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Thread: Pur water filtration instead of Distilled water?

  1. #21

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    Mar 2017
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    319

    Re: Pur water filtration instead of Distilled water?

    Quote Originally Posted by LabRat View Post
    Old metal plumbing is old metal plumbing... Dry down some amount of water from when you first turn on a tap in a clear or white vessel and look for black, blue, rust or sand/dirt, or get a iron test kit and test... If you do any plumbing work, look inside the fittings to spot discoloration, corrosion, pitting, run your finger inside and see if it picks up particles... Make sure that there are no different metal fittings or pipes connected directly together, but if you have to, run at least a foot of plastic pipe between to separate those potentials... Use plastic hangers and pipe grommets near valves that connect to metal sinks to make sure feed pipes do not ground directly to sink... If in doubt, replace metal pipes, fittings in the darkroom... Other parts of the system might have dissimilar metal to metal connections, and can be a release source...

    Sometimes in worst case situations you might see a brass valve or copper pipe that has severely corroded or turned black on the outside, that is a loud alarm that there is a severe electrolysis problem in your system!!! They make anti-electrolysis coupling fittings for pipes, water heaters etc, but some distance plumbed in plastic works well...

    Not trying to be too anal retentive, but one lab had such a collection of metals, that just turning on the water on Tuesday morning would darken a bucket of water, and it turned out that the pipes and fittings were dangerously thin inside, and leaving cloudy water...

    Out here in the LA (western) drought, some of the plumbing I fixed over the last few years has suffered due to hard, bad water and seats on valves have gotten really cut up from much particulate grinding them into constant leaking... My film lab water filter had a large handful of sand and swirly dark particles in it after water main construction in my area, just after 1 week of changing the element!!! I drink this stuff!?!!

    Steve K
    Fascinating! I've done plenty of repair plumbing in the several homes I've owned, and didn't know about this. I just went down the basement and found that there is still a bit of galvanized steel in our mostly-copper water lines. Maybe a total of four feet of steel and dozens of feet of copper. (Though some pipe coming off the water heater was covered in insulation and foil several years ago by a contractor, and I don't recall what it's made of.) Also, though it's hard to get close to in order to see well, there is a fitting between the copper and steel that looks like it might be a dielectric union. I've used them when installing new water heaters, but never really thought about their function. (I installed the heater that's down there right now, in fact, and it has them.) We don't seem to have any issues with deposits in our water, other than the slight iron content which our town's water is known for.

    I'm curious to know just how this water issue effects film development. I will never do much of it. Probably never more than a few dozen sheets per year. Will my negatives simply not last as long? The first ones I developed do not have noticeable issues (yet!). No deposits, water marks, streaks, etc.

  2. #22

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    May 2015
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    Re: Pur water filtration instead of Distilled water?

    Quote Originally Posted by Paul Kinzer View Post
    Fascinating! I've done plenty of repair plumbing in the several homes I've owned, and didn't know about this. I just went down the basement and found that there is still a bit of galvanized steel in our mostly-copper water lines. Maybe a total of four feet of steel and dozens of feet of copper. (Though some pipe coming off the water heater was covered in insulation and foil several years ago by a contractor, and I don't recall what it's made of.) Also, though it's hard to get close to in order to see well, there is a fitting between the copper and steel that looks like it might be a dielectric union. I've used them when installing new water heaters, but never really thought about their function. (I installed the heater that's down there right now, in fact, and it has them.) We don't seem to have any issues with deposits in our water, other than the slight iron content which our town's water is known for.

    I'm curious to know just how this water issue effects film development. I will never do much of it. Probably never more than a few dozen sheets per year. Will my negatives simply not last as long? The first ones I developed do not have noticeable issues (yet!). No deposits, water marks, streaks, etc.
    I'm not sure, as there is usually iron in water due to old piping etc, but I suspect it shouldn't be much of an issue for chems and negs unless excessive, but it is oxidized metal when if big enough might cause spots in developing or washing, but Kodak probably published a paper about it somewhere... Try to find it and please post...

    But the issue I have seen has been when using some designs of print washers, during prolonged washes that maybe a corner of a print that gets a more direct flow will sometimes leave a slight rusty discoloration near that border, corner, or edge (even with double filtration, some extremely small particles get through, and start building up over time probably)... If I washed a DWFB print for an hour, I didn't see it, but if I'm doing a prolonged session where the prints were in for an hour and a half or more with the water running, the color would start to appear, and nothing I tried later would remove it... I changed my procedure where I would stack prints back to back, belly to belly in a holding tray without water flow, and keep checking that the prints would remain completely submerged, and then wash them all together at the same time... That worked... But tried keeping dry to dry times as short as possible, and cycled washing intervals so nothing was wet too long...

    But the problems I have seen in plumbing might have been because the hard water here can start acting like a battery, and that bad water lab was at the very end of the municipal water system, the farthest place away from the reservoir, and all the areas between had very old mains that were constantly breaking, so much work needed to be done daily on the system, and then there's all of those cars, trucks, construction, buildings, streets of the LA basin over it...

    Steve K
    Last edited by LabRat; 24-Oct-2017 at 22:40.

  3. #23

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    Mar 2015
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    Re: Pur water filtration instead of Distilled water?

    I use distilled water for the developer and pre wet. Here in Sacramento the water can be a bit iffy. My biggest concern is the pesticides and associated chemicals from the farm land in the area. The farm run off goes into the rivers which is where the city water comes from. It's a bit less of a concern now since government over regulation has wiped out most of the family farms. But corporate farms are still alive and well. The other water issue here in Sac is the temp. In the summer my tap water runs between 90-100 F. I use a cooler with blue ice packs between and under the bottles and wait till the temp drops.

  4. #24

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    Mar 2005
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    Newbury, Vermont
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    Re: Pur water filtration instead of Distilled water?

    Sorry to hijack this thread...but I'm long overdue in replacing both my hot and cold 5 micron (string wound) filters for my Leedal units (I think 9 or 10 inches long?) - and it looks like B+H might be having trouble getting ahold of these. Anyone? Thanks!

  5. #25
    Photographer
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    Feb 2001
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    Pine Junction, CO
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    992

    Re: Pur water filtration instead of Distilled water?

    Quote Originally Posted by John Layton View Post
    Sorry to hijack this thread...but I'm long overdue in replacing both my hot and cold 5 micron (string wound) filters for my Leedal units (I think 9 or 10 inches long?) - and it looks like B+H might be having trouble getting ahold of these. Anyone? Thanks!
    I think Depot and Lowes both carry 5 micron filters.
    Keith Pitman

  6. #26

    Join Date
    Aug 2000
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    California
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    3,908

    Re: Pur water filtration instead of Distilled water?

    I have used distilled water for photo chemistry for only very brief periods in my life. I have had a darkroom since 1938 in various parts of the country,and have never seen the need forit for black & white. I did install an RO system several years ago when I was working with color and mixing my own chemistry to save money. It is still wonderful for cooking and drinking,but I rarely use anything but plain San Diego water, which is anything but pure, in the darkroom.
    Yes the date is correct.

  7. #27
    Tin Can's Avatar
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    Dec 2011
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    22,385

    Re: Pur water filtration instead of Distilled water?

    I have been drinking only distilled by the gallon for a decade

    Very happy Kroger sells all I need for photo and drinking during these hard times

    They even load into my 4 gallon milk crates in my pickup bed, with all my food and beer once a month

    The farm share is once a week, just got it

    I am home alone a lot!
    Tin Can

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