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Re: Painting fans?

To: Trevor Boicey <tboicey@brit.ca>
Subject: Re: Painting fans?
From: Roger Gibbs <rgibbs@pacbell.net>
Date: Fri, 28 Aug 1998 17:19:53 +0000
Trevor Boicey wrote:
> 
snipped message about blowing in vs sucking out

>   It could indeed be the wrong direction, but in the past
> a friend of mine tried the fan pointing out and had
> a serious problem.
> 
It is true that most (nearly all) commercial booths exhaust the air. However, 
there are 
alternative approaches.  If you go to 
http://www.horizonweb.com/wwwboard/Spray_101/wwwboard.html
and search a bit you will come across a description of the author's booth 
(sprays high 
end show cars).  He built a home spray booth which blew air in.  His experience 
was that 
with a home unit, exhausting the air tended to creat many sources of dust - 
kind of hard 
to build a hermetically sealed home garage.  Some benefits - he claims better 
dust 
control plus you don't need an explosion proof fan/motor.

>   If I used an old furnace fan with a few furnace filters blowing
> air out, could I expect to get all the paint out of
> the exhaust air?

You would be exposing the furnace fan motor (not explosion proof) to the 
overspray, 
potentially dangerous.
> 
>   I worry about painting all my neighbourhood blue. (including
> my own house and other cars!)

Some of the other factors to consider : your health - auto paints seem to range 
from 
mildly dangerous to outright deadly.  Some of the two part paints (Imron, etc) 
and most  
of the hardner activated paints (quite common for the clear coat of a base coat 
/ clear 
coat system) release isocyinates - dangerous to breath dangerous to exposed 
skin also.  I 
don't want to sound like a nag, just make sure that you make an informed 
decision as to 
the risks you are willing to take.

I have painted a few cars at home in the past and I plan to do another in the 
near 
future.  Here are a few thoughts:

a. I would go for a blow in system
b. Clean, clean, clean the garage.  Use compressed air and or a leaf blower all 
over 
(ceiling & joists) to try to dislodge any dust.  Clean again.
c. Staple plastic sheeting to the walls.
d. Have plenty of lighting, consider bringing in temporary lights placed about 
sholder 
hight
e. Dampen the floor before painting
f. Ask your paint supplier about using lacquer, seems to be out of vogue these 
days but 
has several important advantages for the home sprayer (easy to repair errors, 
not very 
sensitive to dust) and some disadvatages (more labor intensive, not as durable, 
needs to 
be periodically rebuffed)
g. If your compressor is slightly undersized you would benefit from running the 
output of 
the compressor through a length or two of 8 to 10 foot metal pipe and then to a 
water 
separator.

Good luck.

-Roger


ps: Oh yeah, the address above talks about a video that he sells for about 
$30.00.  I 
plan to buy one soon, sounds like a good deal.

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