I've been washing my brushes in white spirit to remove the residue of oil-based gloss paint, and now I have a few hundred mls of WS plus sludge to dispose of. I could simply pour it down the drain, or onto an out-of-the-way spot in the garden or in the woodland opposite, but I'm reluctant to do any of those if there are better options.
What do other people do with it?
Leave it to settle in a tall jam jar for a couple of weeks and then decant off the clear liquid after the pigments have settled to the bottom. You might need to do this twice if it is really bad. The ones that some curry sauces come in are particularly good for this.
The spirit gradually goes yellow as a result but still works perfectly well as a solvent for cleaning brushes. I wouldn't use it in any situations where virgin solvent is required for paint thinning though.
just let it evaporate and then throw away the jam jar.
Dulux says:
The container should also have a tightly fitting lid to enable dirty solvents to settle. The clean solvent can then be poured back into the original bottle for re-use and the sediment left to dry before disposal.
Don't pour paint or white spirit down the drain as the chemicals they contain can disperse and contaminate the water supply.
I'd have thought that pouring it away in woodland would be bad for the environment, but in small quantities maybe not very bad.
Put it in a spare plastic bottle and let the paint settle to the bottom. After around 4 weeks you will have 95% clean white spirit at the top and the heavier paint stuck to the bottom of the bottle. Decant off and use your recovered white spirit for future brush cleaning.
+1. Use the 'recycled' liquid for the first-clean of a used brush and keep that separate from later washes in separate glass jars, like 800ml hellmans jars.
After allowing to settle, carfully pour off the supernatant and allow the sludge to partially dry, to the point where it can be scraped out with a bit of flat wood.
Yes that works well or used to assuming that white spirit is still as it used to be. I think much flaked and melted paint gets to the sewers eventually so I guess its well diluted and dealt with at the sewage works, well we hope so as its been going on for many a long year now. As a matter of interest what is the difference between turps and white spirit? Brian
use it to start bonfires with
Or barbecues. Its a very good balance of flammable versus doesnt go bang
AIUI not a lot, if you mean turps substitute. I think the latter might be slightly better refined than white spirit, but don't quote me on that. It's distilled from petroleum. OTOH genuine turps is made from the gum of pine trees, and is a different thing all together. My late wife, an art-school-trained artist, had a small bottle of it which she revered, but whether it's _that_ special, I don't know. 500 ml tins of gum turpentine are available for not too many beer tokens, so may be it's more readily available these days.
I used to set fire to it (outside).
Store it until I need something to get a bonfire started.
Other way round I believe, White Spirit is more standardised. I use White Spirit for thinning paint but Turps for cleaning brushes. but there is very little difference in price, it hardly seems worth having both kinds.
It's distilled from petroleum. OTOH genuine turps is made from
I've heard that white spirit is purer than turps substitute. Actually I think they are the same thing, and stores sell it under two different names for some reason.
Pour it in an unused spot in my jungle of a 'garden'
Thanks for all the advice. Settling the sludge, and re-using the supernatant seems the way to go.
It’s illegal to dispose of it down the drain or into the environment.Your local recycling centre should be able to dispose of it
And anyone with a brain does not dispose of it, he/she pours it into a suitable large glass container like an 800ml helmans glass jar and when the solids have settled to the bottom, the supernatant white spirit can be carefully poured off and re-used to wash out future paint brushes .
When the solids have become a sticky mess they can be wiped out with old newspaper and chucked in the normal rubbish bin.
Exactly what I do but some paints these days don't seem to settle out unless left for months. I still use the top bit of of my settling white spirit bottle as the pre-wash for brushes, and then a very little clean spirit for the final wash.
the other option is use bottles to solar distill it.
If you are not "recycling", just leave it in something like an old washing up bowl in the garden and it magically disappears.
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