Garage painters, how do you control where your fresh air comes from?

If you raise a garage door, it also opens on the top.
filters across the bottom will just make the air come more from the top.
 
Brad J.;9123 said:
I would try making the whole thing a filter wall. Your making a huge wind tunnel. You want a steady even flow of air. You want to be able to take a 2' piece of masking paper hung in the middle of the room and watch it barely move. Not flutter and blow all over the place. Your moving an even volume of air at that point that still removes the overspray in the same manner. Also get rid of the furnace filters and use a regular tacky booth filter.
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I'll frame it up tonight and try that out. Im also going to open up a bigger hole at the other end of the garage for more filtered air to enter. I appreciate all the advice on this.

I just dont like when the completly clouds up when I am clearing. I know this somewhat unavoidable, but the more I can clear out faster the better I will feel about it.
 
All I know is, the less air I have circulating, the less dirt I get.
Also, I get a lot cleaner job if it's raining.
Kind of disprooves the notion that the dirt comes from the painter.:cool:
 
i have a very small space, unless i pull car out. there is still a shitload of cottonwood blowing around. i use a hydroponics exhaust fan mounted outside the room, charcoal filter inside with paint filters. low cfm so the fan can be on the whole time and control the exhaust smell, and not pull dust off of things. epa neighbor close. LOL. perfect for airbrushing. i only paint one piece at a time, never larger than a harley fender and when clearing i actually time coats with amount of exhaust, its made me clear things better, light to medium coat every fifteen minutes, only spraying in room about three minutes... room clears in about 10 minutes... if i have to clear more than one piece at a time i have access to a paint booth but i have to use it off hours or there is lots of sawdust...:0
 
I know it's pretty obvious, but I was told as a garage painter to soak the floor with a hose before I spray.
 
not good to do that especially in high temps. humidity can ruin things... barry advises against it...
 
that's interesting. because I don't remember seeing humidity listed on data sheets since I stopped working with lacquer. I have seen many people say that humidity has no effect on 2K paints
 
Ill wet the floor alittle if im doing a small part, most of the time I prefer to paper the floor with completes, then after im done wet sanding and polishing I just roll it all up and my floor is clean.

My reasons for this thread arent really to do with dirt as much as clean filter air, and lots of it. I understand that my garage is not a booth, but with it being 16x25 with a 8' ceiling it can be pretty close if I design the air system properly I would thing.
 
I use to wet the floor but it never made much difference.
If you put a humidity gage in your garage you'll notice that the humidity
won't change much with a wet floor as long as you have ventilation running.
I prefer to paint on rainy days when the humidity is 100%,
get my cleanest jobs that way.
I don't worry about humidity.
 
58mark;9135 said:
that's interesting. because I don't remember seeing humidity listed on data sheets since I stopped working with lacquer. I have seen many people say that humidity has no effect on 2K paints
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Think about this.
How does an activator work?

Cures three ways, extreme pressure, or moisture and air.

How do you get moisture into an activator with the amount of tin in a clear, primer or SS, the more tin, the faster it will cure. (called jell time)

Humidity is most likely the most calls, I get as far as when we figure out what the problem was caused by. (2 calls on this today)
With humidity, the problem starts with the base coat and wrong range of reducer.
(1 call on this today)
Second call would be temperature.
(3 calls on this today), last on 98 degrees and using a medium activator for 3/4 of a car, yea, it turned white in spots and streak's.

What some excitement? Pick a 90%+ humid day, wet the floor real good and use a 1.3 tip gun on the clear. Next day you may not buff out 2000 grit scratches, I get that call once a month in the summer.
 
Barryk;9189 said:
Think about this.
How does an activator work?

Cures three ways, extreme pressure, or moisture and air.

How do you get moisture into an activator with the amount of tin in a clear, primer or SS, the more tin, the faster it will cure. (called jell time)

Humidity is most likely the most calls, I get as far as when we figure out what the problem was caused by. (2 calls on this today)
With humidity, the problem starts with the base coat and wrong range of reducer.
(1 call on this today)
Second call would be temperature.
(3 calls on this today), last on 98 degrees and using a medium activator for 3/4 of a car, yea, it turned white in spots and streak's.

What some excitement? Pick a 90%+ humid day, wet the floor real good and use a 1.3 tip gun on the clear. Next day you may not buff out 2000 grit scratches, I get that call once a month in the summer.
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Remind me to never have a phone number only a digit different than yours .
 
Barryk;9189 said:
. Next day you may not buff out 2000 grit scratches, I get that call once a month in the summer.
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What do you mean???
Are you saying the clear will be to hard?
(is that even possible with Universal?):cool:
 
my guess is that it wouldn't be cured enough to cut.....try to buff it, looks fine...come in next day and those 2000 grit scratches are right back.

happened back when we tried matrix and they gave us multi panel clear to clear a complete assembled mopar with booth temp at 100 degrees and mild humidity. stuff was brand new to town at the time and took it at face value that these guys (the store selling it) knew what they were talking about and doing......they've been in the business a while......boy were we wrong. last time that happened.
 
Barryk;9013 said:
I have a 14" explosion proof fan in the wall about a foot up from your tool box, I picked that location because I thought I would need a second one in the left hand side. (did not)

For air control if spraying clear I raise the two car garage door about 1 inch off the floor and then the fan draws a lot of air, if shooting base I will raise the door about 6" off the floor and it draws less air.
Primers I just leave the door wide open. Seems to work fine for me.
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Lol.. sounds a lot like my set-up..
 
jcclark;9197 said:
What do you mean???
Are you saying the clear will be to hard?
(is that even possible with Universal?):cool:
Click to expand...

So hard it will not buff no matter what you do, only correction is 400 and re-clear, 99% of this type problem has been with Universal over the years because that is our biggest seller.
 
orangejuiced86;9122 said:
16x40.

I thought about making the entire portion under the bench a filter wall. Do you think it would help?
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Think about this. You are trying to stuff 7000 cubic feet of air per minute through less than a 5 square foot area. That is a recipe for high pressure in the booth, back pressure on the fan, and turbulence in the booth since there is no way all that air can get out.
You want to think of moving the air in a large block from the intake side to and through the exhaust side. In a positive pressure booth you would make the exhaust filter bank just slightly smaller than the intake filter bank. By the way filters have an air flow rating per sq. in. so you can get a pretty accurate calculation of how many intake and exhaust side filters you need.
 
My 3-car garage has three 8' wide 7' high doors. I'm planning to make a folding 4-section aluminum frame for the center door to hold 12 20x20 booth intake filters. It will fill the door frame outside the overhead door. I should be able to adjust air flow by raising or lowering the door. The back door is a 6'8" x 36" and I want to fit two 20-inch fans in a frame that fits that door as well. Not sure if it should be a positive or negative setup. Most commercial booths appear to be negative, pulling the air out of the booth and drawing air in through a filter wall.

I wasn't planning anything this elaborate -- my past projects have just been in an open garage with visquine on the walls but the last two years the bugs have gone crazy and I want to keep the swarms off the car when I'm painting. Brings up another question -- how bad is bug spray if it lands on the car? I don't want bugs in the paint but I don't want to substitute fisheyes.
 
When necessary I spray for bugs the night before I paint and I only spray outside the booth area. Some must get in there though because the bug problem is gone for the first few hours of the day.
 
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