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Types of Booths
First, get to know the basic types of paint booth. Spray booths are defined by the type of airflow they use to collect overspray. These are the three main types you'll encounter:
- Open front booths. As the name implies, open front booths are not fully enclosed. These are the most common paint booths for smaller shops and general manufacturing and industrial spray collection. Three walls and a ceiling contain the overspray and fumes, and a fan in the back wall draws room air past the work area and out through an exhaust filter.
- Crossflow booths. These fully enclosed booths use a horizontal stream of air to collect fumes and particles. An intake filter on one side cleans incoming air, and an exhaust filter cleans it again before it's vented outside the booth.
- Downdraft booths. The most effective overall, downdraft booths are fully enclosed just like crossflow booths. However, incoming air is drawn through ceiling-mounted filters. There are several variations on the downdraft design: some use pits below the floor to draw air straight down, while others use "semi-downdraft" or "side downdraft" designs that pull incoming air down and to the sides or back of the booth.
Fully enclosed booths do a much more thorough job of collecting all traces of your coatings, and so they're useful if your materials are potentially hazardous or extremely flammable. In most situations, though, the primary reason to turn to the more costly crossflow and downdraft booths is because you need completely dust-free air in your working environment.
Air makeup units
In addition to the airflow pattern, the need for an air makeup unit is another major distinguishing factor in choosing a booth. Air makeup units are only needed if your booth will vent to the outside of your building: if you use an open front booth that exhausts filtered air into the room, you don't need one.
The problem with booths that vent to the outside is that they're taking thousands of cubic feet of air per minute out of your building. That air has to be replaced somehow, and without an air makeup unit, it comes in any way it can: through walls, windows, roofline, and any other tiny opening it can find. Especially in cold or hot weather, the main result of this is skyrocketing energy costs. It's equivalent to leaving doors and windows wide open with the heat running.
Air makeup units address the problem by creating a new inlet of air. They draw air from outside and pipe it directly to your intake filters. They can even included heaters to bring cold external air up to room temperature. While they're very expensive – as much as the booth itself – the savings in energy costs are significant and can add up over time.