I am in need of a spray booth for spraying small-ish parts in my garage. I'm mostly concerned with controlling dust. And I'm curious if anybody out there has come up with a creative solution?

I'll be spraying primer and clear coat, and the parts are ~2'x2', or smaller.

I'm playing with the idea of creating a down draft setup. My thought is to blow air in through the top (filtered), and out the bottom, also through a filter. I happen to have a vinyl curtain with track that I purchased awhile ago but never put up, so I'll use that to separate the "booth" from the rest of the shop.

I won't be exhausting outside. I live in Minnesota and make-up air would be an issue. I don't spray a lot, but I need to improve my results.

If you're using 2K paints in a positive pressure booth and not exhausting outside then you're running a very high risk of poisoning anyone else in the garage, including yourself when you come out of the booth and remove your mask.

I've made a 4x6x8 one,2x frame with plastic.I have a roof vent and a doggy door for air in through furnace filters.Couldn't have done it without the vent though.

NFT5 wrote:If you're using 2K paints in a positive pressure booth and not exhausting outside then you're running a very high risk of poisoning anyone else in the garage, including yourself when you come out of the booth and remove your mask.

https://globalfinishing.com/2019/01/29/ ... dangerous/

Doright wrote:

NFT5 wrote:If you're using 2K paints in a positive pressure booth and not exhausting outside then you're running a very high risk of poisoning anyone else in the garage, including yourself when you come out of the booth and remove your mask.

https://globalfinishing.com/2019/01/29/ ... dangerous/

I hate it when threads get hijacked.

I believe in common sense, and it is common sense to leave the garage when there are fumes. It's common sense to not take my mask off while I'm in the garage. I keep my mask on while cleaning my gun, and I take it off once I exit the garage. Like I said, it seems like common sense. So who would do anything else?

If you guys want to talk about safety, why not talk about the danger of setting up grossly inadequate ventilation and assuming you're suddenly safe? Most people have no idea how little air their exhaust fan is moving, or how much air flow they actually need to properly ventilate their shop to clear the fumes. If they have a negative pressure booth, then there the volume of air you need to move is reduced, but I'd bet most home setups are woefully inadequate in the ventilation department.

Or prove me wrong? Show me how you make a spray booth in your garage that controls dust and evacuates all the fumes....and is not a professional spray booth?

I use those in line vent fans you find at the pot growing stores,6" is almost 400 cfm.A small 4x6x8 booth is emptied pretty quick.You could open the man door and run a hose through.

DsKnees wrote:


Or prove me wrong? Show me how you make a spray booth in your garage that controls dust and evacuates all the fumes....and is not a professional spray booth?

chill out. sit back and read around before jumping to conclusions. this isnt the first time this topic has been discussed.

spray booths dont control dust. thats on the person working in the spray booth.

evacuating all of the fumes. hhhmmm... filtered intake air filtered exhaust air. figure out how many CFMs required on your own.

DsKnees wrote:

Doright wrote:

NFT5 wrote:If you're using 2K paints in a positive pressure booth and not exhausting outside then you're running a very high risk of poisoning anyone else in the garage, including yourself when you come out of the booth and remove your mask.

https://globalfinishing.com/2019/01/29/ ... dangerous/

I hate it when threads get hijacked.

I believe in common sense, and it is common sense to leave the garage when there are fumes. It's common sense to not take my mask off while I'm in the garage. I keep my mask on while cleaning my gun, and I take it off once I exit the garage. Like I said, it seems like common sense. So who would do anything else?

This is not a thread hi jack, Common sense is Highly UNCOMMON! by the way.

the truth is you have no idea what a Paint booth is or what it is used for or what its primary purpose is for! It is not to keep dust out of paint Its #1 Its main purpose is to control Paint over spray and Fumes Period. IT IS NOT A CLEAN ROOM it is not free of Dust. Its to control over spray and Fumes period. isocyanate compounds are extremely dangerous people can be sensitized in a single exposure or over many decades no one knows why or how one person becomes sensitized in a single exposure or why it takes another exposure over many years but it does happen it can and does kill.
If you are planning this in a garage that is attached to a home its possible too to expose the whole home to the fumes causing exposure to any one else that lives in the home.

I doubt seriously you even looked at the link I posted.

You original post said you did not want to evacuate air out side do to extreme climate where you live, You said "I won't be exhausting outside. I live in Minnesota and make-up air would be an issue." You said that, Too that I would ask where is your common sense ?

Isocyntes are NOT just breathed they are absorbed though the skin and eyes, ever wonder why real painters are using those whole body suits and full helmets in commercial shops? seen on You tube They are not just to look cool! Do some real research know what you wanna play with.

Here is a small paint booth that uses activated Carbon exhaust filters to do what you wanna do by the way:
https://marathonspraybooths.com/product ... th-spb-30/

Painting is NOT a cheap Hobby get the idea of cheaper out of your head that you can do it cheaper than a Pro shop.
Yes AFTER you have all the correct equipment tools and supply's ya you can do it cheaper BUT getting their is a long road, By that time its time to start making money recouping the costs by charging your customers those costs that you absorbed obtaining the required tools and equipment to get to that point.

