Too hot to paint?? & heating your shop.

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big stinkie

Guest
Here in Kansas, the coolest my un-airconditioned shop gets is about 80 degrees in the summer. That's at night! I've had trouble with solvent pop (the gasses from clearcoat being unable to escape because the surface flashed too quick, leaving thousands of little bubbles in it.) The PPG guys told me that temperature is critical when applying clearcoat. I used the slowest activator, did my best to apply the clear in thin coats, but still had enough pop to be unsatisfactory.

My questions are: Is it simply too hot to fool with painting when it is 80+ degrees in the shop? Do I have to wait till fall to start painting again? Do I have to buy a big AC unit? (My wife isn't crazy about the $$$ I've spent on this already.)

Thanks is advance for your help on this.

FWIW, I figured out a cheap way to heat my shop in the winter. I bought a used propane house furnace for $50 bucks from the local Heating/AC outfit . They said it worked fine, the people were simply upgrading to a more efficient unit. I stuck it in the corner, had the propane guys hook up the gas. Wired it up, installed a filter, built a 90 degree deflector for the air, and lit it. Works great! It can be way below freezing outside and in 10 minutes the air inside is toasty warm! It has plenty of snort, too. It'll get hot as a Bessemer steel converter if you crank it up! I leave the thermostat at the lowest setting when not working in it so it never gets below about 55 degrees. That way it doesn't take much time to warm up the paint and bike to proper temperature.
 
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rex

New member
Exactly,and the PPG guys are right too.What clear are you using.In the Concept line,2042 is fast so I use the 2021 for larger areas,but the tack free time is slow.Besides using a 15 minute flash time between coats (for the 2 required) what reducer are you using?If the thermometer says 80 I use DT885 or blend it with 895 if the humidity is high and the first coat seemed to dry a bit quick.There's also an 898 reducer that's shy of retarder.The best way to pick reducer if you're not sure is hit the part with a one of those point and shoot thermometers.Usually your parts are around 5 degrees warmer than air temperature so you want to take that into account.If you use retarder,only replace about 20-25% of the reducer you use so it's not overreduced.Also if you're going to blend or box reducers stay in the natural progression.It's not good to mix the fast with the slow skipping the one in between,it kind of screws up the mix.Hope this helps.
 
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ezrider

New member
Big, here in Connecticut it has been 95 degrees and real sticky, i use PPG at work and i still dont have any pop.As far as the PPG reps go i get that line every time they dont know the answer for somthing . explain that to my boss that i have to stop painting becouse its too hot, Yeah right.
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shaunboy

Guest
In my experience the most likely cause of solvent pop had been not enough flash off time.
if you are not blending the clear and spraying a whole panel edge to edge then let it flash between coats for an extra 10 minutes even.
if you force dry it let it flash off properly before the heat is applied.
 
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