Timely warning (I'm in a similar job) but I gather many US States now ban paint with such solvents/chemicals. Has affected people painting classic cars no end. I'd agree, do it in a separate building : basement, near to a furnace seems rather too risky. John Purser, Sudbury, UK
From: hmsachs@verizon.net <hmsachs@verizon.net> Subject: basement paint shops... To: hetchinspete1@yahoo.com Cc: classicrendezvous@bikelist.org Date: Monday, January 24, 2011, 6:42 AM
WRT building a basement paint booths, in a single word my advice is "don't".? The least it can do is devour marital capital like Wall Street taking advantage of taxpayers.? My day job is building science (www.aceee.org). In general, basements in American houses exchange air wholesale with the living areas, guaranteeing that whatever highly volatile solvents you use downstairs will be carried upstairs in unreasonable amounts. This is particularly true for forced air systems with the furnace in the basement, but boilers that are not "sealed combustion" can have funny effects on the air pressure regime, too. Painting with toxic stuff should be done in detached buildings, and done with a strong ventilating fan that is ON any time a can of paint or solvent is open. Beloved Spouse, with instruction from Les Lunas, because a pretty good Imron painter. But we did this in an outbuilding with a 5000 cfm fan that exchanged all the air in that small space in less than 10 seconds.? And, nothing ever got opened until (a) everyone was properly masked, and (b) I was gone - couldn't get a seal around my beard, and couldn't afford a proper positive air supply.? Oh, painter was always upwind from the spray, mixing, etc.? Imron is based on neurotoxins, essentially the same class of chemicals as was involved at Bhopal, India.
In other words, painting involves some pretty serious industrial hygiene issues. Life-safety.? Like, the purpose of the solvents is to carry paint and then GO AWAY into the air. And ovens are to finish driving off solvents and reaction products.
I know a couple of "amateurs" who do fantastic work, so it can be done. But please try to protect others. Some time ago, I did an article on this, and could review it to see if it's still useful. If so, would scan it for distribution. And, it's always possible that modern paints are totally benign...
harvey sachs mcLean va.
Peter Naiman wrote: One of my project this year is building a small paint booth in my basement and buying the equipment to learn how to paint my own frames and learn the art of lug and boxlining, <snip>.
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