I own and operate a real commercial paint booth, I might know a little about what I am talking about. Most all home built paint booths built are built wrong as the builder has no idea why they need or what they are actually trying to replicate. Most turn out to be nothing more than Wind tunnels with flat spots. Do some real research this subject has been beat to death on this web sight a search will come up with many discusions on the topic, study the designs of real Paint booths and the safety equipment that is designed into them in the end you'll discover it will be hard to save anything over buying one of the commercially available booths when you add in the costs of failed attempts to design your own but please feel free to try.

Thanks Dennis. You pretty much said everything that I had in mind, but with more passion.

DsKnees, I hate it when threads get hijacked, too. But I wasn't hijacking, in fact responding to what you'd said in your first post, viz.:

DsKnees wrote:I won't be exhausting outside. I live in Minnesota and make-up air would be an issue.

I jumped on the issue of positive pressure without an exhaust because it's so important and I felt you were putting the cart before the horse. Peoples' lives surely rank above a few specks of dust that can be denibbed and made to disappear.

Planning a new paint booth is a big exercise. I've done it and I'm in the process of doing it again at the moment. The very first consideration is "why" and the answer to that is safety. Safety for yourself as the operator inside the booth and safety for others who may be in the immediate, or, in fact, nearby vicinity. I used to have a shop and years ago, when we changed from acrylic to 2K paints, our safety standards were simply not good enough. Result was that I ended up with isocyanate exposure. Let me just say it's like having emphysema and asthma all at once....for about a year. It's not fun and I was lucky and recovered. Some don't.

The next is "how big?" and that's usually decided by your needs and available space. The third is "what configuration?". We'll leave downdraught (full and side) to the pro shops and those who can afford it, which leaves cross or end draught and semi-downdraught. What you are proposing is essentially a semi-downdraught. Good configuration and, if done right, is capable of having outstanding work quality done in one.

Again, to some extent determined by needs but budget also becomes a consideration and it's usually at this point that the wheels fall off. Priorities get out of order and cost becomes more important than the safety aspect. Many people seem to forget that apart from the risk of breathing in flakes of aluminium or mica and the risk of serious illness and/or death from isocyanate poisoning, that the vapours in a spray booth are highly inflammable. One spark and Boom! Yet I constantly see people spruiking about their new home spray booth with sheet plastic walls - one of the best generators of static electricity. Fans are grossly inadequate for the task of moving the air at even the minimum regulated rates and positive pressure booths are rampant.

Digressing for just a moment, it's interesting to see the different emphases in OH&S and pollution control between North America and here in Australia. We have no legislation controlling paint emissions, so VOCs don't matter to us and HVLP guns are rarely used by professional painters who generally prefer the more efficient RP style. But booths get an annual inspection to ensure that they operate correctly, are not positive pressure (highly illegal) and that exhaust flues are the required 3 metres above the highest point on a roof, no matter how far away that point is. So, our legislation is aimed more at looking after the people than the environment. My point of view is coloured somewhat by this and my own experience. I'm not the Booth Police - you do what you like; I'm only here to give you information that I think might be relevant and/or important. If I save your life by convincing you that I am right and the unknown on Facebook doesn't have a clue then that's a bonus.

DsKnees wrote:If you guys want to talk about safety, why not talk about the danger of setting up grossly inadequate ventilation and assuming you're suddenly safe?

Believe me, we do, regularly.

DsKnees wrote:If they have a negative pressure booth, then there the volume of air you need to move is reduced, but I'd bet most home setups are woefully inadequate in the ventilation department.

The volume of air that needs to be moved is determined by the cross section of the area that it needs to move through. So, in a full downdraught booth that cross section is the length times the width, which is much more than in an end draught booth where the cross section is the width times the height. Negative or positive pressure has nothing to do with it.

However, you are 100% correct about most home setups being woefully inadequate.

DsKnees wrote:Or prove me wrong? Show me how you make a spray booth in your garage that controls dust and evacuates all the fumes....and is not a professional spray booth?

Love a challenge.

Here's a booth I built, in my shop, because we couldn't fit a standard commercial booth. Simple end draught but passed annual flow rate inspections every year and negative pressure, of course. I used to get comments from the Axalta rep on every visit about how clean my jobs were, compared to other shops that had, supposedly much more sophisticated (and expensive) paint booths. Panel walls are fire retardant foam filled, brick complies as non-flammable and the suspended ceiling tiles are also fire retardant.



I've sold that business and am building a new workshop at home which will include a paint booth, slightly larger than the one pictured. Similar panel walls and also panelled ceiling. The exhaust will be at floor level and intakes will be in the ceiling at the opposite end, so an end, semi downdraught design. Flue will be external and comply fully with our legislation. I'm looking for around 16,000 cubic metres per hour fans capacity and the exhaust will incorporate a water wash to reduce the fumes and potential overspray emissions and keep the neighbours happy. Budget around $5000.

There have been lots of members here who have had needs similar to yours. Try a search using keywords like small booth or small parts booth. One that comes to mind is a member called "simso" who paints guitars. Have a look at his posts and I know there are some photos as well.