Critical Things to Know before Buying a Paint Booth
If your manufacturer, woodworker, fabricator, or in general evaluating a paint booth there will be a variety of important things that you will evaluate in your consideration of purchasing a paint booth. However, having a pew preliminary pieces of information can help you determine whether it makes sense to further evaluate adding a paint booth to your facility. This article will cover the critical things to know before buying a paint booth and things that you should consider to ensure it makes sense for you.
Factor 1-Do you need a paint booth
While there can be a lot involved in determining whether or not you truly need a paint booth, as a general rule if you are spraying coatings inside you will require a paint booth. While you may evaluate other options, ultimately a paint booth will provide the safest and often lowest cost option as it will often keep your insurance rates lower and limit the chance of any issues occurring with safety organizations like OSHA, NFPA, or others as a general rule if your spraying you should have a paint booth.
Factor 2 – The size of Your Products
When you go to select a paint booth you ultimately usually want to keep the overall size of the paint booth as small as reasonably possible for a given product that you paint. For a cross draft paint booth, the critical dimensions to keep small are the width and height of the booth, while for a downdraft paint booth the width and length of the booth are more important to minimize. While keeping the booths overall size small is important, you also want to ensure that you leave enough space for the painter to be able to effectively perform their work. As a general rule of thumb, this means that you need to have 3 to 5 feet of space on any given side of the product. It can also be helpful to consider the future needs of your company, because you may want to purchase a larger booth initially based on future products that will be bigger in size.
Factor 3 – The size of your shop
A third critical factor to consider is the overall size of your facility. The size of your facility will matter because a paint booth removes significant volumes of air. Specifically, paint booths air removal rates are listed in cubic feet of air per minute. To know whether or not a particular paint booth size will have significant effects on your building need to be able to know the length width and height of your building. With this information in hand you can calculate how long a paint booth will run before removing all your air and better determine if there will be issues due to negative pressure. For further guidance on these calculations you can refer to this article here.
Factor 4 – Gas Supply (If Needed)
If you will need an air make up unit for a paint booth you will need to know how many btu’s of gas your gas company can provide. Air Make up units are used to replace the air removed by the paint booth and/or to supply heat to a paint booth to enable baking of your paint to speed up production. While you can also feed a paint booth with propane it is generally a bit more costly and not as convenient as natural gas. Knowing how many btu’s of gas your gas company can provide and if any upgrades to your gas meter might be needed will help know any additional costs associated with providing gas to a potential paint booth air make up unit. You will also want to verify with the gas company the pounds of pressure or inches of water column that they can provide (they may use this instead of btu’s). The btu’s the gas company can provide, inches of water column, or pounds of pressure will allow a paint booth provider to know if what size air make up you may be able to accommodate.
Factor 5 – Building Information
A paint booth will require modifications to your building including potential holes in the roof, anchoring the booth into the floor, and more. It can be good to check the age of your buildings roof and whether it is licensed and bonded. If the roof still has a bond the roofer who installed the roof may require the hole in the roof be done by them to still ensure your bond on the roof remains valid. You also want to verify if any modifications would not be ok with the building owner. Finally, you may want to verify if utilities will have to be extended to be in close proximity to the paint booth as well as the electric supply that you have.
Factor 6 – Regulatory Bodies
A final factor to consider is the regulatory groups that are pertinent to paint booths and spraying. Common organizations that you want to coordinate with prior to a paint booth include the EPA who will require permitting for hazardous pollutants. Your building inspector as they may have special requirements that they will want to have met. OSHA for safety guidelines related to spraying. Your fire Marshall who is typically in charge of ensuring proper fire regulations like NFPA 33 are met, and other pertinent organizations that these groups may recommend.
By taking these pertinent steps you can often times have a better idea of a paint booth that will be well suited for your needs, as well as ensure you have a better idea of the total cost that may be associated with implementing a paint booth in your facility. For further questions contact us today.