Electricity 1

Part from changing the occasional lightbulb, I've never done any serious electricity. But we cannot afford a fullblown electrician. So I bought a few books and started studying for several weeks. The project is to install everything, and have it checked entirely by a real electrician before going "online". Needless to say that I work on a completely "dead" circuit.

First I had to connect both the earth and the main line coming from the main switchboard in the house. Previously a 25 mm earthline and 6 mm main supply cable had been buried between the house and the "darkroom-barn". Both enter the barn from below the concrete floor through a PVC pipe that will later be filled with silicon kit to make the electricity entrance completely watertight.

Since the wet side of the darkroom will be exactly at this spot too, I couldn't just guide the cables along the wall. I had to use a watertight connection box, and guide them through security casing buried inside the granite wall. With granite walls you cannot simply machine a trench for the cables. I had to hack it out by hand in the pointing between the granite blocks. I used plaster to hold everything in place and to protect the cables from water damage.

The main line and earth both travel inside a 25 mm casing through the concrete wall to the daylight side of the barn.

Main current, main neutral and earth are connected to the switching board. On the right you already see some of the outgoing cables to lights and connectors. But that's for the next post.

The only access to the live wires is at the switch boards in the house and the daylight side of the barn, and inside the watertight connection box shown here. On the photograph the casing has been pulled back to show how the cables enter. The whole space around the connection box has since been filled with plaster. Only the earth control connection stays visible.

A rough coating attempt

I never rough coated anything. This is my first try with white cement and sand. I leave the judging up to you.

After drying for a week the rough coating naturally turns white. The photograph below is actually of a later stage, while two enlarger wall mounts and some electricity were already installed. At the end, all the walls will get a white lime coating.

The Wall

To divide the two work areas I chose breeze blocks. A relatively inexpensive but sturdy solution, with the possibility to fill up the cavities with concrete at the hight of the enlarger studs. Fixing the enlargers to the wall is the only way to really avoid vibrations.

The blue markings indicate the blocks filled with concrete. The big orange line on the wall behind indicates the enlarger fixation hight on that wall. These old granite walls are made of rocks found in the fields. The quality and hardness of different rocks can vary considerably. So, I have to choose the fixation points very carefully. Because of that I have since decided to use another system.

I had never built a breeze block wall before. After documenting myself on the internet and getting some excellent advice from a neighbour, I ordered the blocks, the cement and some iron armement. The most important thing is to position all the blocks perfectly in line horizontally and vertically. With a few threads and a water level I managed well. But... I forgot one surface. The inside of the door. Half way up I realised that the door opening was slowly getting narrower. Just one centimeter and it's not a major problem, but still. Since I'm working on the barn/darkroom to learn as I'm going too, I'm glad this happened. Now I won't make the same error again when renovating our bicentennial farm.

Wood treatment

Notwithstanding the deathwatch beetles, the pine beams and floor of the first floor are in good condition. But a treatment with long lasting insecticide is necessary.

For months I have searched for ecologically safe alternatives. But in 2008 no serious candidates exist (yet). Boric salt (sodium metaborate or 20 mule team lime) is only a repellant. The best existing ecological treatments are only effective for 5 years at the most. Chemical insecticides are guaranteed for 10 years at least. Since I don't want to demolish my ceiling every 5 years to retreat all the wood, I chose the chemical universally used in France : Xylophene.

This stuff is real poison. Once  I took off my mask for only two minutes, but I ended up vomiting my guts out. Fortunately the wood has been dry for a70 years, so it sucks up the chemicals like a spunge. After ventilating a week, there are no illegal tenants left. The real work can begin.

A new concrete floor

The barn needed a new concrete floor, so in the winter of 2007 we started demolishing the old slab. First by hand with a sledge hammer and a wheelbarrow. Later I bought a power pick. A friend (on the photograph) sometimes helped, but I did most of it myself. Because of the hard physical work, working at - 10'C was possible. Any colder than that, the work stopped. All in all, it took the better part of winter to pull out all of the concrete and the granit stone foundations. The whole floor was lowered by 20 cm and egalised with gravel.

In february 2008 othe neighbours helped to pour in the 5 m3 of concrete for a 10 cm slab. It went well. Unfortunately nobody had ever done this kind of work. So the surface isn't as smooth as it should be. A second thin layer of liquid concrete will have to resolve that problem later on. Ofcourse I put in the connections for electricity, water supply and sewage before pouring the concrete. But you can never have too many tubes in your conrete slab. Today I would put in more.

A few problems

Before building the actual darkoom a few problems have to be resolved.

1) The old concrete floor has a height difference of 70 cm from front to back ! Maybe that was convenient to extract manure from this former pig stable. But it isn't for a darkroom. The whole concrete floor has to be replaced. At the same time I can lower it to get a bit more than the actual 2.10 m ceiling height.

2) The ceiling beams show the presence of deathwatch beetle. Longhorned house beetle is present in some roofbeams of the upper floor. Nothing to be really worried about, but the wood has to be treated with a long lasting insecticide.

3) There are no windows or doors. Just holes. Lighttight but ventilating windows have to be installed. And the big entrance has to be closed by more than the existing barndoors.

