Home Paint Booth Questions

jpearson · jpearson's Garage

I am putting together a home paint booth to paint my car. My booth will be outside on a large RV parking area in my back yard. This way my two car garage won't be out of service for several months - need to keep my wife happy.
I am going to build the booth in one of those temporary garage tents. I have two questions (right now) for you experienced guys:

1. Is 10x15 ft enough space to paint a completely disassembled (fenders, doors, etc are all currently off) 911? The body of the car is just over 5 feet at its widest point, this would leave just a couple feet on each side. I could put the car on dollys.
2. What are the best lighting options. Are there any cheap and bright lights that are safe to use inside the booth? I will be building some type of plastic sheeting booth inside the tent so I could put a fluorescent light outside the painting booth but inside the tent however it would easier if there where free standing lights that where safe to use in the booth.

Any thoughts are welcome, however, I am set on doing it myself (I really just want to be able to say I painted it) and there are no rental booths available so we can skip those debates. I am in the early planning stages - I hope to be shooting in a booth in 2 months or so.
Thanks

962porsche · 04:31 AM

1st and for most you have to think about air flow in and out .
to move the proper amount of air you would need about 4 to 6 big box fans on one side and then you could use filters some thing like superflow blue filters for the intake side .
you will need two times the size for the intake side than you will want to have for the exhaust side of the booth .
any lighting that is not explosion proof you run a risk of blowing your ass up !!!!!!
the down side to that is the cost if that type of lighting . you can use fluorescent lights but like i said you could blow your ass sky high . you would want 6 lights on each side of the car 3 footers should do ? and two on each end of the booth . as you know the more lighting the better !
the trick is to get the over spray out as fast as you can !

the car tents i think your talking about should be fine size wise ? we use them to sand blast the cars at my shop i think thre 15 X25 feet .

timmy2 · timmy2's Garage

Check Craigslist in your area for someone renting out their paint booth. With the economy the way it is, there are a more than a few in my area.
For what you will spend on materials and effort to build, you can rent a booth and have the car moved there and brought back home.

78SCRSMAN · 78SCRSMAN's Garage

I did mine in my garage. You can check my thread at the bottom, it's on page one or two with pics of how I did it. Basically I covered everything inside the garage with plastic and put five box fans under the door. I have a man door at the rear and made a frame that I stapled filters to for the intake. I also put filters against the fans while they were on. Worked like a charm. Even though I had the whole garage to work with, I still painted the body on one day and the rest of the parts the next. You really want as much space to move around as possible. You don't want to bump into a part you just painted!

hemeoncdoc · hemeoncdoc's Garage

Is there a concern about explosion from the box fans used to exhaust the overspray? I am aware of "explosion proof" fans but the cost is substantial.

962porsche · 07-25-2012, 09:25 AM

with out the proper equipment yes you can blow your ass sky high ! that is lighting fans and a like .
how ever in my younger years i painted in my garage using 5 to 7 big box fans and with fluorescent lights down the walls and over head . i painted that way at least once or twice a week with out blowing my self of my garage up . now i'm not going to say you never will but the chance you will is very very slim . when i did it it was a lacquer paints that are much more volatile than todays paints .

hemeoncdoc · hemeoncdoc's Garage

I dont want to hijack this thread, but it's relevant. Pardon my ignorance, but is there a reason to use fan to exhaust overspray as opposed to fans on the intake side? My concern in a home spray booth would be the lack of sealed walls etc that may allow entry of dust etc. in a "suction" environment as opposed to a "pressurized" environment. It would also put the fans out of the combustible airstream.

962porsche · 07-26-2012, 06:27 AM

there are some good reasons why you use them to extract the over spray .
the 1st is air movement . you want to pull the air thru your spray area not try to push in thru .
the other is even with using filters if you have the air blowing in you will be blowing unwanted air onto your paint work . this causes many problems the 1st of which is if there is more air blowing on one area of the wet finish than another it will not be flashing off at the same rate . the other is dust , bugs and so on . do you want that crap blowing or could be blowing across your fresh paint ? bug and dust will find it very hard to fly thru a fan up stream . even using 5 to 7 box fans you will not get all that much air movement as you would with a spray booth . so you should not really be pulling dust in from other areas . if you have a area were you think you will be getting dust from out side in your spray area i would use plastic sheeting and cover the walls and make a clean spray area . i would tend to do that any way .

jpearson · jpearson's Garage

It seems like there are pros and cons both ways and in order to achieve a really great set-up a large outlay of cash would be required. At this point my plan is to error on the side of positive pressure. My plan is to have 4 or 5 box fans with filters pushing air in. I don't think I'll use any outlet fans but will have several of the 20 inch heater filters to allow for easy outflow.
I am concerned that running a negative pressure I would pull too much dust and crap into the booth through the seams - likely more than I would push in through the filters but I could be wrong.

962porsche · 07-31-2012, 07:17 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jpearson

It seems like there are pros and cons both ways and in order to achieve a really great set-up a large outlay of cash would be required. At this point my plan is to error on the side of positive pressure. My plan is to have 4 or 5 box fans with filters pushing air in. I don't think I'll use any outlet fans but will have several of the 20 inch heater filters to allow for easy outflow.
I am concerned that running a negative pressure I would pull too much dust and crap into the booth through the seams - likely more than I would push in through the filters but I could be wrong.

it will not work !