Paint Booth

[David H]

I will be using Stewart Systems and am building a 12' x 24' booth which will be inside a heated building on a epoxy coated cement floor. (I hope to be done painting before it gets cold here in Michigan this fall)

I purchased four 20" box fans and good quality 20" x 1" filters. I will use clear 6mil plastic to cover the booth.
I will enter and exit through the end of the booth with a large zippered door.

I purchased a FL4 gun, regulator, filters, large flow quick connects, respirator, new hoses, tyvec suit, etc. all per the Stewarts overview video. I plan on cooling the air between the pump and compressor tank a la Troy in his Stewart paint posts (thank you Troy!) I have plenty of air with my 5hp two stage compressor.

I should have plenty of light with the shop converted to high intensity 8' LED tubes in the fluorescent fixtures. I also have six 4' led shop lights to use ?vertically spaced in the booth.


Paint Booth questions:

1. What is your recommendation for air flow? Should I try for neutral pressure with two fans blowing in and two sucking air out? or?...

2. What to do with the floor? Just wet it when painting, or cover it with butcher paper, or?...

3. Things you would have done differently, or suggest I do.

4. Anyone need a paint booth when I'm done??

Thank you,

David

[TroyBranch]

I only sucked the air out. I had 2- 20" fans and only ran the one. I had the other ready to turn on as a back up. The booth cleared quickly. You could experiment, positive air in the booth will keep dirt out. It was never the booth for me though, it was the quality of the surface prep for the best results.

The key is to keep the floor fairly clean but more importantly doing an extremely good job at cleaning the surface before top coat. 3 tack rag runs min.

Make sure your booth is plenty strong to support the pressure. 2X4 was way better than conduit. Make sure you are using the proper paint filters for both incoming and exiting air.

[Daveembry]

I only sucked the air out. I had 2- 20" fans and only ran the one. I had the other ready to turn on as a back up. The booth cleared quickly. You could experiment, positive air in the booth will keep dirt out. It was never the booth for me though, it was the quality of the surface prep for the best results.

The key is to keep the floor fairly clean but more importantly doing an extremely good job at cleaning the surface before top coat. 3 tack rag runs min.

Make sure your booth is plenty strong to support the pressure. 2X4 was way better than conduit. Make sure you are using the proper paint filters for both incoming and exiting air.

Good advice. Another thing that helped me was to use a blower (like a yard blower) and I blew everything in the booth down very well first after wetting the floor (so the dust would stick to the wet floor). I did this with the exhaust fan on so it pulled dust out as well. This made a HUGE difference in the very fine dust that I was getting onto the horizontal surfaces. I did this just before I started spraying. (maybe 15-20 minutes before but I never turned off the exhaust fan). Tacking RIGHT before spraying like Troy says is a must.

[jmorrical]

Here's the paint booth I built. 25' X 12' X 8' with studs on 3' centers. Like others I am drawing air flow thru two filters on one end with two 20" box fans on the other end pulling air thru the booth. Cardboard and some ripped 2X4s were used to make a plenum to vent air outside. I thought I could simply staple the 6 Mil clear plastic to the studs, but I found the fan pressure pulled the plastic off some of the staples. I would have been better off with 2' on center on studs maybe. I fixed that by using a few runs of 3/4" plastic strap hangars you can buy in 100 ft length. That took some of the load off the plastic.

Lighting is four 8' 9000 Lumens LEDs overhead and two 8' florescent on the side walls. The lighting is great. I'll sell the lumber and lights when I'm done. Half of one end is a simple hinged door for easy access. Cant get that photo to orient correctly here. I chose to put in a zipper tape door for normal entry / exit. I'm ready to spray poly brush / spray and paint.

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[Daveembry]

Looks great. One suggestion for “positive pressure” booth with the plastic walls is to put the plastic on the outside of the studs and you won’t have to worry about them getting “sucked” off the 2x4’s. The heavy duty cardboard on the floors works well also and you can just throw away when done.

Here's the paint booth I built. 25' X 12' X 8' with studs on 3' centers. Like others I am drawing air flow thru two filters on one end with two 20" box fans on the other end pulling air thru the booth. Cardboard and some ripped 2X4s were used to make a plenum to vent air outside. I thought I could simply staple the 6 Mil clear plastic to the studs, but I found the fan pressure pulled the plastic off some of the staples. I would have been better off with 2' on center on studs maybe. I fixed that by using a few runs of 3/4" plastic strap hangars you can buy in 100 ft length. That took some of the load off the plastic.

Lighting is four 8' 9000 Lumens LEDs overhead and two 8' florescent on the side walls. The lighting is great. I'll sell the lumber and lights when I'm done. Half of one end is a simple hinged door for easy access. Cant get that photo to orient correctly here. I chose to put in a zipper tape door for normal entry / exit. I'm ready to spray poly brush / spray and paint.

uoes8gBUSCyT3IOcfyApNQ.jpg

v0uUPgrpQJirx5yskn8Qaw.jpg

hSLYKHhwRmyVUdxXhXIfkQ.jpg

y8YzMf+NShumqdvUYp66xw.jpg

[David H]

For my paint booth I ended up with a Costco car port that I extended with wooden pieces I turned on a lathe to fit inside the support tubes. Plastic sheeting glued with Stewarts glue to the outside of the tubes. One box fan with no filter on it worked great to pull the air out from one end and a large filter area on the other end of the booth to make a laminar flow. I fiddled around with the air flow and found the high merv filters I used for inflow were too restrictive and so added two more rows of less expensive higher flow filters.
Surprisingly (especially for a first time painter) the judges at Airventure really liked the paint job and made many positive comments about it. I went away with a Bronze Lindy!
David

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