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Any tips for faster roller and paint brush cleaning/rinsing?

4K views 17 replies 11 participants last post by  user1007 
#1 ·
I seem to use a lot of water when I rinse out my paint brushes and rollers. I guess I am super anal about rinsing them, as I rinse them until absolutely no more paint is running off of them.

It takes me a long time to rinse rollers and Purdy brushes thoroughly.

Any tips to speed this process up and save some water at the same time?

How rinsed out does a roller really need to be?
 
#2 ·
There are a lot of products on the market to speed things up.........I've never tried any. I usually spend 3 or 4 minutes with each roller cover or brush. I rinse them out and put them in my spinner tool........this spins the water and paint out........repeat as many times as necessary to get them clean. Spinner tools can be bought for about $20 - $25 at any Home Improvement or Paint store.
 
#3 ·
I've never seen the point in cleaning roller covers. They're pretty cheap. You can save them between coats by getting them nice & wet with paint and wrapping them in a gallon zip loc. One $2 roller per job hardly seems worth spending 10-15 minutes to clean 2 or 3 times.

The brushes, I drop in a cup of warm water with a bit of dish soap and let them soak while I'm cleaning up. I kind of agitate them in the soap water and then the normal rinse & work the paint out with my fingers. Sometimes I'll add a bit of dish soap into the base of the bristles and knead it in. Then rinse all of this out with warm water. Usually just takes a couple of minutes per brush.
 
#4 ·
GottaFixIt, I have to agree sometimes just throwing away roller covers is the way to go; however, at about $5 a pop for the good ones, it does save $$$ to clean them out a couple times before tossing them. I like "broken in" roller covers better because they don't have as much lint on them and they seem to absorb and pick up paint a bit better out of the tray. If you get three uses out of one $5 roller cover, you have saved $10 or about 2 gallons of gasoline.
 
#5 ·
Don't clean rollers because it is a waste of time. Buy decent ones and when you are done, use a 5-in-1 tool to get the excess paint off of the roller. Then pitch the roller. If you buy expensive rollers (lambskin), then I would suggest cleaning them but they cost considerably more. Buy a spinner from Home Depot or Sherwin Williams and this will keep your brushes from stiffening up. The spinner will get out a lot of the paint that sits inside the bristles. You can let them sit in an empty can with water or paint thinner if its oil based paint. But don't leave the brushes in there too long because this will ruin the brushes.
 
#6 ·
I stopped rinsing roller covers too unless I was using an expensive lambswool thing for a special application. It is hard to justify wasting gallons and gallons of fresh water to rescue $3-5 worth of roller cover.

As for brushes? I try to rinse them out as I work so they perform better. This usually keeps them from being too clogged up. I use shampoo to clean them and it seems to speed things up.
 
#7 ·
I stopped rinsing roller covers too unless I was using an expensive lambswool thing for a special application. It is hard to justify wasting gallons and gallons of fresh water to rescue $3-5 worth of roller cover.

As for brushes? I try to rinse them out as I work so they perform better. This usually keeps them from being too clogged up. I use shampoo to clean them and it seems to speed things up.
What about the cost of your time? It cost me more in time to clean it than it cost. Besides, the cost is included in the job. Cleaning roller covers is not economical, but you just can't make people see that.
 
#9 ·
Wow, I can't believe how many of you throw out your roller covers. If nothing else, a washed out roller cover is good for rolling porch floors, or concrete block, stuff that's really hard on a roller cover. I'm telling you, you save some substantial money over the course of a year's time.
 
#12 ·
I dont. Takes a few mins. Big deal. I'm kinda rebelling against a throw away world.
And I use super fabs- i think there better after a couple of washes.

Me either, I also think they work better after a couple washes.I use some kind of plastic tube that you hook a hose too down in my slop sink in the basement. Might use a half gallon of water and takes all of a minute to have perfectly clean.I can and do use the same cover for a week.
 
#11 ·
I swear by lambskin rollers!!!! The lanolin in them sheds the paint so easy that a few rinses with water, spinning between, they are good as new. I ALWAYS use lambskin. I do not have the problem of lint coming off of the roller. I do not get the spray off the roller that covers you with little paint freckles and if by chance you roll a dip into the paint to much you can plump up the fibers with a light backwards roll before loading again. For smooth applications I use a 1/2 lambskin, but for most others I use a 3/4. Since they clean out so nicely I cant remember when I last bought a cover.

Many of my covers have their own carriage. Once cleaning them, letting them hang to dry, and not removing them from the frame there is now a seal from the paint inside the cover that did not get rinsed out totally and it dried which created a seal so paint does not seep into the center of the roller. If and when the cover ever gives out I know I have to get a new carriage also, it is impossible to get the cover off the carriage without damage to it. I hate the drips that come from the carriage (paint that gets traped within), not fun to chase them.

I am going to do a cut and paste of this post as a new thread. I would like more input from the message board as far as using lambskin vs. synthetic covers.
 
#13 ·
pitch a purdy white dove no way:no: .some times i'm in 3 different colors a day that adds up:yes: .you have to wash your hands and brush anyway my as well do the cover:) . but here's what you need, a spinner about 20 dollars and a 5 in 1 about 6 dollars with these tools you can clean good and quick:thumbup: . but if your using covers of the el cheapo variety:huh: then by all means pitch away
 
#14 ·
You, personally, you pros, don't pay for covers. The customer does. Look at the math. A smoke break is ten minutes, that's the official time assigned in productivity terms. You're not going to clean a 1/2 cover in less time than it takes me to smoke a cigarette. Sorry, but you're not. At a rate of thirty dollars an hour, in ten minutes that break cost five dollars. You're "paying" five dollars to clean that roller cover. I can buy a good quality cover for 4-5 dollars, sometimes less. At this point, since you didn't pay for the cover, you've lost five bucks. You take the cover to the next job and charge the customer five bucks for the roller, now you're even. That's not productive. You could probably rig some sort of system where you might profit a couple of bucks, but why? Look at the opportunity cost, which is the value of the next best thing you could be doing for that ten minutes. Is the value of that next best thing only a couple of bucks? I doubt it. The opportunity cost of a day at the beach with the family is the value of the day's lost wages. Conversely, the opportunity cost of working a day is the value of spending the day at the beach with the family. For the homeowner/DIY, the same logic applies. The value of your time is your prevailing wage at your job. A week's vacation spent painting a bedroom cost you the value of your employment for a week. If you pay five dollars for a roller, and it takes you ten minutes to clean it, and you make fifty dollars an hour, that roller cover cost you five dollars plus 12 dollars of time to clean it. Now you're into it for 17 dollars. Purchasing and maintaining that cover cost you 17 dollars. Is twelve dollars worthy enough to sacrifice ten minutes that could be put toward a more worthy pursuit than trying to save five dollars. Now, if you like the "leftover" effect of used covers, that's another story and you have to realize that it costs you. I haven't come up with logic for that argument. Soapbox, down.
 
#17 ·
We'll just agree to disagree.:yes: There are plenty of roller cleaners out there. I use to be one, but I'm now in a twelve step program. :laughing: I know of a guy who cleans them everyday, even if they're going back in the next. I'm always dubious of time estimation though, with due respect. I teamed with an old boss on a section of siding on a job. I asked if he wanted to start it before lunch, about 15 minutes away. He laughed and said if we can't have it done before lunch, we don't deserve to sit down and eat it. Well, we worked through lunch, and them some.:whistling2: You've heard the saying, "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink". Apparently, for Brush, it's been modified. "You can lead the horse to water, and, you can make him drink":laughing: It's all good. Have a nice weekend, it's glorious weather in Cape May.
 
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