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Two23
3-Jan-2019, 19:41
I bought a couple of jugs of distilled water for processing film in my SP-445, but how do I make it the correct temperature? I'm assuming that's important. With tap water I can adjust it. My tap water comes from a city well, and is fairly clean. It is fairly "hard" water, here's a report:

http://www.siouxfalls.org/public-works/water-division/water-quality


Would I be better off getting one of those water pitchers with the built in filter, such as a Brita? I could use tap water at the correct temperature that way. I also wouldn't need to buy distilled water that way. Would this work? Any suggestions?


Kent in SD

rdeloe
3-Jan-2019, 20:10
I'd love to learn a better approach than what I do for mixing new solutions, which is microwave about 1/4 of what I need to warm it up over the desired temperature, and then mix it with the room temperature water. Because I'm using the same amounts most of the time I can get close most of the time. With pre-mixed solutions I have to heat it up in a warm water bath, e.g., I save my fix for re-use so that always starts at room temp and has to be heated.

I use distilled water too for developing, stop and fix because our water is very hard and the tap where I work is softened. I rinse with the softened water, and then final rinse with distilled.

Britta is just for taste and odour so I don't think that's going to help you.

Alan9940
3-Jan-2019, 21:19
I would suspect that most of us have to deal with the tempering of water and solutions. Most of the year, for me, revolves around cooling solutions down. I keep jugs of distilled or RO water in the fridge and mix to desired temp with room temperature water. I use a water bath for maintaining correct temp inside the tanks. If processing 8x10, I tend to work closer to room temp because I don't really have any way of properly maintaining something like 68-70F.

Two23
3-Jan-2019, 22:01
I just checked my unheated tap water. It's 49F degrees!


Kent in SD

Willie
3-Jan-2019, 22:41
My Uncle spent a winter in a cabin with no hot water at all. Idaho mountains. He would fill jugs with water and let sit on top of the refrigerator(propane powered) for a day to get to room temperature - which turned out to be generally 68 degrees. Then he could mix his developers, stop, fix and whatnot. Even mixed Pt/Pd and printed it during the day with the windows covered in the cabin as he went out on the porch and exposed it to sunlight for the UV.

LabRat
4-Jan-2019, 00:27
The good news is the standard average room temp in a environmentally controled space is 68degF/20C, which B/W likes... So if the chem is bottled inside this space, it's very close already... An interesting thing is that temp is truly tepid, neither warm or cool...

So if it is a little over or under temp, it is not too hard to bring to temp by rinsing the cool bottle under hot tap water for 15 second intervals, or put the slightly warm bottle in the fridge for a few minutes, but this takes some practice so you don't overshoot your mark...

Or the old best way is to fill a large sink or tub with the correct water bath at temp, and put the bottles in it some time before use... Again, something to get the hang of...

Remember large bottles take longer, and small ones change temp quite fast...

Control your temper... :-)

Steve K

Huub
4-Jan-2019, 04:54
And when the water is somewhere between 18 c and 25 c you can adjust the development times without adjusting the temperature of the water. On the Ilford website there is a table that gives a rough estimate on how much to correct.

Pere Casals
4-Jan-2019, 06:55
how do I make it the correct temperature?


If you use diluted developer... I use Xtol 1:1. If the stock is at say 22.5ºC then mix water until it's at 20ºC-2.5ºC, so at 17.5ºC. If tap water is too hot (not usual) then I can stir with an ice cube in it until I get the required 17.5ºC.

So a convenient trick for diluted developers is to make water at the temperature that will end in the 20ºC after mixing the stock developer in. So mixing cold and hot water solves it.

Another way is using liquid concentrated developers, so also mixing hot and cold water before adding the concentrate.

Another way is having a cabinet for wine to store chem, search amazon: wine cabinet temperature control , some under $100, or second hand for the half.

Tin Can
4-Jan-2019, 07:27
I buy distilled water 10 gallons at a time from Walmart as they are the only local source that has plenty. Read on... 80 cents a gallon last time. I always wipe the bottom of the jug with my hand and look at the water level to discover a leaker. Some do leak.

Then I store my water on the floor as it's a little cooler down there. I use 95% liquid DR chemicals and store them in a utility sink 2 feet up.

I don't really need to check temps as it's all very close to what I want.

I run a Hass water temp mixer for darkroom washing with hot and cold filters, it can instantly produce any temp from 65 to 115 F.

10 years I have been making coffee, food and drinking only the same distilled water as the DR as I suspect all water from any source. I also have emergency supplies of distilled water and hand powered water filters for survival.

Our main city water did fail last year for the entire area, a 5 ft diameter pipe broke inside the pump house/office. What a mess.

All bottled water became impossible to find.

It rains here 55" a year. Next I start collecting water.

Some say we can wash film and prints with tap water at any temp with no harm. I have not tried that.

bob carnie
4-Jan-2019, 07:51
I have always used Distilled water for PMK , and regular tap water for ID11, it seems that region by region , big city small town , all have different dynamics.

peter brooks
4-Jan-2019, 09:29
I used to temper stop and fix in a water-filled medium sized plastic storage box with an aquarium heater (rubber suckers adhere to side) and thermometer, holes cut in the lid and 1" polystyrene insulation cut to fit the outside bottom and sides. Realised after a while that this was overkill.

