Latex Paint Overspray

You (the painter) are so doomed. The overspray will travel that distance. Luckily, it's just water base. Add the cost of buffing all his cars to the job. Really hot water will remove water base paint, and any wax on the cars. A light buffing and waxing may satisfy him. When I spray,(or roll) I cover all the cars nearby.

Car covers may be a cheap alternative, a serious sprayer should have a bunch on hand, anyway. I would not try plastic, it may scratch the finish...good car covers are soft on the inside.

Thanks. I'm just caught in the middle. I manage the garages in my downtown. They belong to the city and they have hired the contractor. They did a poor job of notifying the neighbors.

One thing I should have added is that the relative humidity will never exceed 20%.

Do you have anything to support your opinion? If I'm wrong, I want to know that, too.

I don't think any wet particles can possibly reach that distance.

As a precaution, I may station one of my guys there to observe. If nothing else, It'll look like I care.

Thanks.

Does the paint sprayer manufacturer have any data on droplet size as it escapes the nozzle? Seems that would be a place to start, along with wind speed and direction.

There is probably some data on prevailing wind directions locally. Hey, set up a weathervane or wind sock and only paint when it's blowing the other way.

I think the whole thing is a hysterical reaction of someone who is afraid of loosing his job, due to poor business conditions.

My thought is also that no contractor will be painting in conditions that could carry overspray that far.

I'll take a look at elevation, barometric pressure, temps, etc tomorrow.

Thanks for the input.

My thought is also that no contractor will be painting in conditions that could carry overspray that far.

I think you're right. Much ado about nothing!

Kramarat gave me a suggestion to use a power washer to check the wind direction and velocity, occasionally.

I think I'll do that.

Thanks guys.

You don't need a Weatherman to know which way the wind blows....

--Bob Dylan

A question finally show up that I know something about, and I'm locked out by too many posts.

Thanks. Rollers are not used here, so that's moot.

Fact is that the prevailing winds are from the dealership's direction until the painter's shift is over. So, it would take some morning winds from the opposite direction to cause a problem.

By now, the painters have been well warned by the city contract administrator to take care of any over spray.

you could require the contractor to place plastic sheeting on the exterior side of the scaffolding to help block the overspray.... if the paint mist is fine enough, you may not be able to see it in the air.

None of this matters.

I'm sure the contract stipulates that the contractor have insurance.

SPRAY AWAY!!!!

No scaffolding. Man lift.

I would think that on a calm day, any such droplets would be dried dust before they traveled 150 feet. If there is rain, the droplets could still be wet, but they would pretty much go right to ground (if you didn't postpone spraying in the first place).

I believe that there's a good chance that some airborne overspray will settle on the cars, even at that distance, height and a low wind velocity. I'm coming from experience here.

Back in 1992 I was power-spraying my old 1896 2-story Victorian house that my X and I were completely remodeling. Even though I was painting the front of the house on one fine Saturday morning and there was barely a hint of wind. Well, those wet paint particles unfortunately settled onto my neighbor's brand new black convertible car. This neighbor lived behind me and I felt that spraying the front of our house posed no risk since the closest distance from the front of our house to his driveway was around 120 feet. The highest height was about 32 feet above the ground. Yeah, I had an extremely long aluminum ladder to reach the top of the house walls....scary, even with a ladder stabilizer bar fitted to the top of the ladder. Anyhow, to make things seem acceptable for spraying there was a 8-foot high wooden stockade fence located along the rear property line right next to his driveway. Okay, my thoughts were that these conditions and the given distance presented no problems regarding my spraying the front of the house. Boy, was I ever wrong! Later that day (after I did the painting) my neighbor came over bitching about all of the tiny slate blue droplets all over his new car! I went over and look over the entire car, and yeppers, there was paint all over it! Also, all over the side of his beige colored house! ACKKKK! mea culpa!!! That was an expensive lesson regarding power paint sprayers and how far the overspray can travel, as it cost me around $450 to get a professional body shop to get the paint off his car. Thankfully I had a power washer to clean the blue paint off of his vinyl siding!!!!

Tell the Contractor to use rollers to apply the Acrylic paint and avoid the battles later on with the car dealership and their attorneys....also, any vehicle traveling down the streets adjacent to your parking garage that may get dosed with overspray.

If the painters know what they're doing it won't be a problem. Arizona is very dry.

