Modelers, I’ve been wanting to build a paint booth of sorts for a long time. Right now, I have to haul all the associated equipment outside for each session.
The problem with a paint both is that in my current house, I have no way to vent to the outside. I do have a window in my room but opening it to vent in the warm months is out of the question. I live in the southeast US and we have flying cockroaches two and a half inches long. We don’t want them in the house.
Anyway, I was trying to think of another way to vent the booth. One idea I came up with was to terminate the vent over a bowl or “box” of water. The air would be pointing directly at the surface of the water and the “box” would have vents on the top. I’m thinking the water would catch most of the paint. However, I don’t think it would do much for catching the vapors and thus the odors.
Anyone have any other ideas for this type of situation?
You could cut out a board that would fit in the open window and cut a hole in it for the exhaust fan ducting to fit into. That way it will vent outside and yet nothing can come in as the window is sealed by the board. You could even put some fine screen material on the exit to keep anything from flying in when the exhaust fan was off.
Well, that’s true, but in addition to the roach problem, the window is on the side of the house with a carport. I think you can see the problem with that. [B)]
Put one of those dryer vent things on the exit of the ducting coming out of the house. That way the paint, etc will go downward.
The paint that comes out of the booth should be dry enough to not stick to anything anyhow.
If that is not possible then your only alternative is a spray booth like the ones Artograph sells like this:
Depending on how much space you have. You could try an old range hood.
A buddy of mine built a booth and used the self circulating range hood as the exhaust. He just changed the filters out. Went and found or made a Hepa filter to fit it.
The hood sucks the fumes up through the filters and vents it out the top vent on the hood.
I kinda balked at it. Until I saw it work. He sat there in the house and sprayed away while it was on and no fumes were detected. The best thing about this( to him anyway) was he didn’t have to make a hole or splice into his dryer vent tube to vent any fumes out.
That’s a tricky question, Dana. Whatever you do will have to have the same air flow volume or you’ll create back pressure in the hose that will prevent fumes from exiting it.
I don’t know if this will work or not, but you might give it a try. It’s a take-off on the paint can MikeV posted a couple of weeks ago. Take a large 5-gallon paint can (you can get them a Lowes for a couple of bucks) and stuff it with the filtration material from A/C filters. Run your exhaust hose into the side of the bucket, and mount your fan on top of the bucket (or the other side) so that it pulls air through the hose and filter and then out of the bucket. You could also use a second fan on the bucket, I guess. The trick is that if any positive pressure builds up in the bucket, your exhaust booth isn’t going to move any air out.
I haven’t tried this, and I don’t know if it will work or not. The fumes are chemical and not particulate, so in reality the only way to remove them is with an organic filter like on a respirator. Putting enough organic filters on there to get the volume of air flow you would need would get expensive in a hurry though.
Something that might help in that respect, and again this is untried, is activated charcoal. It removes chemicals from water so it might work on air. You can get it at any store that sells aquarium products.
