Hey Guys I was planning to buy a large table top paint booth. Instead, I met with a local body shop owner. He suggested I build a separate paint room. The more I thought about it, the more it makes sense, (dollars and cents). I will section off a portion of my shop (6x 12 feet) and build a room. I will use a low ceiling with a good industrial exhaust fan (explosion proof type) and large air intake filters. What I am looking for is where and what to get for the material for the walls and ceilings. I want the walls and ceiling easy to keep clean with paint solvents. Thanks in advance.
6 x 12 sounds like you are only going to build it big enough to paint small parts in, is that right ? Don
Paint white inside for best lighting. After painting with a good quality paint(I did mine with Imron) the walls can then be painted with a stripable peel paint, or coated with one of the rinse off water based products. If you are really trying to do this right you will need air inlet filters and arrester filters to catch the paint as it exits the booth. The exhaust fan should be either explosion proof, or one that has the motor isolated from the air stream. Depending on how it's built and lit, approved light fixtures will vary from ordinary, to vapor proof or explosion proof. Any switches located inside the booth or within a few feet of the doors need to be explosion proof. Spray booths are supposed to have fire control. Normally either water sprinklers or CO2. If you use the booth in the winter your heater/furnace will not be able to maintain acceptable painting temps for too long, and the booth fan will pull exhaust from the heater into the building. Pretty much anyplace is going to have regulations about spray booths. Some prohibit painting in a neighborhood. Feel free to use or disregard whatever suits your situation. I am just p***ing along info you should be aware of.
How big is your shop? Do you have room for a full size booth? I got mine from a local car dealer that no longer did bodywork and at 14 x 24 inside, I've had a few occasions that even that has been tight. On the flip side, it provides a nice "clean" area to park something if the rest of the shop is being used for welding and grinding...
hey, Like MP&C said, A good used booth can be a great value if you/ve got the space! Out here in the west, they're not hard to find given all the dead and dying shops If you're thinkin of doing this at home, I'd rethink that! Your homeowners insurance won't cover it, and if you have a booth fire, it's all gonna come outa your pocket including the fines from your city/state, fire/code department
I would build it out of 5/8' firecode sheetrock, it's not more expensive than 1/2". DO THE CEILING TOO!. Paint it white with cheap paint and re-paint when dirty. Cheaper in the long run than washing it with solvent and white is brighter and does not "tint" your paint jobs. Place 4' Florescent lights outside of the booth with window of 1/4" gl*** sealed to the sheetrock. Hinge the lights so that you may change the bulbs from the outside. If you deflect the outside fumes upward with a stack, they disburse better than straight out the window. Gut out the insulation out of an old refrigerator and install shelves and a latch, This makes a prety good fire cabinet for your paint and solvents. (not legal, but it will contain the flames and keep sparks away from the paint.) Instal a few fire extinguishers on the wall near the exit doors for easy access. Explain to your neighbors that it is your "sand blast room" Contraire to public opinion, if you have a realy good exhaust fan and a large air compressor to blown down the walls and ceiling, it is good for both.
Check with your insurance company. Any fire will be blamed on the booth. We just put in a downdraft booth in a new body shop , and had lots of hoops to jump through. EPA regulations it's not like it used to be. Just my 2 cents. Steve
If it will be "inspected", any gl*** needs to be tempered or imbedded wire. I had to replace some of mine, at the time they cost about $28 each.
I'm going with 2x4 frame and heavy clear plastic. The ceiling will be hinged to the wall and fold down. The walls will then stack against the folded ceiling and strapped to the wall when not in use. Furnace fan with divorced motor running off a belt. Duct tape the 2x4 seams when its put together. We'll see how it does on primer and keep modifying.
I bought a 10x17 yard shed made like insulated doors. It has metal on the inside and outside, with 2 in. of foam in the middle. Very well insulated. Put in fire proof exhaust fan, with furnace filters on the opposite end of the fan. Paint white inside, hang lights, and enjoy many years of use.
I'm in the process of putting in a substantial booth as we speak. SEM1951 is absolutly correct. The regulations are unbelievable along with the insurance and code inspections. My understanding is,(from the guy who is supplying the booth), is that shortly you will no longer to purchase finishes without a current booth certification. Here in Pa. this goes along with the compressor certifications and the heating source certifications. All of which you pay for. Fines for non compliance are enourmous!
This is how many will be forced out of the hobby , instead of outright "banning" hot rods [ and old cars in general] ,those in power who don't want us around will quietly find ways to legislate us out of existence dave
If it is going to be temporary and have room put up one of the temporary garage you can get at HF hang some lights and cut some holes for exhaust fan and intake filters.
I had not heard that....but I'm not surprised I had hoped to do at least the priming and blocking of my car in my garage or driveway like I've done for years........
I'm not sure how this is going to affect waterborne finishes. They do require solvents to some degree, (VOC compliance) and are very difficult to shoot without a very good booth anyway. They are also expensive because of the prep time required.
