SOLUTION: Two painters, working together, can paint a house in 3 days. One painter working alone can paint the house in 4 days. How many days would it take the second painter, working alon

Question 994052: Two painters, working together, can paint a house in 3 days.
One painter working alone can paint the house in 4 days.
How many days would it take the second painter, working alone,to paint the house.
Found 2 solutions by ikleyn, MathTherapy:
Answer by ikleyn(52786)   (Show Source): You can put this solution on YOUR website!
.
Two painters, working together, can paint a house in 3 days.
One painter working alone can paint the house in 4 days.
How many days would it take the second painter, working alone,to paint the house.
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Let    be the number of days for the second painter to paint the house, working alone.
Then the second painter paints of the house per day. It is his rate of work.

The first painter can paint    of the house per day. It is his rate of work.

Working together, they paint of the house per day.

It gives an equation

+ = .

Simplify and solve it. Multiply both sides by 12x (it is the common denominator). You will get

3x + 12 = 4x.

Hence, x = 12.

Answer. The second painter can paint the house in 15 days.

For more problems on joint work see the lesson Using fractions to solve word problems on joint work in this site.

Answer by MathTherapy(10552)   (Show Source): You can put this solution on YOUR website!

Two painters, working together, can paint a house in 3 days.
One painter working alone can paint the house in 4 days.
How many days would it take the second painter, working alone,to paint the house.

Time 2^nd painter takes, alone: days
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