Home made paint booth
 

Well I thought I would share the paint booth that I made in in my back yard this weekend for those who do their own paint work. I started out with a roll of plastic that I had laying around and covered a section of ground where I wanted to set up the booth. Just a standard 4 mil clear plastic. I used bricks that were left over from my dads house to hold down the edges. I bought a party tent offline on ebay for $500 that came with the full metal pipe frame and all canvas for setup. The tent was a 32'x16'which is a little large but I wanted to be able to paint my 25'seafari and the race hull in one day. They sell smaller ones for less that would do well for 20 hulls that would be easier to manage but even as large as this one was we set it up with 2 people and a kid. We put the frame together and then mounted the canvas on it before we stood it up and placed the legs on to make it more manageable. After we got it up we placed the sides on which had nice clear windows in it to provide light to paint by so I didn't have to mess with hooking up explosion proof lights inside of the booth. It was plenty bright to see to paint with just the sunlight that passed threw the canvas and windows. Once the tent was all the way up and tied off to stakes to the ground we took 5 strips of 3' wide conveyor belt from my work and laid them on top of the plastic on the floor so that the plastic would not move around as much while painting. We bought 4 $10 box fans form lowes to install in the back of the tent for ventilation. They were put together in a frame and then put on a rack so that they would mount up high in the back wall. We cut the canvas open and installed the fans in the wall and sealed the unit off with tape. They provide plenty of air to keep positive pressure in the tent so no grit and trash gets in. The fans are 3 speed and on high they swell the tent sides out well. It took over half the day to build it and set it up but like many other things it take longer the first time around. I believe it could be set up in 4 hours now that we have done it once. It seemed to work very well and was all done for around $700 bucks total. I purchased a supplied air respirator to use while painting it the booth that has an air pump and a supplied air hood. The air ducts in a 3/4" air line that has a home make air cooler in line of the supply line. We took a tub and a coil of copper tubing that was coiled up about 6 circular rotations and installed fittings on both ends and put it inline on the hood supply line inside of the tub. Filled the tub with ice and water so that the ambient temp air would pass threw the chest and cool the supply air down. Painting in a enclosed booth with a tyvex suit on will get hot quick but with the chilled air going in the hood and down threw the suit it was not bad at all. Here is some pics of the booth set up, I will try to get some pics of the air chiller unit. After painting in the open air several times, it is nice to be able to control the dust and bugs that seem to like flying into the fresh sprayed paint. Any of you guys that are considering painting you hulls, this is a cheep and easy way to do it.

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Where are the canapés?

Good Job!

In FLA. this would not last through 1 summer storm LOL.

Very nice!

That's an impressive paint booth Friz! Good ideas on the windows and supply air cooler! A friend of mine that's a professional auto restoration guy built a paint booth in one of the 5 bays in a metal building behind his house, and he had to line the walls with florescent lights to get it bright enough to do good paint work!

Do you have any problems with the fans blowing in bugs or dust? I think my friend, who is a serious perfectionist, set up the fans to pull air out, and used a bunch of furnace filters for the air intake, but I believe he still wets down the filters and floor before painting to minimize dust problems.

pleated filters on the air intake side and you are ready to rock and roll,,,, of course after you push the car out you can have a party!!!!

The fans did have filters on them, the picture was token before I mounted them and sealed them off. I used standard 20x20" house air return filters and placed one over each fan, then used tape to seal them to the frame. Also we let the fans pull air and push it into the tent so that it would remain under positive pressure. The air was filtered before going threw the fan then the pressure inside of the tent keep any dust or bugs out. If it pulled air there are to many seams on the tent that would suck stuff in. Even with the seams the fans would keep the tent sides pushed out and all the seams had air pushing out of them so there was no back flow of dirty air. I don't have a pic of them installed prior to paint but found this one when we were testing the unit:

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We don't have it as bad here but I will be taking it down today to prevent it from getting tore up. The forecast has scattered thunder storms in the area tonight so I need to get it boxed up this afternoon. It defiantly is not a long term deal but works good as a temporary unit for doing quick spray jobs.

Aint no canapés at this party, just some deadly voc's. They take you mind places!

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Some pictures of the car once sprayed, it is Hot Rods Hugger Orange. It is an two part urethane that has flatting agent mixed in to give it that old school matted look. Didn't want a gloss job this time, trying something new, think I like it. I defiantly dose not show the minor imperfections as bad. Also some pics of the suit I sprayed it in to keep the voc's out of my head. It was hot but manageable with the cool air supplied flowing threw the ice chest coling device I made for the supply line.

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