Well water for FB washing = good idea?

[~andi]

Someone with experience in this? The municipal water is charged by used volume here, so frequent washing in running water for an hour can get expensive. I've therefore been using dump and refill method to save water.

At any rate, we have a garden well for watering the plants. Except for the electricity the pump requires, that water is free. Is is wise to use it for washing prints? I can't say anything about the water quality or if it has solid or solved particles in it which would harm the print (it looks fine). It's very clear and very cold, even in the summer. Longer washing times due to temperature are no problem, the lawn will benefit from the watering and the hint of ATS fertilization

I could have it chemically analyzed at the local waterworks. But which parameters are indicative?

So, well water for washing = good or bad idea?

Cheers,
Andi

 

[removed account4]

if you use something like perma wash / fixer remover you will cut your wash times to a fraction of
what you are currently using. and regarding your "ats fertilizer" ....
i would not put your spent fixer or silver + fixer laden wash water in your garden or lawn. in some places in the world
( not sure where in "europe" you live ) it is not legal to do that, and you might find yourself in some trouble.

 

[Nodda Duma]

Hi Andi,

Well water varies in mineral content from region to region and even with depth. My house uses well water exclusively, so it gets used for everything: drinking, washing, processing film and prints, etc. Many people are like that. I'd take it over city water any day. Less additives. I'm lucky in that I don't have hard water, but I do filter for sediment.

My only suggestion -- other then try and see -- is to filter out any sediment with a two-step filter (25um and, say, 5 or 10um). You'll earn back the relatively low filter setup cost pretty quick in watee bill savings.

 

[Neal]

Dear Andi,

Our well water has a high iron content but after a filter and water softener it washes fiber based prints very nicely. Of course a good filter/water softener combination might be expensive, but you will only need one large enough to fill your washing needs. Where I live, a water softener/filter combination that would be sufficient for a home darkroom would cost about $400 and if you printed once or twice each week another $10/month in salt.

Good luck,

Neal Wydra

 

[~andi]

Nodda, sounds good. My grandparents had a well in the basement (with a reservoir, automatic motor for the pump, pressure system, etc.) and used that water for everything too. Until it got illegal in the 60ties or so and you had to take the city water. They kept the well anyways for garden water (that's allowed) and had a switch to choose city/well, the inspector never realised it (or probably let it go through). The well water always tasted much better than city supply.

I very much appreciate the filter suggestion, especially for the sizes. I'll check if I can get those to easily put on the hose.

Jnanian, the ATS bit wasn't serious (-> ). I don't discard used fixer on my lawn. Thanks for the heads up and warning anyways. I live in Germany, almost everything is illegal here So I bring the used fixer to a special place at the city who recycle it. Sorry if my wording wasn't clear enough. Fixer-laden wash sounds like I have throughput of a 500 16x12s per day. I have maybe 10 per month - if I have the time. I'd do the final wash in archival washer with running well water only as final wash. The "5min post HCA wash" should have cleared the bulk of the chemicals already. I'd bet the animals peeing on there do more environmental harm, and they do it illegally too, those bastards

I'm not looking into an industrial, high volume, permanent solution for my wash water (sorry, it wasn't clear in the original post that I'm not doing photography professionally). Just the occasional fun in the sun on hot days instead of standing in the bathroom fill&dump every 10 minutes.

The cubic meter of water is right over 2 euros here, so any savings are welcome. You have pay for drain as well and for the area of your property which is sealed and has no trickle-into-the-soil-ability (e.g. the roof sqm of the house or parking spot, etc.). Then paper prices exploded the last couple of years, especially Ilford (and now MCC prices are almost on par). I hope Brexit isn't putting Ilford products off the affordability-scale for us mainlanders.

~andi

 

[RalphLambrecht]

Someone with experience in this? The municipal water is charged by used volume here, so frequent washing in running water for an hour can get expensive. I've therefore been using dump and refill method to save water.

At any rate, we have a garden well for watering the plants. Except for the electricity the pump requires, that water is free. Is is wise to use it for washing prints? I can't say anything about the water quality or if it has solid or solved particles in it which would harm the print (it looks fine). It's very clear and very cold, even in the summer. Longer washing times due to temperature are no problem, the lawn will benefit from the watering and the hint of ATS fertilization

I could have it chemically analyzed at the local waterworks. But which parameters are indicative?

So, well water for washing = good or bad idea?

Cheers,
Andi

cold water takes longer to wash;hard water is better for washing than soft water. do a washing test and check for residual fixer;you may well be OK

 

[~andi]

Ralph, yep it's soft water and quite cold (I guess around 8C). The temperature and sediments were my main concern. I was fearing it could be too cold, guessing around 8C. I would't mind washing for 2hrs or so in those cases, but that's the maximum I would go. I'm going to test this methodically in summer.

 

[Jim Jones]

Dump and refill is both economical and efficient, but requires more effort. When using it, the first water bath after the fixer or washing aid may have significant chemical content, but subsequent baths are pure enough for almost anyone but photographers. Certainly they are fine on the lawn and garden. Cold well water is no problem if you let it warm to room temperature before use. Whatever water you use for the final bath should be clean and nearly pure. My well water was terrible, but 5 micron filtering helped a lot.

 

[~andi]

Neal, thanks, very helpful info. Totally forgot about the iron. The well water is soft, so I guess I don't need the salt. It has a higher iron content though, judging from the color of the stone-basin around the manual pump anyways.

Jim, I'm lazy and cheap. I was looking for a way to cut down the effort a bit during summertime and just use the archival washer in running water mode with the well water while saving a couple of bucks... hehe. I'm doing the dump&fill with the tap water. Warmed up and filtered well water is definitely more hassle for me.

