of magnitude and all that.

pentaxuser · Jun 4, 2024

koraks said:
We're still below the national average per capita with this. I'm saying this because I have a hard time seeing how you're going to run into financial trouble due to water use in a domestic darkroom printing operation. I wonder if it's even possible in the first place.

Orders of magnitude and all that.

Yes this may be the case which why I have given the OP the chance to gíve us more details of why he thinks or appears to think that the amount of water used will be significant

We don't know his fears or possible assumptions he may be making. If he tells us we can either help him dismiss his fears or explain that he must just accept the cost

If he has come from an area where water was virtually free or where the cost was hidden in some other cost then suddenly paying for water per se may have come as a shock to which he has reacted. A few years ago water was not metered in the U.K. but was combined with what we called household rates , now called council taxes, so you paid the same if you used 1 gallon or a million gallons of water

When we became metered for water it became clearer to each of us that water did cost money but it was a shock that we had to get over.

pentaxuser

ole-squint · Jun 4, 2024

Dali said:
Is it a joke? Where are you currently living?

Utilities, including water, can be very expensive in Europe, especially electricity.

ole-squint · Jun 4, 2024

koraks said:
Prices of drinking/tap water apparently vary from roughly € 3 to roughly € 6 per m3 (1000l). Half of this you pay for supply, the other half for wastewater treatment. Like in many countries, both activities are administered in tandem. If you can manage the purchase of silver nitrate, I think you'll manage the water as well.

Btw, French people also need to bathe, make coffee etc. So like in virtually every country on the planet, access to affordable drinking water is pretty high at the top of the list of priorities.

I received a dm from a printer in France who directed me to a website that broke down the cost per m3 for each commune. 4.50 euro is about average, so that'll be doable. As for those in the US, I lived in Austin, TX where the utilities, including water, are controlled by the city. It wasn't unusual to have a water bill of $150/month and an electricity bill of $400+/month. The city tacks on charges to raise revenue. We were in Europe for 4 months and still had a water bill of $80/month for the period we were gone.

MTGseattle · Jun 4, 2024

Yowza! I guess i can balance some of my whining regarding expensive things in the Seattle, WA area against my fairly inexpensive utilities. We had an odd-ball 2 winters where I hadn't finished my hvac system, and we were supplementing wood stove heat with those silly oil-filled electric radiators. I think our highest electric bill (December 2013) was still under $400
I have;
water/sewer/garbage (City)
Natural gas (utility provider)
electric (City)

We did get a $7500 water bill a couple of years ago, but that's a whole other story.

Dali · Jun 4, 2024

ole-squint said:
Utilities, including water, can be very expensive in Europe, especially electricity.

Unless you operate at an industrial scale, this is an non-issue. And water price is disconnected from electricity (the reason for high price of electricity in France is another story and I will stop there...).

Ivo Stunga · Jun 5, 2024

Which countries are we talking in Europe?

In Latvia It's the hot water rates that one can easily feel, but cold water is a non-issue. Both metered.

Here's a data for the capital Rīga where everything is more expensive than at other corners on the country: 1.21€ of cold water m3 without VAT, 2022...

I'll ask for more precise data, for hot water too... My household uses local source, no payments to the city.

koraks · Jun 5, 2024

Ivo Stunga said:
In Latvia It's the hot water rates

In most of Europe water heating is handled domestically so there are no hot water rates. There are exceptions where hot water for heating specifically is supplied to homes, but that's generally billed by unit of energy, not by unit of volume (since the water isn't being consumed, after all).

ole-squint said:
It wasn't unusual to have a water bill of $150/month

Expect it to be about one third in France, or less.
Rates are increasing of course due to water shortages resulting from climatic conditions and increasing consumption. But the rates are currently still trailing behind the actual production problems by several years.

Ivo Stunga · Jun 5, 2024

Here we have something like this: Both cold and Hot tap is metered. You pay a rate for water consumed according to the cold water meter + you pay a rate for hot water consumed (defined as Water Heating) according to your meter.

loccdor · Jun 6, 2024

My water bill in the USA is very low (about $15 a month with generous usage). However it was a $200 one time fee to set up the account when I bought my house, which was a bit ridiculous.

Ivo Stunga said:
Here we have something like this: Both cold and Hot tap is metered. You pay a rate for water consumed according to the cold water meter + you pay a rate for hot water consumed (defined as Water Heating) according to your meter.

Hmm. That's odd. I would think that would be covered through the cost of your gas/electric.

Ivo Stunga · Jun 6, 2024

Naah, it's a separate thing in apartment buildings, combining volume with a rate for heating of that volume. Private homes heat their own water with electricity, gas, wood pellets or hardwood.

lecarp · Jun 6, 2024

ole-squint said:
I received a dm from a printer in France who directed me to a website that broke down the cost per m3 for each commune. 4.50 euro is about average, so that'll be doable. As for those in the US, I lived in Austin, TX where the utilities, including water, are controlled by the city. It wasn't unusual to have a water bill of $150/month and an electricity bill of $400+/month. The city tacks on charges to raise revenue. We were in Europe for 4 months and still had a water bill of $80/month for the period we were gone.

Texans always say that everything is bigger in Texas!

Water availability in France for alt process

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