Without running water, how much water does it take with hypoclear to wash RC prints?

I have moved, with a darkroom but without water, and except for 5gal. buckets and and evap. tank for waste water due to septic tank requirements, and that we have about 20 Deer for dinner each day who probably don't like the effects of photo effluents in their water, how much water would be required for 11x14 Black and White RC prints, using hypoclear, to have well washed prints without the need to haul too many 5 gallon buckets to the screen covered evap."bathtub"out back? It seems that the Ilford method for washing negatives has worked fine, so there must be a way to do prints as well. After years as a commercial photographer, nothing i do here so far is worth being archival but it can be fun and could become a useful portfolio for a while. After all, living out in the country is somewhat bizarre but very peaceful. Any info would be most appreciated...Best, David

The question with wash is always at what point you consider it to be good enough. Add to this that it's usually not feasible to do any meaningful quantitative analysis, and you're left with a moving target and any advice can only boil down to "YMMV". RC is a good choice in your situation as you basically only need to wash the emulsion, not the paper base. This makes a massive difference.

Flashcam said:

It seems that the Ilford method for washing negatives has worked fine, so there must be a way to do prints as well.

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I'd use a similar approach; i.e. soak & agitate, dump, and repeat a couple of times (how many? Your guess is as good as mine! I'd go with 5 or so). If you use a (very) shallow tray, you can get away with using preciously little water.

Make sure the water isn't too cold; lukewarm would be nice. Washing is a diffusion process, so it goes (a lot!) faster at higher temperatures. Conversely, near freezing, nothing much happens. Also, the effectiveness of the washing process drops rapidly as time progresses and/or with every change of water. Let's say the first wash cycle removes 50% of the chemistry still left in the paper, then the next cycle also removes 50%, etc. You can see where it goes; it tangentially approaches 0 - which means two things: (1) you never really get a firm zero, i.e. a completely washed emulsion, and (2) the first couple of washes are the ones that make the difference, so the difference between 2 and 3 cycles will be significant, but the difference between 8 and 12 cycles will likely not even be meaningful.

Try to not keep the paper submerged for too long; RC doesn't like it (water ingress along the edges etc.) RC should need a couple of minutes anyway.

I doubt you really need the hypo clear with RC paper.

Hope this helps in any way. I also hope someone chimes in with a more quantitative suggestion; I know there's a nice white paper about this somewhere, but I can't find it at present. David Kachel has written a bit about it that I can get behind: http://www.davidkachel.com/assets/fixnwash.htm but it's not what I had in mind...there's a page somewhere with a chart that illustrates the reduced utility of additional washes very nicely, but IIRC it was based on a continuous flow washing regime and fiber based paper. As I recall it showed that wash effectiveness very drastically drops after 10 minutes or so - again, this would be on FB; you'd reach that point on RC in probably a minute or so (continuous flow).

guangong said:

The amount of residue is so little that simply washing in running water will not damage a septic tank. I have been doing this for 40 years with no harm to septic system. Chemicals used in processing film depend upon the chemicals.

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I'd agree with this. Maybe do the first rinse and take it to the evap tank out of concern, but after that it can go into a septic tank. As to how much is needed for RC prints, are there tests for residual chemicals available?

Any discussion of continuous flow will need to be translated to 'water exchange rate' and then you can match it in the number of 'dunk and rinse' cycles you do.If you should wash five minutes at flow rate of full exchange in one minute, five dunk and rinse cycles

Flashcam said:

I have moved, with a darkroom but without water, and except for 5gal. buckets and and evap. tank for waste water due to septic tank requirements, and that we have about 20 Deer for dinner each day who probably don't like the effects of photo effluents in their water, how much water would be required for 11x14 Black and White RC prints, using hypoclear, to have well washed prints without the need to haul too many 5 gallon buckets to the screen covered evap."bathtub"out back? It seems that the Ilford method for washing negatives has worked fine, so there must be a way to do prints as well. After years as a commercial photographer, nothing i do here so far is worth being archival but it can be fun and could become a useful portfolio for a while. After all, living out in the country is somewhat bizarre but very peaceful. Any info would be most appreciated...Best, David

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First. RC-prints do not require hypoclear before a wash. It could even cause overwashing! A 2 min wash in running water or 5-6 water exchanges (Ilford wash procedure) are sufficient for an effective wash. It is best to check for wash efficiency after the wash to verify your method for effectiveness.

Here is the Ilford Method for washing both film and paper. It looks like just three trays filled with water will do for RC paper.

RalphLambrecht said:

overwashing

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What does that mean in physical or chemical terms? I can sort of see an argument based on emulsion swelling that would permanently affect the emulsion - but today's RC paper emulsions are pretty robust, so I'm not sure what kind of negative effects could be expected from soaking the paper for a minute in a sulfite bath. It's more benign than the print developer it has just gone through in most cases.