4) There isn't any electricity, water or sewage. All this has to be installed. The same goes for a toilet.

5) Some heat and phonic isolation between the darkroom and the upper floor would be nice.

Darkroom criteria : Space

For the location of my new darkroom I chose the ground floor of this granite walled barn. Because they are 50 cm thick and partially buried on the east side (you are looking at now) the granite walls act as a temperature regulator. Furthermore the first floor protects the ground floor from heat coming through the roof in the midst of summer.

We live at a hight of 1000 meters in the middle of France. In winter temperatures can get as low as -20'C (-4 'F) and in summer they go up to +40'C (104 'F). But in winter our cats' water bowl has never frozen inside the barn. And in summer inside temperatures were typically 25 'C. They never exceded 28 'C.

I wil isolate the darkroom ceiling. The walls will be plastered but not isolated, to keep their temperature regulating function. Ideally the walls should be isolated on the outside, but that would destroy the traditional aspect of the barn. Experience will show if I have to add isolation.

Space

Inside the barn is 6x8 meter (19.5x26 feet). A surface of 48 m2 (516 ft2). It has to be divided into a darkroom area and a print finishing / office space. After a lot of deliberations I decided on a darkroom space of 4.4 x 6 m, and a print finishing space of 3.3 x 6 m, with a concrete wall between them.

Group space
This darkroom has to be optimised for me when I'm working alone on my fine art prints. But it also has to accomodate up to 6 persons while I teach my workshops. What is the best architecture to provide both?

Every enlarger needs enough working space. At the very least 80 cm. But preferably more. In a normal one-person darkroom the dry and wet sides are on opposite walls, with 1 to 1.5 m between them. Narrow enough to simply turn around when changing from the dry to the wet side, but still large enough to move around.

The best way to provide this for multiple persons is to make long dry and wet sides, with the same 1 - 1.5 m between them.  In my 6 m long darkroom I could put 5 working stations in a row, if there wasn't a door. With a door in the middle there is space for 2 large workspaces on each side of the door. And when I put the wet side in the middle of the room, another 4 enlargers could be placed on the other side of the wet space.But I need storagespace too, and a wooden beam in the middle of the barn supports the first floor. So I came up with this :

Each square is a square foot. 3 squares are a meter. The left side is the finishing office, the right side the darkroom. Green = worksurface. Blue = wet bench. Brown = storage and bookshelves. Red = the darkroom entrance. Purple = toilet.

The width of the wet bench has to lodge the short side of my largest trays. About 75 cm wide. The length will depend upon the measures of the materials I can find. But it has to be at least 4 m (12 feet).

My personal darkroom history

I started my darkroom life at different photoclubs. But I soon wanted a darkroom of my own. So, like so many before me, our bathroom regularly transformed into a temporary darkroom. In the beginning it was fun. Later, setting up and breaking down the darkroom became a big PITA. The six darkrooms that followed were established in empty bedrooms, low ceiling moist caves, or suffocating attics. Often heavy curtains functioned as a light trap. Or towels prevented the dark from leaking out under the door. There was rarely any  ventilation at all, and running water was a big bucket.

My third darkroom was in the French town of Calais. I rented a room while I worked at the Chunnel construction site. With 10 to 12 hour working days I reduced my nights to six hours of sleep (I was still young) so I could do printing at night. My bedroom transformed into a darkoom with an opemus enlarger on the table. Developer trays on a cupboard. And a small sink as a print washer. I ate and slept in the same room. Once I used ammonia to eliminate fixer from prints. That night the ammonia bottle started leaking while I slept. I almost died from pneumonia. My voice didn't return until weeks later. If it hadn't been for my poor condition, my landlord would have evicted me.

In those days I worked standing up. While living in a Paris suburb (Ivry sur Seine) I started selling prints of weddings and priest ordinations. Printing often took several days, and I had to practice yoga to return the blood flow in my legs. Since then I have taken to printing seated.

Back in Holland I studied to be a professional photographer. In those days every photographer had to know analogue darkroom techniques. I quickly noticed that I could have taught my teachers and then some.

For the next twelve years I worked in several state penitentiaries (not as a photographer). The last seven years in a maximum security prison. Large format photography and the darkroom helped me to switch off from my passionate but not so easy work environment. So, I constructed a darkroom in our attic. After presenting my darkroom on the internet it has become the longest active thread on APUG ("argentic" that's me).

In 2006 we moved back to France, where we bought a bicentennial farmhouse in the Livradois-Forez national parc. There was no electricity, heating, water or sewage. So, I did a lot of construction work just to move in. In the meantime I started Phot-O-Vergne teaching photography courses. And with some friends I started a public darkroom at the university campus of Clermont-Ferrand which attracts a lot of students every year.

In 2009, after three years of virtual darkroom deprevation I started building a topnotch darkroom in one of our granit walled barns. In this blog you can follow its construction. I now own a photography store in Ambert which takes up most of my time. So the darkroom construction has slowed down. But bit by bit I will get there. Hope you enjoy this blog.

Don't hesitate to comment. I'm always open for suggestions and tips.

Wilbert

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