This is all alarmist hype. I can't comment on sprying in your driveway but we have been on waterbourne up here for a number of years and the same rumors were floating around before we switched over. Little guys were going to go out of business because they would have to buy new state of the art booths, harder to spray etc it was all ********. Guys continued to spray in their ****ty, dirty booths without issue. Not sure what you mean by prep time? If you want a nice paint job the prep is time consuming regardless of what you are spraying overtop. No more so or less so with waterbourne.
Rather than an inside paint room (unless you have a ton of room in the shop) What about a separate paint building such as a 10x12 storage shed like Home Depot displays out in their lots in a lot of places that was insulated and lined with the proper inside walls? You would still need the ventilation system but you wouldn't have the paint room taking up room in the shop nor would you have paint fumes in the shop or the regulation people raising havoc about it. To the outside world it's just a storage shed where you keep the lawn and garden tools and stuff the Christmas decorations in the overhead shelf. To add to K13's comment above. I've never seen any finish that hides poor or short cutted prep work better than other finishes. There are a dozen younger guys here locally who are fantastic hands with a paint gun with any finish you can imagine but their skill with a paint gun is quite often overridden by the less than stellar prep and sanding work done before the vehicles are painted. One shop here in town probably doesn't have one worker who would recognize a long board sanding board if he was slapped along side the head but they wear out a dozen DA sanders a year.
Do you mean to tell me if a car guy wants to paint small pcs of his ride he must comply with all the certifications about. Whatever happen to doing a paint job in your own drive way?
I'm not an alarmist but there are laws we all must comply with that are in effect now. There are a lot of places where it is illegal to shoot at home. I just want you to be aware the fines are astronomical for doing so in certain areas so be careful! As to prep time with waterborne, these finishes are in the 2 mil. territory and they do require more prep. Urethanes with 10mil.+ will easily fill 320 sanding scratches, waterbornes will not. They also require more coats and effective sealers and bases to get a nice finish along with different equiptment including much better oil and water supply source conditioning. The days of the old Binks no.7 are gone. Not trying to piss on anybodys parade, just be careful. My last booth was framed with metal studs, 5/8" drywall and lined with FAS, which is a commercial product available at The Home Depot and the like. It served me well. Just so you know I'm not some Primadonna I just shot this in my shop, (grey area legally). It's not rubbed out in the pics. Not great but as good as a lot of well equipt places do. In other words, with a little inginuity you can get a great finish without state of the art equiptment. Just don't hang a shingle out.
Home Depot sells a white board material in 4' x 8' sheets that is essentially shower walls or the dry erase boards. Cleans easily. Check to see if it will stand solvent wipes. The stuff is CHEAP to buy, easy to glue to a stud wall, etc. I is in the lumber section near the plywood.
Most places, what you posted is the case. That doesn't mean people don't do it anyway. Unfortunately, if some one complains, or if you are caught, your right to life, liberty, and the persuit of happiness, aren't going to help.
Insurance companies can be a pain in the ***. I have a 7000sf body shop and one insurance company refused to insure me because I have --------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------------- PAINT INSIDE THE SHOP!!!! DUH?
There are two filters to a booth. The intakes to clean the dust. The exaust to trap the paint. Some of the slickest paint I have done is in a still room. The paint flow is amazing. And to watch the chemical cloud hover as it slowly dries. Gl*** baby. A lot of booth filters are 20"x20". There are more sizes. Once you decide on the filter size. Frame your booth doors to except metal L trim to hold the filters tight. Filters should install from the outside.(most booths have intake filters in the doors + other filters and exaust in the back) If you finsh the inside with sheetrock. Use blue board as it will stand up to floor washdown better. Caulk everything as any air being drawn in thru a crack will be like a dust cyclone. Lights.. Very important. Try to get some from the side and from the top at least. But a set at a 45 up in the corners help. (ever watch a painter bending around tring to catch the light? ) Lights in real booths are gl*** lens. Had to take um out and s****e/laquer clean um when when overspray or stray p*** painted them. A kid working for me that had to clean them started putting saran wrap over the lenses. Clean lense.. Change the saran wrap. Kid was a genius. O yea. I have been to the Binks school in Chicago. Have sold and built many booths. Industrial to home made. Down draft. Water curtain. Love the smell of laquer in the morning.
you dont need explosion proof lights, your electrical just needs to NOT be in the painting area (which is considered a hazardous location). the last booth i hooked up basically had panes of gl*** that were siliconed to the panels followed by just normal 2'x4' light fixtures (since the gl*** was considered to be a barrier from the inside of the paint booth).
Unless you plan on painting complete cars on a regular basis a booth is a waste of money and space. Just buy a turbine HVLP system for the money you will spend on building a booth. Then you can paint in the back yard. I've painted several cars in my driveway with mine over the years. Hardly any overspray and uses half as much paint as a conventional paint gun.
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