Exhaust fan for spray room?

[Kanvas Keepsakes]

Hello everyone.  Got a small problem.  I'm about to close up my garage and turn it into my print studio/office.  Once the wall goes up on Monday, my spray room which is in my garage, will have no way to exhaust my spray out of the garage.  Before I could just open garage and let spray residue kinda flow out.  My spray room is about 12 ft long by about 6 ft wide.  Attached is the photo of the room.  When I spray all the spray just kind of lingers in there and drops to the floor and gets everything in the spray room all dirty.  I must exhaust that room out into my roof/attic and of course attach a hose to go to the outside.  I have NO idea what kind of fan/exhaust system to use.  I've seen some suggestions on here but they all consist of fans in the walls exhausting out of the room.  Mine has to be in the attic/roof.  Is there anything my local Lowes or Home Depot might have that I can install with enough power to suck out all that spray?  Thanks in advance for all the help. 

[howardm]

you might want to look at grainger.com or mcmaster.com for 'exhaust fans' for a big selection of better-than-your-average-Lowes products.

[Landscapes]

I spray in my bathroom and noticed that by using a fan, all the overspray starts clogging up the fan.  So in the spare bathroom, I erected a wooden frame, lined with plastic, and I go inside to spray with a mask on.  I let the overspray just fall down and also coat the plastic sheeting on the walls.  When necessary, just replaces the entire plastic liner.  This way, all of the spray in contained within the plastic lined frame in the bathtub.

Since the spray isn't harmful (ie. not chemical), there is no issue with just letting it fall down as long as it isn't going into your lungs I guess and coating your throat.  By getting an exhaust fan, it will all just get coated and so its easier to let the spray coat the plastic sheeting which is easy and cheap to replace.  Lights are also on the outside so they shine through the clear plastic so they don't get coated either.

[Kanvas Keepsakes]

Landscapes, I've been letting it just kind of float around and drop.  But the tile on my floor is black already.  I might just have to let it settle as last resort.

Howard, what size fan or CFM's am I looking for?

[jferrari]

all the overspray starts clogging up the fan.

This is why commercial paint booths function by drawing the particulate-laden air through a filter media first. Some even use water for this. Even spraying water based products without CFC's does not necessarily mean the air is safe to breathe. You really don't want the particulates clogging up your lungs. Make sure your fan has some sort of filter installed on the suction side and that you use a respirator.    - Jim

[mstevensphoto]

Howard, what size fan or CFM's am I looking for?

that depends a lot on the volume of your room. Generally you will find that bathroom exhaust fans have a CFM rating that means they do a complete room exchange in something like geologic time. I would recommend a more industrial exhaust fan that can push enough to exchange your room air every couple minutes. if your room is 12x6x8 then you've got almost 1300cf of air. a 500CFM fan will exchange your room air in 2.5ish minutes (rough rough math here).

I have the luxury of a window and I've adapted a 20" box fan to fit it. The fan IS all gooped up with the varnish it's pushed through but it runs fine after three years and no less than a dozen gallons of timeless. I keep meaning to make a furnace filter attachment for both my fresh and exhaust air.

[Larry Heath]

If you haven't made a choice of fans just yet, you might take a look at these guys.

http://www.industrialfansdirect.com/IND-FA-EF-P.html

Oh, they will work in any position.



Later Larry

[Kanvas Keepsakes]

Thank you, Larry!  Just what I was looking for. 

[howardm]

dont forget that you're going to be sucking out a lot of air from the room and it has to be replaced so any/all inlets should be filtered so as not to suck in airborne crud.

[Kanvas Keepsakes]

So I pop in a filter in front of the fan? 

[langier]

Wear protection, including respirator (filtering at the least), gloves, eye protection no matter what you do. Cheap insurance for you in the long run!

[howardm]

no, what I meant was that as you suck boatloads of air out of the room, it will develop negative pressure and cause air to seep/migrate into the room.  Preferably hrough a passive intake vent and that should be filtered (as I'd be concerned that airborne particles would be pulled into the room and deposited on the freshly sprayed item)

[picman]

Lets look at this another way.
Use the fan for your inlet air - pushing are into the room.
Add passive vents for the exhaust.
The fan stays clean.
On the negative side, the room would have to be fairly well sealed as the air would be pushed thru every opening.