Water wise washing.

[W K Longcor]

I begin by admitting that I have been out of the darkroom for almost two decades now. So take anything I say with a grain of salt. Back in the 1970's, I began having problems with the emulsion softening and lifting off the paper base. My Kodak tech rep. stopped by one day and told me that the chemical make-up of the water could make such a problem. Particularly very "soft" water. Turns out, the building did have a water softener. (Eventually, we installed by-pass plumbing around the softener to our print wash area). He suggested tossing a "hand full" of epsom salts into the wash water. I still have prints from back then. The epsom salts did no harm and did keep the emulsion on the paper while wet. So, if you want to try overnight soaks -- maybe try some epsom salts-----worthy of a try???

[cyrus]

I've never had a problem with gelatin sloughing off a print or a negative, and I've left the stuff in water sometimes for many days. I don't know why

[Kirk Gittings]

I don't know why either, maybe hardness is a plus or minus or paper design? Our water here is somewhat hard and at two days it definitely becomes a problem.

[NancyP]

Here's a variation on Ken Lee's dish-rack:
30-CD acrylic rack. 4 x 5 fits beautifully. I even found a cheap box fitting the rack perfectly.
http://www.containerstore.com/shop/c...uctId=10010451

[natelfo]

I installed a reverse osmosis system in my darkroom due to hard water issues. I can process 6 sheets of 4x5, 2 rolls of 120, or 3 rolls of 35mm using a little over 2 gallons of water. I keep several 2 gallon containers full of RO filtered water because the RO tank itself loses pressure after only a few minutes, so I use the tanks for the actual processing, and I only use RO water throughout the entire process. Here's my washing process:
After fixing, fill the dev tank with water, slosh around constantly for about 2 minutes. Dump, then refill. Let sit for about 5 minutes, sloshing around a few times each minute. Dump, refill, let sit for 5 minutes. Dump, fill with Heico Permawash (or any other hypo clearing agent), slosh around for about 2 minutes. Dump, then repeat the same 3 rinse cycles as before, but I let the last one sit for about 10 minutes. One last quick rinse, then photo flow. Never had an issue with film not being washed enough.
As an added bonus, keeping several tanks of water helps ensure that the water I use is always the same temperature, which is within 2 degrees F of my house thermostat.

[Peter De Smidt]

A small amount of residual fixer in the paper provides some protection from image deterioration due to pollutants, but so does some types of toning. So, if you want increased protection, you can either wash the paper until the proper level of fixer is left in the paper, or you can tone the print in selenium/sulphide and use hypo eliminator (Hydrogen peroxide + ammonia), along with a short wash. The book Way Beyond Monochrome should have a good summary of current thinking on these topics.

[Mark MacKenzie]

Just wanted to say I have learned a lot of good ideas from this thread. Thank you, all.

[ROL]

Just wanted to say I have learned a lot of good ideas from this thread. Thank you, all.

.

[Kirk Gittings]

ditto

[tgtaylor]

"...consists of a series of water changes rather than having the water constantly-running..."

What Cyrus says is correct: It's how many times you change the water that really count. If you're truly interested in conserving water I would suggest that you start with an alkaline fixer such as TF-4, TF-5, etc, that requires minimal washing to start with. Leaving your print in the water for hours or even days as suggested in some of the above posts is harmful to the paper and the image - especially RC - and the mfg data sheets usually cautions you against extended washing.

With regard to film, here is a method from California that was in vogue during past water shortages:

1. Fill the tank and dump.
2. Fill the tank, agitate 5 times, and dump.
3. Fill the tank, agitate 10 times, and dump.
4. Fill the tank, agitate 20 times, and dump.
5. Fill the tank, agitate 40 times, and dump.

The above gives you 5 changes of water in, presumably 5 minutes, which is less than the 10 changes of water recommended by Jobo but probably sufficient if using an alkaline fixer.

Thomas