One of the benefits of applying powdercoat instead of spraying liquid paint is that cleanup is a lot easier, since the powder particles don’t bond to anything until they’re heated. But you will have to clean up; although the electrical charge imparted to the powder by the gun causes most of the powder to stick to the intended part, there will always be some overspray, and it’s important to control where that ends up.
When I was single and living alone, I sprayed the powder in my garage, and didn’t bother protecting anything but my motorcycle from the overspray. The black powder went everywhere. It didn’t stick, but of course I still had to wipe or air-blast every visible surface in there before I could sell the house. Not cool.
When my wife and I moved in together in our new house, I planned to do the powder application in the basement. Desiring not to repeat my garage scene, I made a “booth” in one corner of the basement using heavy-gauge polyethylene (PE) sheeting and some furring strips:
The PE sheeting is wrapped around the furring strip and stapled to it, and then the furring strip is nailed to the ceiling joists. Another furring strip is similarly stapled to the bottom of the sheet, providing deadweight to stop it from blowing around.
Of course the two plastic sheets doesn’t seal perfectly with each other or with the basement walls. So to further ensure that no powder leaves the booth during application, I turn on the shop vac and stick the hose into the enclosed area:
See how the sheeting is bowed inward? That means every single gap and leak has air flowing only into the booth. Each side of the booth is ten feet long, so there's still plenty of space in there even with the sheeting bowed in like that. I’ve powdered 360 Mojolevers in this setup since February ’07, and although the area inside the booth can get messy, there’s not a spec of powder outside. Mission accomplished!
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©2006, Mitchell P. Patrie