Building a darkroom for a camera club

[Øyvind Dahle]

My camera club is moving at some point, and I'm started to plan the new darkroom.

There will be less and less darkrooms around and I want to plan a real good one to attract new members and happenings.

We just bought a condenser 135-4x5" Beseler and a condenser Omega D3. From before, we had three enlargers, Durst color 670 and two worn B&W 66 with lenses for both 35 and 6x6. The outside of the biggest trays are 50*64cm (20*26"). The tapwater here usually beats bottled water.

I'm drawing up room for: -three enlarger workplaces (one of the 66 stored underneath the Omega to be moved up when needed.) -two rows of trays in wetbenches (one of them hinged to the wall to normally get to the RC drayer and the Kodak highglanze drum) -50-80 wooden cupboard to store chemicals for members -depending on demand, combined with a light trap (a dark curtain?) -air out of the room -At least three watertaps -A light table below the Omega (clear plastic shelf) -Storage room underneath the wetbench for film and paper development things and papercutter and glanzing presses. -a filmdrying cabinet -darkroom light -additional electric outlets

But there is with all this no room for a walk-in changing cupboard, maybe I will make a hand-in changing cupboard.

The plans will also be used for making pretty accurate cost estimates for the board.

What are my pitfalls?

What mistakes have you done building a darkroom?

Øyvind:D

[Witold Grabiec]

My mistake was BAD planing. After that all darkrooms came out great. Every time I had a very limited space available, but always managed maximum use of it. Keep in mind the work flow, especially if more than one person will be using it at the same time. Are you going to do the work yourself? Do you really need everything what's listed in your post?

Limited space means custom fitting to get most out of it. This leads to either modifying some of the cabinets you may have, or building everything to size (best approach but money or tools/skills required). Don't forget about any part of the walls to store some of the stuff. Since I've done this more than one time, I may be of help. Email me directly and we can go from there. I have about a week on hand that I would not mind giving up to support your efforts.

[Alan Davenport]

Inadequate ventilation. Install forced air ventilation, preferably with some kind of hood to draw fumes up from the wet-side counter.

[jantman]

The first thing that I'd mention is that if it's a group darkroom, you want things to be easily accessible and easy to use. You mention a hinged wetbench? Does that mean NOT a sink? I can't imagine a darkroom without full-length darkroom sinks. Also, why hinged? Why not mount the dryers above it or something?

Granted, I must say, the only gang darkroom I have experience in is a 6-person, and I surely would have designed it differently. I'm currently collaborating (or attempting to) on a replacement for it.

[Øyvind Dahle]

I was thinking of the second wetbench hinged. The dryer are quite heavy and big, but you have a point.

The sink is coming, I was thinking of cutting PVC-plates to have underneath the trays, to make a 4-6" deep PVC sink with drainage, and screwed together to make it fit other places if we have to move again.

The only reason to have one darkroom is the size of the room: ca 5.4x2.45m (16x7.4') with a door at the end. Two darkroom would have been better.

We are planning on a new digital projector, new PC for the scanner we won and a nice room in addition to the new darkroom so the money will have feet, as we say here.

Øyvind:D