JerseyDoug said:

Here is the Ilford Method for washing both film and paper. It looks like just three trays filled with water will do for RC paper.

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This is exactly what came to mind for me. Also, absolutely no hardener in the fixer. Skip the hypo clear completely.

After the final rinse a silver stabilisation bath (Adostab) might be a good idea if you haven't toned the prints.

I've moved this thread to the Black and White Film, Paper and Chemistry sub-forum because it is a better fit.
Do you have a swimming pool? If you do, you are probably using sodium thiosulfate to keep the chlorine conditioned, and any deer would be in more jeopardy from the pool than your wash water.
And unless your volumes are massive, the relatively tiny amounts of silver coming from washing the fixed prints are inconsequential either for your garden - if dumped there - or your septic tank.
In fact, the biggest danger for septic tanks comes from over-washing - using too much water, for too long.
I use two stacked trays with small drain holes at one end, with the bottom tray discharging into the basin, and the top tray overflowing into the bottom tray. A trickle of water flows first into the top tray. The prints spend 1-2 minutes in the bottom tray first, and then 1 minute in the top tray.
You could easily adapt that method to a use not involving running water.

MattKing said:

A trickle of water flows first into the top tray. The prints spend 1-2 minutes in the bottom tray first, and then 1 minute in the top tray.

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Really? This may be fine w.r.t. having enough water to sufficiently dilute the residual fixer, but is it enough agitation? I seem to need more agitation, although I exchange the water in a different way.

It is the continuous flow that matters.
I use the Kodak guide for washing film as an indicator - one change of water in every 5 minutes.

Develop 1.5-2 minutes, stop bath 15-30 seconds, Fix in film strength Ilford rapid fixer, 30 seconds, water tray one 30 seconds, water tray two 30 seconds, water tray three 30 seconds, hang to dry. Constant agitation throughout.

After 5-10 prints dump tray 1, move all your trays up, refill the dumped tray and it becomes new tray 3.

This is a better washing sequence than what the big Ilford dry to dry processors use and those prints are fine.

I would use the wash water on the lawn. Absolutely no reason to use septic, that's for biological waste

RC paper is basically film; you can treat it in a similar way.

There is a way you can quantify the effectiveness of your wash; just use the HT-2 test. The formula and the hypo-estimator chart can be found on Unblinking Eye, here: https://unblinkingeye.com/Articles/Archival/archival.html .

Or, you can buy the Residual Hypo Test kit directly from Photographers' Formulary or a number of photo retailers like B&H, Freestyle etc. A quick search will turn up a dealer near you.

Once you have the kit, you can easily determine the minimum wash needed to get zero stain by simply washing a bunch of strips with the Ilford fill-and-dump method and testing strips starting after dump #3.

Hope this helps,

Doremus

It all helps. Thanks folks!

koraks said:

What does that mean in physical or chemical terms? I can sort of see an argument based on emulsion swelling that would permanently affect the emulsion - but today's RC paper emulsions are pretty robust, so I'm not sure what kind of negative effects could be expected from soaking the paper for a minute in a sulfite bath. It's more benign than the print developer it has just gone through in most cases.

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It seems the answer lies directly in the article you linked:

Recent research has shown that removing absolutely all of the fixer from photographic papers can be detrimental. This is one of the reasons that resin coated papers tend not to last long. It is easy to wash all of the fixer from these papers, making them susceptible to damage.

miha said:

It seems the answer lies directly in the article you linked:

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Meh. The argumentation is supposedly that remaining thiosulfate would allegedly "coat" the silver particles, protecting them. This sounds like a minimum degree of sulfur toning. Similar to 'protective' selenium toning, it's doubtful (at best) that this offers any reasonable protection. It all reeks of wishful thinking, jumping to conclusions with a healthy dose of pseudoscience to me.
Where are the references in both Kachel's article and Buffaloe's Unblinkingeye writeup? Buffaloe does offer a few references, but no specific one for the overwashing claim. Kachel keeps it at an axiomatic statement.

I remain very skeptical.

Check out Knoppow's reply in the thread; it might have the insights you need: https://groups.google.com/g/rec.photo.darkroom/c/jUo3VYGJQEQ

In about 1960 T.H.James, of
Kodak Labs discovered that a small residue of hypo left in an emulsion
actually protected the image silver from oxidation! This was such
heresy that the results were not published for a year, in fact not
until after Fuji published similar results.
The amount of hypo must be quite small, larger amounts cause massive
sulfiding of the image causing it to yellow and fade.

miha said:

You should really be asking the author of the article you shared.

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I think there's a problem in photographic practice with parroting. Plenty of examples are available; the acid/pyro thing comes to mind as well. My skepticism is aimed at that phenomenon primarily.