From the answers so far I gather it's basically ok to use well water, if filtered properly and the residual fixer test turns out fine. Nice

 

[jeffreyg]

Our house is on well water and we do have a treatment system but I installed a cartridge filter in the line to my darkroom sink. It was easy to do and it has worked very well for forty years. Every time I replace the cartridge I am amazed how much it has filtered. Our water is never really cold and this line bypasses the water heater. I use the 5 micron 9 inch filter cartridge that is especially effective to remove sediment and iron.

http://www.jeffreyglasser.com/

 

[Fraunhofer]

We are also on well water for everything in the house, but the well is 600ft deep, tested annually, has a water treatment system and filtration etc. so I am not sure that we pay less for water if you count the setup cost relative to city water. The cost is just better hidden.

 

[Luckless]

What is your property's solar gain? Building a small solar hot water heat exchanger and using a thermal mass storage tank isn't a terribly hard DIY project. (Assuming local regs don't have weird things to say about such projects.)

Personally I'm considering a dual valve and recirculation pump setup for a print washer when I get setup for that this summer. Would auto fill and drain on a timer without the need for constant supervision. (I'm also probably going to go with a bucket based system rather than a directly pumped system, but that is just a minor detail for my personal setup.)

 

[Old-N-Feeble]

I would not use my water for washing prints or film without a very good filter system including an iron remover. My water is often brownish in color and would likely stain and deposit other unwanted residues that might not clear even if the final soak was in distilled water.

 

[bsdunek]

Dear Andi,

Our well water has a high iron content but after a filter and water softener it washes fiber based prints very nicely. Of course a good filter/water softener combination might be expensive, but you will only need one large enough to fill your washing needs. Where I live, a water softener/filter combination that would be sufficient for a home darkroom would cost about $400 and if you printed once or twice each week another $10/month in salt.

Good luck,

Neal Wydra

We also have well water for everything. We have a "whole house filter" (https://www.lowes.com/pd/Whirlpool-10-in-Whole-House-Complete-Filtration-System/50412472) and a softener. The water is quite hard with calcium and magnesium carbonates and some iron. I've been using it to wash prints for 45 years and have seen no ill effects. As my darkroom is plumbed like the rest of the house, I can use 70 deg. water. Cold water would take longer, of course. I would recommend the filter just to avoid any particles.

 

[MattKing]

If you are worried about temperature, fill a large container, let the container come to room temperature (over night?), and then use the water to wash the prints.
It doesn't take as much flow as many assume.

 

[~andi]

What is your property's solar gain? Building a small solar hot water heat exchanger and using a thermal mass storage tank isn't a terribly hard DIY project. (Assuming local regs don't have weird things to say about such projects.)

No clue. Probably not much. More overcast/rainy days than sunny ones. It still might be a nice project, so would be collecting rain water for the toilet, for example.

Personally I'm considering a dual valve and recirculation pump setup for a print washer when I get setup for that this summer. Would auto fill and drain on a timer without the need for constant supervision. (I'm also probably going to go with a bucket based system rather than a directly pumped system, but that is just a minor detail for my personal setup.)

Now, this is something I wish to have in an archival washer. The Nova Eco has a quick dump facility. However filling it up takes quite a while. So I use it for running water washing only. The perfect archival washer would work like this: running water for 15 minutes, then dump and refill automatically every 10 minutes or so, plus some random agitation mechanism like a aquarium pump etc. while keeping the formfactor of the usual horizontal archival washers.

Andi

 

[~andi]

Lots of valuable information here. Thanks guys. This has been very helpful. I think I'll go with one of those 10inch filters attached to the garden hose and ten going into the nova washer. Then run some tests. I'd not want to make it more complicated than that as addition hardware and steps like warming up the water, will negate the benefits I'm after: less work than dump&refill plus save couple of bucks. The filter I can still use inhouse if things should not work out.

Andi

 

[removed account4]

Jnanian, the ATS bit wasn't serious (-> ). I don't discard used fixer on my lawn.

good to know ~andi.
best of luck with your printing+processing !
john

 

[Jeff Bradford]

My well water is so full of iron I can barely wash the laundry in it (whites turn orange). It does alright for rinsing film so long as the final rinse is distilled water with PhotoFlo, but I wouldn't put FB paper in it. You will only know for certain after you test it.

 

[Doremus Scudder]

I'll chime in here as well...

I used a darkroom for years with well water. Absolutely no problems whatsoever. It had good filtration and the water was of good quality.

Problems associated with well water in photographic processing are attributable to mineral content. Iron is a special problem as it can kill some developers and can leave spots on prints.

So, ~andi, the best situation would be if you could get your well water tested, or had access to test results from earlier or from neighbors using the same aquifer. However, if the water is clear, not too hard and doesn't leave rust or other deposits, it's likely just fine for washing prints.

The one problem you may have is temperature. Prints won't wash well or fast at 8°C. You may want to come up with some way to temper the water. A small, on-demand water heater comes to mind, but these fluctuate a lot, so may cause problems in that regard. Letting the water stand till it reaches room temp is also a way to deal with the problem.

There must be a chart/table somewhere showing wash time vs. temperature and whether or not adequate washing is even possible/practical below a certain temperature, but I can't seem to find one easily. Perhaps those with better reference libraries than I have here can find something and chime in. I'd be interested in knowing more about the effect of temperature variation on print washing as well.

Best,

Doremus

 

[~andi]

Thanks to everyone for very informative responses and interesting ideas. I'm going to go ahead with it and run the tests as soon as its a little warmer out there