Homemade spray booth

[bcrispin]

Just wanted to tell you that a fan installed at the top of the curtain as pictured will not remove much of the organic solvents in your spray cans. Those solvents are heavier than air and are leaking out slowly through the seams between the velcro strips. That's why it hasn't exploded when using these solvents. What amount does make it to the fan is pretty diluted with air. If the setup was used in a garage or basement the fan would have to be sparkless, ducted to the outside and mounted low to keep the fumes out of the room. The booth would also need to be completely sealed with a simple filter mounted high in the curtain to let in air and another in front of the fan to collect solvent droplets and particulate spray matter. This could be changed frequently and cheaply. Otherwise, when you open it to store it, most of the fumes would be released into the room. It should never be set up in a room where there are pilot lights, portable heaters, etc. Just thought this might help those wishing to do this inside.

[booman]

those are great tips also!
I wouldn't recommend using a booth indoors. The main purpose of a spray booth would be to reduce fume exposure to the person and to reduce debri on your sprayed work.
The only way it would work indoor is how bcrispin is describing. Where you would have to install a ventilation system to the outside with sparkless fans and some filters. This would be a great experiment if someone wants to try to do it.
I'm pretty happy working outside (except in the summer) but I would like to almost eliminate the debris problem.
I do have a question for you bcrispin:
1. would overspray particle that dry and fall back on your piece be considered debris? Maybe this is the reason I have tiny specs in my glossy finish.

I'm going to try and velcro every opening in the booth so hardly any air will escape and no debris will come in. I'll try some really glossy finishes and see if there still is some debris or if its perfectly smooth.

[bcrispin]

I'm pretty sure the tiny specs on your finish are caused by fine droplets of paint falling back on your surface. All booths have a controlled feet/min. movement of air that prevents the airborne droplets from settling back down. Car painters have told me that you can successfully paint a car in a garage as long as it's spotlessly clean and has enough air flow to prevent the paint in the air from resettling on the car. That's the main purpose of the controlled fans at each end. If you have no fan at all I think this will always be a problem. If you have a covered opening (to keep out dust) to let in air at the top side and a bilge fan (sparkless and water resistent) at the bottom it should, in theory, solve the problem. If you don't want to spend the $30 for the fan and you use latex paint you may be OK if the fan is strong enough to create suction, but make very sure the propellant is not flammable. A simple smoke test will tell you if you have sufficient air movement in the booth. Only trial and error, as you know, will finally show the best route to go. Good Luck.

[booman]

Thats great news! Now my new goal is to improve my spray booth with an afforadable & safe ventilation system for those smooth/glossy paint jobs. I'll start doing some research for those sparkless fans and filters so I can have a fan at the top and the bottom with filters so there is absolutely no debris in my booth.
Thanks for the information. I should probably do some reasearch in painting cars and laquer finish's.
If you decide to make your own spray booth, please post some pictures and some detail on how you did it.
Thanks again