I have a really powerful airless sprayer. With the right tip, and the pressure cranked to the max, I can spray a wall over a floor that can't have paint on it, with no drop cloths, and walk away with no paint on the floor.

Good Morning Lyn,

I would think that at 85 - 100F and the wind is not blowing directly towards the dealership there should be no problem.

I would further think at 85 - 100F the finely atomized latex paint will be dry long before it drifts onto the dealership's cars.

Under the above scenario at best, you may get some drift that would appear as a fine dust on the cars.

I don't envy you on this one. Much to do over nothing.

Having been in similar but unrelated pi$$ing contests like this, you are on the right track. Put on a physiological show to calm the unwarranted, paranoid fears.

Provide a "fire watch" = one guy standing at the dealership to monitor drift. Arm him with a pressure washer to spray in the air on occasion to indicate wind direction, also to spray the cars whether they need it or not to rinse any perceived overspray.

At worst you will pi$$ away a few days wages for a laborer to stand there doing little of nothing but hopefully you will avoid a huge bruha.

Good Luck Lyn!

I have to pretend that I care, about something, almost daily. It works well.

EXACTLY.....just comes with the territory I guess.

Keeps the wife happy too. As long as I don't lose track of what she's saying.

The risk is high that the spray will travel just by convection driven by the latent heat of evaporation of the water, and these little balls of glue will go for a long way and still stay sticky. When the water evaporates you do not have dry paint, you have a small pigmented blob of latex that can take many hours to lose its glue like nature. Buy a few rolls of plastic sheet, wide enough to cover each car, and paint on a sunday when the dealer is closed or have the dealer drive the cars somewhere. Expect to pay for whatever you do. Plastic is cheap compared to $300 of so per car for a pro finisher, and you and the painter will be liable and the car dealer will sue you first and leave you to chase the painter.

The painter sounds fly by night - any good painter knows all about overspray - all the more risk to you

I'm sorry, your statement is nonsensical at best.

This statement is absolutely ridiculous, "will travel just by convection driven by the latent heat of evaporation of the water"! This one is no more intelligent, "When the water evaporates you do not have dry paint".

THERE IS NO PROBLEM HERE. We have a GM of a car dealership that is in financial trouble wanting to exert his power over a city department.

You haven't been paying attention.

Again, sorry, but you are misusing the term dry. Maybe it's a paint chemist's slang for something, I don't know.

You seem to correctly use "cure" once, but otherwise no cigar.

And your contention that crosslink=dry is even harder to accept.

Now, having said that, let's just accept the fact that the wind blows AWAY from the dealership during the painter's shift and agree that we disagree about the terms you have used.

We have a GM of a car dealership that is in financial trouble.

This is the bigger issue to contend with. Ya might want to offer to move his cars off site or garage them for the day. I live in the sticks, the dealers here have little inventory. (some cars only have 3 wheels) No mention as to how large a dealer your guy is. Being in a financial issue, He could cause more issues than anything you have ever experienced. Best to try to work with him and relocate the cars during the operation.

This "fly-by-night" contractor has already completed the re-paint of another parking structure here. There were no problems with it, even though there were vehicles routinely parked much closer to that garage than the car dealer now whining.

You are jumping to numerous conclusions which are not based in fact.

You seem to have made up your mind to execute the spraying regardless of any advice to the contrary. Weel this is your prerogative. Why ask for any opinion in the 1st place if anything to the contrary of your mind-set will be rejected (and sometime without regard to the competence of the contributor)?

Better late, than never. The project was finished last week, without incident.

You, also, obviously read what you wanted to into the question instead of just expressing your opinion on my question, which was, "What are the odds that any paint particles that are small enough to reach his property would still contain enough moisture to stick to one of his cars?" I was looking for well reasoned responses that might have indicated that, under extreme conditions wet overspray could travel that far.

I listened to the competent responders.

I discounted, outright, responses which disregarded the question and predicted doom and gloom without regard to reality.

Here's one response, "You (the painter) are so doomed. The overspray will travel that distance." No mention of how this could happen if the prevailing wind was blowing from the dealership's direction. Nor how this could happen in calm conditions, which was the case during the entire project.

In fact, no over spray reached the street. In fact, I expected no overspray to reach the street.

In fact, the painters were pros and knew what they were doing.

Thanks.

Sorry to spoil your day, but there seems to be some overspray on my Renault. I am going to get an estimate for the removal of the overspray. It only seems to be on the driver's side, but the shop stated that it may need to have the whole car compounded to assure the color matches as it does now.

