I'm building a spray booth

[seeker589]

I am building a spray-booth area thingie.

I really need a source for exhaust fans that are recommended for painting. More explicitly - sealed ones with no exposed sparks - chemical fire in a house is bad.

I need two of them - one for my work area and one for the spray area.

Any help would be great.

Thanks

[mikemodeler]

To add to Lee's post, there has been much written/debated here about the type of motor needed to build a safe spray booth.

The Grainger folks have the correct type of motor to keep you safe. They ain't cheap but being blown up or having a house fire isn't either!

Show us your booth when you get it done!

[crazyjim]

Yeah. Let's see what you got and plese be specific about the motor.

[Klaus]

Download the book written by Mark S. Gustavson and Robert A. Wick, and take a look at the info starting on page 145. There is a list of Grainger blowers on page 154.

"How To Build Championship Scale Vehicles, Construction Considerations of Building Championship-Caliber Models."

Feel free to contact me with any questions.

Klaus

Edited May 13, 2011 by Klaus

[Aaronw]

This is the blower I bought, my booth is 24" wide, by 16" tall.

http://www.grainger.com/Grainger/DAYTON-PSC-Blower-1TDR7

I was quite happy with my purchase and Grainger's service. Also be aware that most of the blowers do not come with a cord, you will have to order that seperately.

If you search you will find paint booths have been beaten to death, so I'm only going to make two other comments.

The first is don't be cheap, figure out which blower you need and get it, expect to spend $100-200 just for the blower. A good blower will last you for many, many years. Trying to save yourself $25-30 by getting something less isn't worth it, as it will probably annoy you everytime you paint for many, many years.

The other is you don't need a fan rated as "explosion proof", that is a very specific requirement (full size drive your car in paint booth, venting a fuel bunker etc) and those are very expensive (usually start around $1000).

If you look at commercial hobby booths almost all of them use a shaded pole blower.

Edited May 13, 2011 by Aaronw

[seeker589]

Thank you for all of your replies.

The example given for the Grainger sourced fan seems like someting I would be looking for.

I would love to see examples of other people's painting fume/odor removal systems.

[crazyjim]

Aaron - does the square part of that blower mount to the back of the spray booth? How do you attach a 4" vent hose to it?

[Aaronw]

Aaron - does the square part of that blower mount to the back of the spray booth? How do you attach a 4" vent hose to it?

The square part is the exhaust, it bolts on sideways and air is drwan through the round hole in the side. When I get home I can post some photos of the booth that show it mounted.

[mikemodeler]

Tim,

To Aaron's point, when you consider the cost of that blower motor and engineering it to fit your booth, it might be a good idea to compare costs to a ready built booth. Pace is one of several that advertise in the hobby mags and several members here have raved about them.

Despite my handy skills and general frugality, I am seriously thinking about getting a Pace (or similar) booth just because I can literally plug it in and be painting in a matter of minutes as opposed to building one in hours or days!

Best of luck and show us what you got!

[Aaronw]

Tim,

To Aaron's point, when you consider the cost of that blower motor and engineering it to fit your booth, it might be a good idea to compare costs to a ready built booth. Pace is one of several that advertise in the hobby mags and several members here have raved about them.

Despite my handy skills and general frugality, I am seriously thinking about getting a Pace (or similar) booth just because I can literally plug it in and be painting in a matter of minutes as opposed to building one in hours or days!

Best of luck and show us what you got!

The Pace booths look good, I was about to buy one myself, but when I started to price materials I found I could save myself a fair bit of money. My booth is a little bigger than the Pace Super mini ($335) with a larger blower and I did it for about $200. If I didn't already own a lot of wood working tools, then by the time I got a drill, skill saw and sabre saw my savings would have gone away.

It took me about 8 hours to build mine, which is a consideration since sometimes we do have more money than time.

Edited May 13, 2011 by Aaronw

[Aaronw]

Jim, here is my booth.

[crazyjim]

Thanks for the pics, Aaron. Looks like a premier unit. Do you vent to the outside? I've never seen square vent tubing or sheet metal. Will you need to fabricate a flange to take the square to round? Or is something already made?

[Aaronw]

Thanks for the pics, Aaron. Looks like a premier unit. Do you vent to the outside? I've never seen square vent tubing or sheet metal. Will you need to fabricate a flange to take the square to round? Or is something already made?

They do make square to round adaptors but I haven't got as far as running ducting. A bear broke into my garage shortly after I finished the booth and really made a mess of the place. It has been something of a disorganized mess since then, so for the moment it has been working quite well just to set it up right by the garage door and blow the exhaust outside. The normal daytime breeze carries the fumes away from, not back into the garage (the nighttime breeze is not so thoughtful, but the humidity usually comes up at night making painting iffy anyway). It is way better than my old lay some newspaper on the ground method.

[crazyjim]

A BEAR?!?! You mean like a grizzly bear? Thanks for the info on the fan. I'll have to look closer at Grainger for that adapter. I have a bathroom exhaust fan connected now and am thinking of upgrading to either a fan like yours or a Pace unit. Decisions. Decisions. Decisions.

[Aaronw]

No more grizzlys in California, but we have lots of black bears. They are actually pretty mellow bears, kind of like giant dogs, but they can reach 400-500lbs and have big teeth and claws so you don't want to make them angry. We were baffled at first since we don't have food in the garage, but then we discovered the squirrels had been involved. We found boxes stuffed with acorns, and black bears like acorns.

The squirrels started a car fire last year too. Poor guy had his car parked all winter, he took it out in the spring and it caught on fire. After we put the fire out we were looking for the cause and found the space between the exhaust manifold and the heat shield was packed with acorns. The acorns caught fire and apparently burned through a fuel line.

Then there was the skunk that went under the dishwasher, my wife thought it was a mouse under there so she started wacking the side of the dishwasher to scare it out... she figured out it wasn't a mouse real quick.

Nature may look cute but looks are deceiving.

Edited May 14, 2011 by Aaronw