Current darkroom has the bench over the central heating boiler - an old one, not very efficient so gives off quite a bit of heat. By moving the chemicals to different locations I can vary the heat gain. I always move a bottle of distilled water around with the stop and fix (all in acrylic type straight sided 1 litre wide necked drinking bottles), and use a thermometer to take the temperature from that. So if you have a source of gentle heat, get to know it, with experience you can gauge how long it will take to heat the stuff up and just plan ahead.

I think the dev temperature is more important than that of the stop and fix (within reason).

No water supply in the darkroom so for dev and main rinse water I mix water from a boiled kettle and tap water in a large jug, adjust using a thermometer and decant into thermos flasks. We are on a spring, so the supply is probably full of all sorts of bits and pieces (it does have at least UV treatment before it gets to us).

I used to get a lot of debris on negs, I sought advice from the one remaining analogue photographer at a local club and he suggested always doing the final rinse with distilled water. I do that now (actually I use it for the final rinse and the photoflo dunk) and it makes a world of difference. Hence the bottle of distilled water ready at the ballpark temperature.

Print trays I boost temperature if required with a vivarium heat mat. Works a treat, nice and gentle but not too sloooow.

Two23
4-Jan-2019, 09:42
Sounds like trying to filter tap water isn't the way to go.


Kent in SD

Doremus Scudder
4-Jan-2019, 12:49
It's easiest to just process at ambient temperature if it is within processing parameters. Store your water and chemical stock solutions at room temperature. Then just mix what you need and measure the temperature and make any development time adjustments needed if your temperature is not exactly 68°F/20°C. For wash water, get a thermometer well for your faucet and adjust the temperature to ambient before washing (or, get a more expensive, but more convenient temperature control valve or even an electronic water temperature control mixer).

If the tap water is routinely too warm, as it often is in the South and Southwest, then you'll need a different approach. You need to bring your chemicals up to the temperature of the tap water (assuming it's not too hot for processing - up to 25°C is fine). Not too difficult with a water bath. Use hot water to get the solutions close and then a tempering bath fed by the "cold" tap water to hold things at temperature during processing.

Processing in the cold is more problematic, since developers with hydroquinone lose activity at colder temps. If possible heat the area and get everything up to ambient temperature. Alternately, water baths and tempering baths get things warmed up and held at processing temperature.

If you process in the summer, and don't have air conditioning, you can still easily mix things at 20°C and just shorten development time for the small temperature increase in all solutions that occurs during development. In my Vienna "darkroom," it was often 30°C (86°F) in the summer. I measured temperature drift before processing film by simply leaving a tray of water out for the developing time, and agitating test sheets in it at the same interval as I would when really developing. (With a tank, you could simply fill it and agitate as usual for your developing time). I used a water tempering bath (larger tray). At the end of developing time, I measured the difference. It was much smaller than I expected, just a couple degrees. So I adjusted my developing time using the Ilford table and choosing the development time halfway between the starting and ending temperatures of my test. All the other solutions drift higher at about the same rate, so the only other temperature consideration was to make sure my wash water was the same as the temperature of the last fixer when I was ready to transfer to the wash.

Filtered tap water is fine and filtering is a good idea, since it removes particulates that can stick to your film! The reason for a distilled water final rinse for film (I mix my wetting agent with distilled water) is that tap water can contain lots of dissolved minerals, which get into the emulsion along with the water. When the film dries, the water evaporates, leaving mineral deposits behind and, if you have hard water, these can really ruin a negative. The distilled water leaches the minerals out so this doesn't happen. If you do have hard water, make sure your last rinse in distilled water is long enough; I like 3-5 minutes.

And BTW TKent, I love your quote from Don Giovanni (Zerlina) in your signature!

Best,

Doremus

Pere Casals
4-Jan-2019, 15:05
Sounds like trying to filter tap water isn't the way to go.
Kent in SD


Water should be filtered to remove water borne particles, anyway a (reusable) distilled water rinse is usually adviced. Xtol has a better preservation if mixed with distilled water that if mixed with tap water that's high in iron content.

A powered Reverse Osmosis filter also provides good water.

Randy
4-Jan-2019, 16:44
I just use tap water (our water source is from a well). I do a soak in distilled water for a few minutes before hanging film to dry.

jp
4-Jan-2019, 18:59
Keep one jug in a warm place in the house and the other in a cooler place, and mix them together in the right ratio to get to a proper temperature.
example: I used to mix 1:1 d76 and the chemistry might have been at 60f, so I'd add some 76f tap water for the 1:1 mix and I'd be at 68f.

Lacking a place to keep a jug warm, 20 minutes before you need it, place it in a tray of hot tap water. That will warm it up enough for mixing options.

