I started photography when I was twelve. I had two closets in my bedroom so my parents allowed me to set-up a darkroom in one - a card table to hold trays and an old Federal 2-1/4 x 3-1/4 enlarger. I used that makeshift darkroom for a year, then my dad helped me build one in our garage. I had no fan in the closet, but I did install a fan in my garage darkroom. We had a darkroom in our Jr. High (grades 7-9), and in High School, we converted a janitors closet into a darkroom. No fans in either. I went to Oregon State college (Corvallis) 1955-1959 and we had darkrooms in the student union building for the camera club. No specific fan, just the building's heating and ventilation system. In 1959 I went to Brooks Institute of Photography and in the enlarging hall (long narrow room with 18 enlargers on one side and a long sink on the other. There were large deep hypo trays for every four enlargers. The ventilation was the fact that the doors at both ends were open (large light trap entry) and there was air movement through the room. I guess. It smelled like strong hypo all of the time. I spent countless hours in there.
Actually, now at 69, I cannot remember any of the darkrooms that I used - a little or a lot - having an adequate ventilation system. My current darkroom has two large, albeit noisy - soon to change, fans. And, I visited Brooks last year for their 60th anniversary and all classes reunion. The darkroom is still there, 18 enlargers, five deep hypo trays, but now a plenum exhaust system built at the back of the sink, all the way along, sucking out the fumes. I was really disappointed! It just didn't smell the same! ;-)
Here's a picture, via my little Sony T7 pocket P&S, illuminated mostly via the Thomas safelights, showing the (now covered) hypo trays and the exhaust plenum along the back of the sink:
http://www.visualimpressions.com/Brooks%20B&W%20darkroom.jpg Aaahhh, the smell of fresh hypo in the morning! JimPS... don't get me wrong... I believe that darkroom chemicals can be very hazardous and EVERY darkroom should be adequately ventilated. I also believe that I have been unbelievably lucky in that I didn't get into serious trouble using unventilated darkrooms for all of those decades.
At 01:05 PM 5/2/2007 -0500, Shannon Stoney wrote:
Shannon, Why did you let the bucket just sit there? If it was there for weeks, that would indicate that you had personal contact with the darkroom to know it was the same bucket. When I have run across those types of situations, I make it safe or as safe as I can while I am there or just don't work there. I don't mean to just walk away, but make the administrators know about the safety issues. EricI didn't realize the bucket was a problem until I got really, really sick and had to leave that class and that darkroom. Then I researched what could have caused my problems, and thought about that bucket, and the fact that the ventilation fan had not been turned on until the last week of the class, when I told the teacher that I felt really sick. Then she showed me a switch behind a barrel and turned it on. There was a giant sucking sound and the vent went on for the first time. But by then it was too late for me. It took me almost a year to get well.Then I wrote a letter to the dean of the school and told him about my problems and the bucket and the ventilation. They rewired the darkroom so that when the lights are turned on in the building in the morning, the vent fan goes on, bypassing the neglectful teacher. I assume they got rid of the bucket too.--shannon
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