My $200 Paint Booth

Dean Jenkins

Promoted Users
Booth Side.jpg
Booth Fans.jpg
Exhaust Fan.jpg
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Booth Airflow.jpg

Really appreciate this forum! Already found lot's of great information here.
I thought I would post my ~$200 paint booth solution.

I have a 36' X 36' shop and want to DIY my restoration (1968 el Camino) paint in it. Only one bay, 12' X 22' is available. Chassis, parts, etc are in the rest.

Here are my priorities for the paint booth:
-Great paint job, without any dust, bugs, contaminants etc screwing up the paint job
-Not get overspray all over the shop
-Temporary. Easy to put up and take down. May use it again in the future.

So, I did a bunch of research and came up with this solution.

-Quictent 10'x20' Party Tent Gazebo Wedding Canopy with Removable Sidewalls. $115 on Amazon
-(3) Lasko 20" Box fans at Home Depot, $19 each = $57 total
-Rheem 20" X 20" X 1" furnace filters, 3 pack, $16
-Ram Board to cover the floor (I have a really nice Epoxy floor and don't want to get paint on it, if concrete, I could skip this) $$60 at Home Depot

I used 2 fans for input and taped the filters on them and mounted them in 7/16" OSB that I had laying around. I mounted the input fans ~ 5' high.
The Lasko fans move 2500 CFM each. Assuming a 30% loss with the filters on the input, I have 3500 CFM coming into the booth, of filtered air.
Output fan is at ground level and draws 2500 CFM, so I have positive pressure in the booth and air moves end-to-end and down.
I put the output right at the exterior overhead door and cut some OSB panels so only the exhaust fan area is exposed to outside. This is because I'm in the Northwest and painting in the winter, need to keep as much heat in the shop as possible.

Volume of the booth is 1900 ft/3 (10W X 20L X 9H) so my air turnover is less than one minute.
The booth is in no way "airtight" but since the input is greater than the outlet CFM, excess air just moves OUT through the seams and bottom.
I taped the corners just to hold it together and control airflow.
I will add some painters plastic to the visible side seam and tape it so I have an easy entry/exit point.

Attached pictures show the setup, and a simple airflow test with a lighter. Definite air movement the way I wanted!
I also did a "cigar test." Fired up a big stogey and blew smoke and it moved rapidly the way I wanted :)

I think this is going to work!

Yes, 10' wide is a little narrow for a whole car paint job. But, the legs of the tent angle outwards giving a floor width of 12'. A typical muscle car is ~7' wide and I can "nudge" the booth over (it is very light) a foot when I do each side, so that will give me ~4' of space when painting each side. I think that will work.

I post an update and pics when I start shooting. Looking forward to that and your comments!

Dean
 
Probably will work fairly decent for the very occasional use home booth. Having a room inside of a room as with most real booths & having double the positive pressure should really help. Interested to see how well you think it works in use as My company job is moving location & now changing their minds about me having a real paint booth as I was hoping for & will be loosing my work garage converted booth setup. Might need to have temp booth setup at work. May go back to plan B of curtain walls to my side of our partially enclosed carport & setup some intake side fans to compliment my triple 20" industrial wall fan setup.

You could also setup some sort of mist water hose setup outside of garage to help trap fumes.

Worst thing about those cheap fans is they really aren't a true 2500 cfm, a decent wind can reverse back through one.

Good luck & I agree with your choice of vehicle & drivetrain, though I'm biased on that one. LS/6 speed swapped my el camino back in 2002 before it was a trend, haven't regretted it.
 
Last month I painted the cab of my 54 F100 pickup in a similar home made "booth". Mine was set up in the driveway. The canopy was a 12 x 20. Made a removable panel on one end to drive the truck in/out. The rest of the panels were painted separately and went in/out of a fabricated 32" door. Used a furnace blower fan with filters for positive pressure and a pair of cheaper exhaust filters at the other end. My routine was to spray SPI reduced epoxy sealer then next day 3 coats SPI dark red color and 3 coats UV clear.
Here are some things I learned about the booth.
1. The exhausted over spray is substantial. The filters plug quickly. Will need a lot of them. Exhausted over spray escapes everywhere it can. If you have close neighbors (I don't) , you may hear from them.
2. I have lots of nibs. Most came from the canopy roof flexing due to the positive pressure and outside air flow.
3. Good lighting is a must.
4. Cleaned the floor before each day's session. I used 2 blue tarps.
5. The Breath Cool supplied air system worked well once I got used to it.
Good luck.
Bob
 
Home Depot sells coarse thick filters that are far better for exhaust. I can’t remember what they are called. More like booth exhaust filters so they don’t clog as easily.

Don
 
You may find that the cloud produced by over spray doesn't exit the booth fast enough.

