Paint Booth

[428]

I need a little feedback here.
Trying to have a paint booth inside a clean, want to somewhat keep it that way, garage. I have to keep the boat in the 3rd bay, the lift has to go in the center, #1 bay is my work bay and the tractor bay is my engine shop so the best place for the booth is the third bay. I plan on making it out of 1 1/2" PVC pipe wrapped with clear poly. I'll install a door that is basically one big filter top to bottom for air intake. I'll build two filter boxes that I can connect flex duct to and snake out under bay #2 door and connect to a belt driven fan outside. This will be run out away from the garage and concrete pad.
The booth out side door I can hinge so I can still pull the boat in/out. For a longer project I can park the boat under the lift but it runs the full length of the garage. Pain in the **** to walk around and a very tight fit. First bay is impossible to back it in.
This design should allow me to keep it up for awhile and I can store the fan and duct in the attic when not in use. I'll have side lights on the wall side outside the poly and tri-pod lights between the booth and lift. The light fixtures overhead are at 10' and I figure a 8-9' height inside the booth.
Being made of PVC and poly I can dismantle it and store it. I'll try and attach my drawings. Some of my concerns are static in the poly and keeping the soon to be tiled floor clean.
What do you guys think? Suggestions for improvements are welcome.

 

[rangerlayinrocker]

doesnt sound like a bad plan as long as you can get the fumes outta there proficently(spelling?) just watch you don get caught, my buddy was painting cars outta his garage and the city showed up and told him to stop because it wasnt up to code. and the neghbors were complaining of the smell of paint all the time.

 

[52 M37]

First I would check your local ordinances.
Laws around this kind of stuff have gotten a lot tighter in the past 10 years.

The main problem with painting in your garage is not only getting the fumes out but keeping the dust, dirt and insects out of your paint job. The poly if not sealed on all sides with filters to allow clean air to enter will put alot of junk in the paint.

Hope this helps,
Rich

 

[Luckydevil]

I did alot of research on this not too long ago. The best I could come up with aside from buying a professional style booth was to build a pvc or wood frame and use the thick 6mm plastic sheeting they sell at home depot/lowe's as the exterior.

It would preferrably have to be near a window where you could create a seal and add a house style air filter (the ones that are about 20"x20"). That would put the air intake up a little bit which seemed to be the most preferred. Then you would want the air exhaust to be down low. So for that I figured you could use some sort of ducting attached to a flammable gas safe fan and just run it out underneath the garage door.

For the booth door you could just cut a door size flap in the plastic, but leave the top part attached. Then just add some stick on velcro to the three sides that were cut.

Of course you would need personal ventilation inside the booth also and the HobbyAir was what I found as the best value. It costs around $400.

Hope that helps.

 

[428]

Intake Filters

What I had planned was a hinged screen door with filters attached all the way up. This would draw air from inside the garage, I could open the garage man door to let more fresh air into the garage. Maybe add a screen door there to keep bugs out?

The exhaust would be filter boxes down low in each corner as shown in the last pic. Duct them to the fan. Depending on noise I'd rather have the fan outside but could go either way on that. I have an extra lower door panel I could change out on the bay #2 door and cut a hole in for the exhaust. keeping the fan hidden and noise down would help stay inconspicuous.
While I'm in a subdivision with an HOA, our lots are several acres, in the county and my nearest "downwind" neighbor is several hundred feet away. We do have nuisance clauses, not sure how bad I've have to be to be considered that but...
I'd planned on attaching the poly to the PVC using Duct tape as stated in use #925 of the 1001 uses for duct tape book and put a flap of poly on the door to create a seal to the frame.

Yeah Lucky, I probably do need to invest in a good respirator. I doing pretty much 2 frame offs in a row and will be doing a lot of different types of painting. Where did you find a "hobby air" system?
And Ranger, you're upwind a few miles so you won't smell it.

I've thought about this design for awhile but still feel like I'm forgetting something

 

[rangerlayinrocker]

haha im glad our neighborhood doesn't have a nuisance clause, if it did my family would have been tossed out on my account may years ago. we live on a hill and everybody i know has done atleast 4 or 5 burnouts in front of the house. Not to mention, all the cars parked along the street in the summer when we open the pool, and have cookouts and what not. You seem to have thought it out a good bit, so im sure you can make it work pretty good. I mean after all a guy down the street from me has painted for a long time and hes the bodyshop teacher at the golden strip voc. center and he still paints in his garage LOL

 

[byrdman]

I've been planning the exact same thing for my shop. I plan on building my PVC box so that it ***** air through filters in the top(I've got 10 ft ceilings, I plan to build the box 8-9 feet high) and ventilates out the front. I'm building my box to attach to the garage door. I plan to leave the garage door open a couple of about 18" and **** the air out down low. This way it makes a downdraft over the vehicle. I want to use BIG ductwork to pipe the output away from the building, and filter the output to hopefully reduce smell. Basically I think what you've got just inside the garage door will be outside for me. The garage walls are concrete block for the first two feet so wetting the floor down is no problem.

