Hard water has one advantage to B&W photographers: it washes film faster
than soft water. So if you want to save some of the precious
filtered/distilled, then use hard water to wash, then do a final brief rinse
in filtered water.

...

jul1104 from Lloyd Erlick,

I used a counter-top water distiller for almost a decade.
Your remarks are very much in line with my experience.

When I first purchased my distiller for about C$200, I
assumed a service life of one thousand liters, which
translated to about twenty cents a liter. Over its service
life the cost of electricity rose constantly; I estimate it
at around thirteen cents per liter of product water. It may
have risen to around sixteen cents. (I'm located in Toronto,
Canada, and electricity has been the center of enormous
political scandals ... it was one of the factors in the
electoral loss suffered by the ruling party provincially.
The experience in California has been watched very carefully
in my neighbourhood.)

However, I found that the distiller lasted much longer than
my first guess. It came to a total of 6500 liters before I
abandoned it when I moved. It was a simple device, and I was
able to tweak it along quite easily (as it was originally
supplied, the plastic fan blade began to tick and clack
against the plastic housing as it warmed up in use. I
removed the cover and ran it bare.) The fan itself was a
simple thing with a motor that was easy to replace, although
it never came to that. Eventually the temperature sensing
cutoff device failed, but I never got around to fixing it. A
cheap and easy fix would have been to simply run the thing
through a timer. I was very aware of exactly how long it
took to distill a fill-up of about a US gallon, so setting
the timer and relying on it wasn't too scary. I'm sort of
sorry I pitched it, because in my new digs the landlord
picks up the cost of electricity!

These days the best deal on distilled water comes from the
local supermarket. Strangely enough, it's on the four liter
jugs, which sell for ninety-nine cents. (They are labeled
'steam distilled'.)The big polycarbonate nineteen liter jugs
are not significantly cheaper, plus they weigh far too much.
And they carry a ten dollar deposit.

I got into the habit of using distilled water for all kinds
of things, and finding it superior in all cases. This
includes making coffee (damn I wish I could still drink
coffee! Cafenol indeed! I can't let that into my
darkroom...).

I prefer it for any solution I intend to store, especially
selenium toner. I've figured out how to keep my 1+5 dilution
of selenium pretty well indefinitely, and distilled water is
an important part of it. I also use distilled for making up
fixer. And I use distilled water instead of a squeegee on
all my film and prints. Certain cleaners, like ammonia for
glass, are diluted with distilled water. I never permit any
other liquid near my spotting dyes (no spotting brush in the
mouth...).

Cleaning the distiller I had was easy. The whole top
assembly lifted off, exposing a dinner-plate diameter
opening. (It had a large gasket, which I assumed I'd have to
replace at intervals. But it lasted the whole life of the
unit!) I found that a simple, quick swill and brush-out over
the sink kept the deposit inside to a very easily managed
level. I stopped using the overpriced cleaner (same as the
stuff sold to clean kettles) sold with the distiller, and
even stopped using the plain vinegar I substituted later.
The frequent (each use) swill and light scrub (plastic
bottle brush with no soap or chemical) sufficed for years.

I eventually got so I kept a glass jug of distilled water on
my counter for drinking, and another in the fridge if I
wanted to drink cold water. People always tell me I
shouldn't do this, because of the 'flat' taste. But it was
never flat; in fact, it tasted very good. Water 'flavour' is
partly dependant on dissolved gases, and the action of the
distiller is such as to very strongly promote the
dissolution of air in the product water. Compared to the
disgusting stuff in tap water, distilled is very tasty. (I
should add that for drinking purposes I always passed it
through a Brita filter, because the taste of the stainless
steel distiller container was quite prominent in the product
water. It has the flavour of iron. Obviously the water is
not pure in the chemical sense of H and O and nothing else,
but it certainly is close enough to pure for our purposes.
And part of it is that the human olfactory sense is still
pretty good, even though we're not hounds...). I didn't
bother with the Brita for darkroom distilled water.

Interestingly, I never found the water went 'bad'. It never
became smelly, never developed any flavor at all. A few
times I went away for two weeks or more, and left a jug of
distilled out on my counter. It was always fine and tasty
when I returned. There is nothing in distilled water for
micro-organisms to feed on. Distilled water won't go bad.

It was indeed easy to keep twenty liters or so on hand. I
just filled up one of those twenty liter white pails that
restaurants throw out (zero cost). I had a plastic dipper
(zero cost) and always poured the water through a plastic
mesh coffee filter (very cheap, but you could get one of
those gold-plated ones if high cost is desirable) in case an
insect got into the supply (happened once, so I adopted the
suspenders to go with the belt.)

I find the water purchased in plastic jugs tastes of
plastic, so I still use the Brita...

regards,
--le

On 7/11/2004 3:52 PM PSsquare spake thus:

[By the way, most people familiar with the concept use the term "resistance"
rather than "Meg Ohm level".]

So what *is* the resistance of pure water, anyway? It would be interesting to
compare notes on this. (Would a standard VOM be accurate enough to measure
this? or do you need fancy lab instruments?)

...

...

jul1204 from Lloyd Erlick,

I have no quibble with anything you say. I have only looked
for water that is better than tap water for some of my
darkroom practices.

It's clear that any of the 'distilled' water I've used is
not pure in the sense you describe. It always has a flavour
of the stainless steel distiller tank if I drink it, so
something must be in it. If I buy it, it tastes of the
plastic jug.

But if I put a few milliliters on a piece of glass (clean
glass - how clean? I've never gone for the nitric acid...)
and let it evaporate, I'm satisfied if there is no visible
residue.

The easy solution for darkroom purposes is to get distilled
water at the supermarket, in a container labeled 'steam
distilled'. I've never expected 'absolute' purity, but I've
been happy with the results I've had. I would not claim that
other types of 'purified' water are no good. If they work
for users, they pass the test.

regards,
--le

The purest water in my lab comes from a still, then is polished in
Waters unit. That unit consists of cartridges remowing cations, anions
and organics, finally filtered through 0.45 micron filter. The output
flow is controlled with a megaohmmeter (built in). It should read 18
megaohm when electrodes are 1 cm apart, and electrodes surface is 1
cm˛ each.
Such water is deemed pure and disinfected.
Any technique that gives water with resistivity of 18 megaohm*cm is
equaly satisfactory.
For photo applications it is unnecessary, water free of heavy metals
(iron, copper, manganium)and sulphides is OK.
RO, DI are equivalent in quality, running costs are different.
Supermarkets sell demineralised water, ie. free of heavy metals,
calcium and magnesium. You do not need better. For most application
boiled and cooled water is fine, prolonged boiling will cause most
calcium, magnesium and heavy metals to precipitate.

Finally, carbon dioxide will dissolve in pure water and cause
resistivity to fall, even though it has no metal ions at all.
Resistivity measures all ions, regardless of their properties.

Regards

n Sun, 11 Jul 2004 22:52:07 GMT, "PSsquare" <pschmitt@stny.rr.com>
wrote: