Spray Booth Fan Size Calculator
A 16 fan will not move that kind of air.
Spray booth fan size calculator. We sell fans designed specifically to meet the demands of paint spray booths. This means a booth 10ftw x 8ft tall 80squft moving at 100fpm will require a 8000cfm fan. Strongway heavy duty fully enclosed direct drive shutter exhaust fan 14in 1 400 cfm 120 volts 4 blades. The less air moved the more likely over spray will land on your product.
Using the example from above 80 square feet multiplied by 100 feet per minute equals 8 000 cfm. With the same amount of air being pushed into the booth but now a lower cfm being pulled through clogged air filters the booth is over pressurized. The fan should be about twice that size and have about a 15 000 cfm at 1 sp rating. This fan calculator is typically used to calculate the cfm or cubic feet per minute of air exchange that may be desired in a building.
The important thing is that to meet code. Your booth would be 12 x 12 x 100. Many spray equipnment companies regard a downdraft booth to be a large booth and they design for the 50 ft min target. One hundred feet per minute is the guideline for air movement in the booth area.
Some booths are designed so that air entering at the back of the booth but from the ceiling moves to the far end of the booth where exhaust filters are. The correct way to size a fan for a booth is to move the air across the product at about 100 to 150 ft min. As the filters fill up with over spray the exhaust fan must work harder to remove the air through those filters and out of the booth. If you re spraying paint you need fans.
Why paint booth cfm is important paint booths are designed to meet a minimum air flow requirement to be compliant with national codes that govern spray booths. Or at 150fpm 12000cfm. Important codes that paint booths comply with include national fire code 1 nfpa 33 osha and a few others. For a good overview of all paint booth code compliance check out this article.
Paint gives off voc s that pose a fire hazard and create health and environmental problems. Multiply the booth s face area by 100 feet per minute to achieve cfm. From your question is it not clear what you mean by semi downdraft booth. That s why the nfpa osha and the epa have detailed requirements for ventilation and you can t have good ventilation without exhaust and make up fans.
Whether exhausting air or bringing fresh air into a structure the calculation produced should help to figure out the size of fan s required to accomplish the air exchanges needed.