Do you think it would be possible to make the check out to Cash?

What color's the over spray?

Yes, very bad.

I/we could be wrong, of course, but it looks as though the dealer is trolling for some excuse to make a bit of money.

(But he's gonna hafta fight city hall to do it, right?)

City hall falls all over themselves to appease this dealership. It's in the heart of downtown, one of the few really successful businesses (tax dollars) in our downtown area, with no freeway access.

When they move, they may go to another city.

Even if he has 300 cars in his yard this

http://www.thepaintstore.com/SearchResults.asp?Search=drop+cloths&Search.x=12&Search.y=42&utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_term=plastic+drop+cloths&utm_campaign=Drops&gclid=CNy70ILxsqsCFahS4godKxtVcw

should help. Unless the Mormons don't use plastic

Cheap too, Ky.

What is happening in regard to the cars normally in the "three story parking structure"?

There is obvious adequate concern about the dealership across the way, but if his claims are valid, then equally he could be looking for his showroom glass to be protected as could any other close resident.

Step 1 is to understand the specific "paint" being used. All my experience has "overspray" being trapped within 3m air travel of the gun using various techniques. The industrial spray booths relied on the particle surfaces being "dry" and creating space where air velocity was slow enough for the particles to fall from the air, including changes in airflow direction.

Good luck. At least your following some "due dilligence" process in asking for advice, but whether CR4 anonymous advice would stand under investigation might be interesting.

Based on most of what I read, you need to ask a couple of questions of your applicator. What manufactures materials is he using. What percent of solvents and the types of solvents used in the product. He's he actually crosslinking with an xo cross link. Makes a huge difference in how the materials cures.

I won't go into all of the various paint formulas as there are way to many to mention. But, not all latex pants cure the same. Same with oil based materials, solvents such as butyl-ac ate dry at a different rate then say MAK or MEK. Thus come out of the coatings at different rates as well. Unless you are using an xo-thermic coating variables are all over the place for drying.

You should check with Lyn-Door Industries. They have a line of products carefully engineered to solve many daily problems.

Latex paint dries by losing water, AND by intermolecular polymerization to become and insoluble matrix with trapped pigments and extenders.

Solvent based paint dries the same way.

In each case the base varnish is the viscosity of heavy molasses.

A lacquer dries by solvent loss alone. It is a solid to start and is then mixed into a solvent. It never cures, you can always re-dissolve it and wash it off an object.

Many so-called automotive lacquers are not true lacquers - they have some degree of cure or cross linking added.

And people wonder why paint jobs are getting expensive.

How many engineers does it take to paint a parking garage? Oops, wrong thread.................I need to find the tech jokes thread.

I've had this happen to me. I was the one with the oversprayed car that was 20 yards away! No warning from the painters that they were going to paint this sign (not even billboard-sized) and after they 'fixed' my vehicle I ended up with many scratches and had to replace the windshield. The dealer has a very valid concern. The contractor should do whatever is necessary to prevent the possibility of overspraying anything other than the building. It will take a lot of time, effort, and expense to remove overspray from a vehicle and its glass without leaving any scratches. Can you multiply that by the number of cars at the dealership? Plastic sheeting on the scaffolding would be an inexpensive way to reduce the risk. I also agree with car covers; just part of the cost of doing business. Unfortunately this could run about $10,000.00 initially. How about giant fans pointing from the dealership toward the parking structure!!!! The wind and its direction aren't very dependable. Me? I'd invest in rollers......

Thanks to you all, even though most of you misinterpreted what the question was.

It wasn't about a careless contractor who had not taken proper precautions.

It was simple a question about how far over spray could travel, in the worst possible conditions.

I am happy to report that the project has been completed without incident, which is the outcome I expected in the first place.

I want to especially thank those of you who gave clear, well reasoned responses to the original question.

And to those of you who predicted doom and gloom and assumed that the contractor was "fly-by-night" I can only say that this is the second three story parking facility that the contractor has painted in my area of responsibility WITHOUT INCEDENT!

Thanks again to all.

Gee what would it cost to move the cars before the paint job.

They are mobile right.

I did not notify the dealership because I determined that they would not be affected by the project.

There was no reason to cause them to move their vehicles.

This was born out at the completion of the project.

Thanks.

very good

Hope the info helps someone down the road.

"Spray safe"