Recirculating spray booth

[John Barncord]

Since my shop is completely underground, I have no easy access to the outside. I would like to build a spray booth down there, so it looks like I will be limited to a recirculating system. I see there are a number of companies that offer them commercially, but I cannot justify the cost. This leaves me with attempting to build my own. I'm wondering if anyone here has done this.

My first inclination is to simply draw air across a set of filters to tame overspray, leaving the exhaust to go back into the room. My finishes of choice are all water-based, so there is no fire hazard. I can wear a respirator, if necessary, to keep the VOC's at bay.

My garage is off limits for this type of thing since it's full of boats and cars.

Any thoughts on this?

[Jamie Buxton]

You might consider a whole-shop air cleaner like http://www.lagunatools.com/accessori...r-platinumaf_2 1400 cfm and $400 strikes me as pretty good. Rolling your own you'd need to buy a motor, a fan, a filter, a switch, and then build the enclosure.

I do a lot of HVLP spraying of waterbornes. I find I don't really need to worry about overspray. The finish turns to dry dust by the time it is two-three feet from the gun. The dust may hang in the air, which is why an air cleaner just might be what you need. That is, a real booth isn't necessary. Just the air cleaner should do you.

Here's a thread which shows my spray setup. http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthre...highlight=HVLP As you can see, there's no booth. The difference between my shop and yours is that I can open the doors to blow the airborne dust out of the shop.

[John Barncord]

Jamie,

I never thought of using a whole-shop scrubber for this. I automatically jumped onto the 'gotta-have-a-booth' bandwagon.

On the other hand, I already have a 3000cfm blower, filter media, and enough material to build a good semi-permanent booth.

You might consider a whole-shop air cleaner like http://www.lagunatools.com/accessori...r-platinumaf_2 1400 cfm and $400 strikes me as pretty good. Rolling your own you'd need to buy a motor, a fan, a filter, a switch, and then build the enclosure.

I do a lot of HVLP spraying of waterbornes. I find I don't really need to worry about overspray. The finish turns to dry dust by the time it is two-three feet from the gun. The dust may hang in the air, which is why an air cleaner just might be what you need. That is, a real booth isn't necessary. Just the air cleaner should do you.

Here's a thread which shows my spray setup. http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthre...highlight=HVLP As you can see, there's no booth. The difference between my shop and yours is that I can open the doors to blow the airborne dust out of the shop.

[Jeff Duncan]

I don't have any experience with the reticulating spray booths so can't comment on them. There does seem to be some misunderstanding going on here so I'll just throw my two cents in. First keep in mind that the idea of the booth is to remove the fumes from the air. The overspray gets caught up in the filters and the fumes go out the stack. If you remove the overspray but recirculate the air you'll keep most of the overspray out of the air, but you'll also concentrate the fumes without any fresh air entering. Water based while in some ways is a safer finish, is NOT safe to breathe. It is toxic and without introducing fresh air your going to have a room filled with fumes.

Wearing a respirator is also NOT an option. Again WB finishes are still toxic to breathe, there's a lot of bad stuff in there! You must wear a respirator always regardless of how good your booth is.

I highly recommend doing some homework on what's in the finishes your spraying before deciding which way to construct your booth. The idea that using a shop air filter is all you need to spray a finish is really not a sound plan. I think unfortunately a lot of guys out there confuse the term "water based" with being completely safe. Reading up on these finishes you'll find there's a lot of nasty stuff in those cans as well

good luck,
JeffD