We are having a new home build in Vermont. This house will be sited in an area where septic systems and wells are used extensively. We will be doing some of the interior finish painting (latex only) and will have to dispose of the tool cleaning water.
After we move in I will also have a workshop and along with the wifes studio have this as a continuing problem.
What is the best and safest way to handle this disposal? Some of the readers here must have had and solved this problem.
Thanks
Marty
Knowing today's environmental over concerns.... if you generate 100's of gallons of waste water from the latex I would call your local hazardous waste disposal company and have them set up a holding tank, call the EPA and let them know what you are doing, and pay the waste disposal dearly. I'm sure they will laugh all the way to the bank...........or use the septic. Common house hold cleaners can affect the environment more than just a bit of latex laced water. Wanna have septic problems use lots of bleached based cleaners. Helps kill the enzymes that make the system work.
I clean my brushes in the kitchen sink. Granted, I don't do a lot of painting either. I don't clean rollers as you can put them in a plastic bag for over night and they'll be just as good in the morning. When done painting, throw them out.
What problem?
Like yourself, we've lived in the country with a septic system since
1974 (we built that year). Like you we've cleaned latex paint-laden brushes and rinsed in warm soapy water many a bristle brush that had laid coats of varnish, poly, etc. on trim and doors, etc.Big deal, as you know, is to remove the solids from the tank every few years. We've been doing it (during our peak use years when we had children at home) every twelve or so. Probably due this year just to "be safe."
Pumpers freak out when then learn how long it's been and tell us to expect that we've got solids running out of the tank and into the field. We nod, thank them and tell them to check it out and tell us the bad news. So far, they've reported back that "what the hell are you doing? You've only got 8" - 12" of solids at the bottom. Incredible?"
Haven't a clue as to WHAT we're doing right. Maybe it's the outdated packages of yeast SWMBO tosses down the toilet every month or two?
If it's diluted, don't sweat it. I wouldn't pour the leftover paint down the drain or skinned over paint. Rinse water shouldn't do squat.
Back home in NZ I had a roller washing unit that sat in the laundry room sink. It was basically a thick wide bore pipe (roughly 6-8" in diameter). It was glued to a base and there was an angled input high up and an outlet low down and a spigot in the middle. You put your roller on the spigot, connected the top inlet to a tap with a hose and turned on the water. Come back when it is clean. Great for the big foam corrugated rollers for painting corrugated iron. Keep meaning to make myself one...
Peter
The diluted cleaning water isn't really an issue...IF you don't want to send it down the septic system, pour the cleaning water on the driveway, it's so diluted at that point it won't cause any damage or negative run off.
When you have left over latex paint, you have a couple of options: Mix it with sawdust and put in the trash can. Our local collection agency will take latex paint as long as it won't run....so us lot's of sawdust. OR you can spread it out on cardboard, leave it in the sun and let it dry out, then dispose of as waste. I tried to take some old latex paint to the hazardous waste disposal day and they wouldn't even look at it..."take it home we don't want it" was the reply.
I just finished painting our new home, and I made something that may help you as well...take a cheap roller frame and remove and salvage the roller holder ends and wire or what ever is used to support the roller cover. Get a length of threaded rod the same size as the roller frame shaft and about twice as long as the roller cover, 4 lock nuts and washers. Your goal is to mount the roller holder on the threaded rod, but you don't want it to spin freely and that's where you have to put a lock nut on the rod above and below each end roller cover. The order of items on the rod from the top: locknut, washer, roller cover end, washer, locknut ------body of roller cover holder------locknut, washer, roller cover end, washer, locknut. The bottom nut can be right at the end of the threaded rod. And yes you'll have two nuts "inside" the roller cage, but it's not a problem, chuck the rod in a drill and hold the nut with a wrench, run the drill while holding the nuts stationary and in no time they will be run up the rod. Chuck the rod in a drill, and you can spin the roller cover at high RPMs.
I used a cheap plastic scraper like used at the kitchen sink to scrape the paint from the roller cover, no water, this is the stuff mixed with saw dust or spread out on cardboard. Rinse the roller cover in water and spin the roller cover on the rod contraption above while holding it all down into a 5 gallon bucket, . Rinse again in water mixed with Downy...I know sounds weird...but it's a surfactant and makes the latex paint easier to remove. Spin again...and the cover will be clean and nearly dry. Use the same downy mixture to clean the brushes...don't rinse the downy water out the last rinse, and they'll clean easier next time.
It's a big job...hang in there...and it'll be rewarding when it's done. (sorry this is so long!)
DAC
One more tip, I discovered quite by accident that wash water can be a useful pest control substance. Our new compost heap has been producing a lot of whitefly which have flown across to the herb garden in my big wooden planter (inserted relevance there) and started laying eggs etc. In my painting I have sometimes been lazy and left buckets and roller trays with opaque water in them lying around. The whitefly seem to see it as solid, land and drown.
Peter
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