Try to imagine the main air flow from the two box fans traveling directly to the single exhaust fan. The single exhaust fan will be overwhelmed and the excess air will move to the sides and begin heading back along the walls toward the inlet fans. The turbulence created will cause the over spray to circle in the booth until it eventually makes its way out.

My first attempt at a booth was to frame a dividing wall in my garage and cover it with plastic sheeting. I used a positive pressure set up similar to what you have but ended up removing the board under the garage door so that the cloud could get out faster. I simply raised or lowered the garage door to regulate the positive pressure in the booth. Eventually I added more intake fans and filters as well.

NOTE: I live on 7 acres in a very rural area.
 
Probably will work fairly decent for the very occasional use home booth. Having a room inside of a room as with most real booths & having double the positive pressure should really help. Interested to see how well you think it works in use as My company job is moving location & now changing their minds about me having a real paint booth as I was hoping for & will be loosing my work garage converted booth setup. Might need to have temp booth setup at work. May go back to plan B of curtain walls to my side of our partially enclosed carport & setup some intake side fans to compliment my triple 20" industrial wall fan setup.

You could also setup some sort of mist water hose setup outside of garage to help trap fumes.

Worst thing about those cheap fans is they really aren't a true 2500 cfm, a decent wind can reverse back through one.

Good luck & I agree with your choice of vehicle & drivetrain, though I'm biased on that one. LS/6 speed swapped my el camino back in 2002 before it was a trend, haven't regretted it.
Should be shooting first panel within a week. I'll post how it goes.
Glad you like the LS3/T56! I'm looking forward to seeing how it runs and drives. I have high expectations.
 
It will probably be ok for spraying a panel or two at a time but you may be overcome in a fog of overspray if you attempt to spray much more than that. DAMHIK!

Don
I think you are right. I'm planning on having all the panels off and doing them a few at a time. The shell will be the biggest piece of course, but even that should be manageable. It is an el Camino and I'm not painting the bed (will be LineX) so just shooting quarters, jambs and roof. We'll see how it goes. Fingers crossed.
 
You may find that the cloud produced by over spray doesn't exit the booth fast enough.

Try to imagine the main air flow from the two box fans traveling directly to the single exhaust fan. The single exhaust fan will be overwhelmed and the excess air will move to the sides and begin heading back along the walls toward the inlet fans. The turbulence created will cause the over spray to circle in the booth until it eventually makes its way out.

My first attempt at a booth was to frame a dividing wall in my garage and cover it with plastic sheeting. I used a positive pressure set up similar to what you have but ended up removing the board under the garage door so that the cloud could get out faster. I simply raised or lowered the garage door to regulate the positive pressure in the booth. Eventually I added more intake fans and filters as well.

NOTE: I live on 7 acres in a very rural area.
Thanks for the insight on your set up. I can add two more intake fans very easily if it turns out more airflow is needed. And can control exhaust the same way you did, with the garage door. I'm not worried about exhausted paint fumes. I'm rural as well.
 
Last month I painted the cab of my 54 F100 pickup in a similar home made "booth". Mine was set up in the driveway. The canopy was a 12 x 20. Made a removable panel on one end to drive the truck in/out. The rest of the panels were painted separately and went in/out of a fabricated 32" door. Used a furnace blower fan with filters for positive pressure and a pair of cheaper exhaust filters at the other end. My routine was to spray SPI reduced epoxy sealer then next day 3 coats SPI dark red color and 3 coats UV clear.
Here are some things I learned about the booth.
1. The exhausted over spray is substantial. The filters plug quickly. Will need a lot of them. Exhausted over spray escapes everywhere it can. If you have close neighbors (I don't) , you may hear from them.
2. I have lots of nibs. Most came from the canopy roof flexing due to the positive pressure and outside air flow.
3. Good lighting is a must.
4. Cleaned the floor before each day's session. I used 2 blue tarps.
5. The Breath Cool supplied air system worked well once I got used to it.
Good luck.
Bob
Thanks. That is helpful information. I'm planning to go over ceiling/walls/floor with a leaf blower before each session and let the fans run at least 30 minutes to move any dust etc. out before spraying. I'm not using any filter on the exhaust. Advantage of being rural. Luckily my shop lighting is great and the tent is translucent. It looks like I will have all the light I need.
 
Looking forward to seeing how this works out for you. I have 24 x26' shop with single two car style garage door and trying to figure out how to paint a car in it. Curious, are you painting a solid or metallic color?
 
I may suggest spraying water or even lacquer thinner & seeing what happens. Those are really some weak ass fans & not much surface area. I'd probably at the least have 2 out.
Spraying panels separately will really help you out in numerous ways for your situation.

