Exterior Paint Sprayer

[ssmith1627]

Guys, I've got a borrowed paint sprayer. Was going to try to paint the exterior of a rental house that belongs to my inlaws. I tried a patch just to get me started. At that point, I wanted to run mineral spirits or something of the sort through it to clean it out. But wow, with that long house, that takes FOREVER. And you have to run a large volume of that through to really clean it out.

Am I missing something ? How do you not end up with a 5 gallon bucket of paint water at the end ? What do you do to dispose of that mess afterward ? Trying to get some tips. I'm leary of even putting paint back into it again because of the lengthy cleanup.

Many thanks,
Steve

[jhart]

Perhaps a little more info would help. What brand sprayer? Are you using oil or latex? The spray units I use all have some type of container for the paint.

[Tom Slick]

they do take a long time to clean. you have to figure out if it is still faster using the sprayer, including the cleanup, compared to rolling the paint on.

another thing to remember is once you have removed the paint bucket from the machine and are starting to pump water into the system you can pump the paint into the paint can until water comes out of the gun. you can cycle the dirty water though the machine several times to rinse the machine out, then switch to clean water, then repeat process. if you are using latex, the cleaup water can be dumped down the drain.