Home made paint booth

[flyingfrizzle]

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.