Eh, got a 99'LS1 used in 2002', no such thing as an LS3 then. Wish there was. Point is no regrets other than could always use more power.
 
Looking forward to seeing how this works out for you. I have 24 x26' shop with single two car style garage door and trying to figure out how to paint a car in it. Curious, are you painting a solid or metallic color?
I'm spraying solid color and will not be doing the whole car at once, I will do groups of panels separately so overspray buildup should be minimal. It it was metallic, this probably wouldn't work as you have to do that all at once with full length spray etc.
 
I may suggest spraying water or even lacquer thinner & seeing what happens. Those are really some weak ass fans & not much surface area. I'd probably at the least have 2 out.
Spraying panels separately will really help you out in numerous ways for your situation.

Eh, got a 99'LS1 used in 2002', no such thing as an LS3 then. Wish there was. Point is no regrets other than could always use more power.
I'll be doing a test panel in a few days. Final car will have SS hood, so I'm spraying the stock flat hood as a test. We'll see how it goes. I can easily add more fans if needed. At $18 a pop, no big deal.
Here are my motor details if interested: https://www.gmperformancemotor.com/parts/19370411.html
495 Horse for under $8K, works for me ;)
 
OK. First spray in the $200 booth. I put SPI Epoxy primer (Black) on the underside of the hood (my "test" panel.) The booth worked great! Good air flow, no overspray hanging around, no explosions from the cheapo fans. All worked as planned. I sprayed 16 ounces of paint in about 15 minutes. I took the picture as soon as I put the gun down, you can see there is no "cloud" in the booth. I'm really happy with how it worked! There was some "swirling" as predicted. Surprisingly there is black paint on the intake filters and some on the intake back wall. But overall the airflow worked out and this setup gets my thumbs up to keep using :cool: (which is good since I had no backup plan.)
And as a side note, I'm totally digging my Devilbiss (Tekna) Pro-Lite and the DeKups system. Easy to use, easy to clean.
Also, the SPI rep told me that the Epoxy primer will work just fine for chassis, firewall, inner fenders etc. From what I'm seeing so far, I'm thinking he is right and I will go with that. I noted that the tech sheet said if you are doing this, to use a 4 hour induction time. Roger that.

1st spray.jpg
 
Work continues on my "test panel."

Got the top of the hood shot in epoxy primer

full epoxy.jpg


Of course, there are a few dents to fill in

dent 1.jpg


Do you ever want to cuss out the prior owner(s)? Seriously, you just had to drop something in the middle of the hood, on the body line. On a classic car! No problem on a 1985 Ford Grenada, but a 1968 el Camino??? Be careful for crying out loud. Serious challenge to get this prefect.

dent on body line.jpg


So, here it is with my best attempt at filling in with bondo and shaping. Took 3 layers and way too much time sanding . . .

Bondo.jpg


And then 1st go 'round with 2K primer and blocking and filling minor imperfections with glaze. I'm like 12 hours into this one panel. And this is just a test to see if I can even do this auto body and painting thing. And to think this panel looked straight before I started . . .

block and glaze.jpg


And here we are, final 2K primer coat before sealing and then base coat. Yeah, a little "tiger striping" on the 2K. Still trying to get the gun dialed in. Good thick coat but the edges of the fan were flashing. I'm sure it is just getting the pressure, fan, and fluid settings right. Better get my act together before base coat and DEFINITELY before clear.

final 2k.jpg


The whole goal of this "test panel" (I'm not using this hood, going to put SS hood on the car) is to LEARN. Have to keep reminding myself of that and I am definitely learning! Biggest lesson? This ain't easy . . . but it is doable. I'm hanging in there and having fun.
Better to be in the shop and dong this, than obsessing over the latest vote count. Can I get an amen? ;)
 
Pressure, fluid, and fan settings are important, but don't forget overlap. That is what causes striping and dry edges as much or more than anything else. Try overlapping your pass 75%. You may have to speed up a little when doing this.
 
Something else to check FIRST on an older hood or other structure with internal bracing is the condition of the sealant between bracing & skin. I've used commercial urethane caulk, but there is NVH sealant meant for these areas. If skin is flexing & sealant to bracing will improve that, you'll spend less time chasing spots.
 
Pressure, fluid, and fan settings are important, but don't forget overlap. That is what causes striping and dry edges as much or more than anything else. Try overlapping your pass 75%. You may have to speed up a little when doing this.
Thanks, I was overlapping, but probably not enough.
 
I think what will be interesting in regards to your booth will be with the clear. I painted a tailgate in my shop with the garage door partially up securing a cheap fan to pull out the fumes and such. This is more area than your booth. No problem with primers and basecoat, differently story with clear. Had a serious fog in there when spraying the clear. Good luck to you and please keep posting.
 
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