I am going to be building a darkroom in my basement. My problem is that any plumbing in the basement (washing machine, slop sink, ect.) gets drained into a sump pump. So basically the chemistry that I use will end up in the sump pump, and sit there until the level is high enough to pump it out. Is it bad in anyway for B&W chemicals to sit in the sump pump (health hazard or other damage?)

-- Jeremy Hildebrant (jkhphoto@yahoo.com), February 07, 2001

Answers

Greetings,

I would not attempt to let B&W chemistry sit around waiting for the sump to activate. I doubt the dilute chemicals would damage the pump, but some would always be present and that could lead to problems. You may want to consider dumping used chemistry into a 5 gal. bucket, diluting it, then disposing of it in a responsible manner, which could be a drain if your municipality is O.K. with it. Whatever you decide to do, you should research the chemicals that you'll use and identify any incompatibilities. For example, sulfur based brown toners when mixed with any acid produce deadly hydrogen sulfide gas.

Regards,

-- Pete Caluori (pcaluori@hotmail.com), February 07, 2001.

The last thing you do is wash the paper or film, so if you wash a long time the sump pump should kick on several times thus purging itself chemicals. To be sure you could dump the spent chemicals into your standard drain and only use the sump pump for disposing of wash water.

-- Chris Hawkins (peace@clover.net), February 08, 2001.

Instead of the sump pump, for this I would explore an ejector pump. This is a sealed compartment kind of like a sump hole but it is a sealed box. You plumbing store will have more info. Cheers

-- Scott Walton (f64sw@hotmail.com), February 09, 2001.

If you get to the main line out in your basement, you may be able to run a new drain line into the cleanout. This is pretty much what I did with the same situation. Otherwise the ejector pump idea would be the way to do it. Good luck.

-- DK Thompson (kthompson@moh.dcr.state.nc.us), February 09, 2001.