Andrew O'Neill
5-Jan-2019, 14:41
Put the distilled water and developer in a tempered bath. If they are really cold, put them in warm water to bring the temperature up, first. That's how I did it in Japan during winter. Summer was a real challenge, trying to cool everything down to 21C. I was constantly making ice. Tap water was 30C and the room I worked in was 36C and quite humid. I thought I died and went to heaven when I purchased a window mounted A/C.
When you have the developer in the SP-445, keep it in a tempered bath between agitation cycles. I use BTZS tubes, so they are always in a tempered bath. Good luck!

Jac@stafford.net
5-Jan-2019, 15:07
I just use tap water (our water source is from a well). I do a soak in distilled water for a few minutes before hanging film to dry.

Randy seems to be right. I have a home distiller and cannot tell if mixing chemistry with hard city water makes a difference, but washing in hard water is highly effective, and a final soak in distilled water (with 1:200 Photoflow) is a definite advantage. (I do not have a water softener)

I have no suggestions for maintaining chemical temps. I use a large aquarium heater, but the tank takes up a lot of bench space.

mrred
5-Jan-2019, 15:34
I have 2 4gal jugs with spigots. One I fill with distilled water (I have a distiller) and the other is tap water. Evgerything is at room tempature.

My tap water is fairly clean with just mostly silt as an annoyance. However the city makes it PH 7.6 to compensate for older pipes. A little high to mix PH controlled chemicals but fine for one shots and rinsing.

Jac@stafford.net
5-Jan-2019, 15:51
I have 2 4gal jugs with spigots. One I fill with distilled water (I have a distiller) and the other is tap water. Evgerything is at room tempature.

:) I had my home distiller empty into a blue five-gallon water tank, then did not pay attention to it for a few years only to find that its contents evaporated. Some plastics are permeable. Take care.

mrred
5-Jan-2019, 16:30
Manually operated....lol

Luis-F-S
5-Jan-2019, 19:31
I've always just used tap water, chilled or warmed to 68 Deg F. I have a filter on the incoming line which does nothing since our potable water has no suspended matter for the filter to take out. L

mrred
5-Jan-2019, 19:41
It's not really suspended matter that is the evil. I think Iron is the #1 cause for developers to crash, especially Vit C based ones. A while back I had Iron issues with my Foma. It would cause deposits on the film.

Two23
5-Jan-2019, 21:19
It's not really suspended matter that is the evil. I think Iron is the #1 cause for developers to crash, especially Vit C based ones. A while back I had Iron issues with my Foma. It would cause deposits on the film.


My water has very little iron in it, but hardness of 19 grains. Maybe I could get away with tap water?


Kent in SD

mrred
6-Jan-2019, 06:28
My guess it would depend on your film/developer combination. You should also measure your PH of the water. Distilled ideal is 7.0. You would never see that, in the wild. Some developers are buffered and would not react either way.

Give it a try.

Tin Can
6-Jan-2019, 06:36
Photography Formularily specifies distilled water for mixing TF5

Less smell

Work great

mrred
6-Jan-2019, 06:39
The PH shift would be causing that.

Luis-F-S
6-Jan-2019, 08:41
My water has very little iron in it, but hardness of 19 grains. Maybe I could get away with tap water?
Kent in SD

Have you had trouble with the water? If not, don't create problems that don't exist. If you have, then deal with the specific problem. Filters do not remove iron, just suspended matter.

Two23
6-Jan-2019, 10:14
Water Ph is 8.71. I'm using HC-110, PF tf4. SO, I will definitely used distilled for fixer and final rinse. Room temperature is 72, so it might be easiest to simply adjust time since four degrees isn't that great.


Kent in SD

Doremus Scudder
6-Jan-2019, 13:20
Water Ph is 8.71. I'm using HC-110, PF tf4. SO, I will definitely used distilled for fixer and final rinse. Room temperature is 72, so it might be easiest to simply adjust time since four degrees isn't that great.
Kent in SD

Kent,

A pH difference from neutral in your tap water will affect the activity of the developers you mix with it. Take this into account (I had to reduce my USA developing times by about 10% or a little more for my water in Vienna, Austria due to the harder water there).

Keep in mind also that distilled water is needed for some purposes and not others. Use it for pH sensitive things (like TF-5 and maybe TF4 if it really reduces the odor compared to mixing in tap water) and for making stock solutions, especially saturated solutions like the solution B for PMK/Pyrocat (if you mix those with tap water, you'll end up with a precipitate and a weaker solution).

Distilled is also a good idea when you are mixing developers/fixers from scratch and have hard water or water with other dissolved minerals. Prepackaged chemicals (e.g., from Kodak or Ilford) include sequestering agents and buffering to compensate for a range of water qualities. These can usually be mixed with tap water with no problems. Of course, there's nothing wrong with using distilled water for everything, but it can be unnecessarily expensive/inconvenient if you don't really need it.

Distilled for the final rinse (+wetting agent to save time) is highly recommendable regardless of your water quality. Soak longer if you have lots of dissolved minerals in your water. Don't keep the solution too long (i.e., only one session or so) since dissolved minerals build up in the rinse and the wetting agent will degrade over time.

Best,

Doremus