-I've seen the hobby air system mentioned several times as the preferred affordable "pipe-in-the-fresh-air" system. A lot of the automotive chemicals need a system like this, not just a respirator mask. Make sure you place the unit somewhere upwind of your painting else you'll be piping in tainted air.

-DON'T use regular old box fans to ventilate. Any motor that is in the path of the fumes can potentially spark, and ignite- and BOOM goes your garage. I know there are plenty of people that get by with it, but I'm not chancing it. Either use explosion-proof motors, or use belt-and-pulley style fans so you can keep the motor isolated from the fumes. Same goes for heaters, lighting, switches, etc

I have no experience with this, but I've read that using regular furnace filters for input filtering can introduce fish-eye and other unpleasantries into your paint.

There's also a lot of discussion out there about whether a negative-flow or a positive flow is preferred, and how best to get the right flow direction (downdraft, etc) in a makeshift rig.

Lots to figure out!

 

[nick]

paint booth

one thing you could do to keep down the paint fumes, is to run your final exhaust duct into a barrel of water. it works really well as a filter. a couple of things that you could do to keep the floor clean is to buy yourself a roll of the tyvek house wrap and cut it to your floor size and tape it down to the floor. just pull it up and throw it away when it starts getting nasty. you could also get some liquid soap and spray it on the floor with a cheep spray gun , let it dry. to clean up , just wet the floor and the soap becomes soapy again and washes away the overspray.

 

[dkn1997]

for the booth, I would buy one of those party fold up tents that are available at most warehouse stores (bj's, sams, costco) this way, the framing is already done. you would just have to sheet down the sides.

 

[dodgecharger-fan]

your final exhaust duct into a barrel of water

I was thinking along the same line of this, but I honestly don't understand how the air would keep flowing. Wouldn't you need to be pushing it pretty hard to get it to bubble up through water?

 

[428]

Water Barrel

I remember seeing this somewhere a long time ago. The exhaust was about 6"-12" above the water so any particals would hit the water and stay cutting down on paint dust and fumes.
Is that what you're talking about?

I like the party tent idea, have to check that out.
An the Tyvek has a little more grip than poly for the floor without the static.

 

[rangerlayinrocker]

hey i will come help you build it, if ya paint my ranger. LOL Im a hard worker and i need some paint on my truck

 

[428]

Careful what you offer, hadn't painted in a while and someone elses ranger would be good practice.
Instead of fire and flames it might be more of a run and drip look.

Found some fans in Grainger but the pdf file won't load. Might be to big.

 

[rangerlayinrocker]

hey do you have a 220 outlet?? cause today i picked up 4 big blowers for a furnace but they are 220 volt and i have no use for em. if your interested i will take some pics of them and if you think you can use em you can have em

 

[428]

Post a pic, like to take a look. But most furnace blowers pull air over the motor to cool it.
Not good for flammables.

220 is not a problem.
Thanks for the offer.

 

[rangerlayinrocker]

yeah i just went out and looked at them and your right they do pull air over the motors. i would hate to see what a little spark and all the paint fumes would do unless something like a 4th of july display was wanted LOL oh well lol i knew i should have said no when the guy asked ifi wanted them, i just have a problem with turning down free stuff LOL

 

[nick]

you could use a belt driven squirrel cage type blower , like one out of a furnace. if you could get an explosion proof one, that would be the safest way to go. these blowers should move enough cfm to keep the air flowing through the water. the final duct would be under the water.

 

[Satatic]

Did you make the diagram of your garage? Cause those are really cool, i liked the little vise drawn on there on the bench.

 

[428]

Drawing details

A little slow at work sometimes so I just add a little here and there to it.
It's much easier to move things on paper, um, computer than picking it up.

I added casters to the work bench this weekend. I'm going to move it and swap it where the drill press and grinder are right now and see if it looks and works a little better.
The goal is to have nothing on the floor that doesn't have wheels or can be moved easily with hand trucks.
Gladiator wall cabinets should come in this week. Had to order.
Outbuilding for yard tools should be delivered Friday as well. Air compressor will go in it as well.