Spray painting for commercial buildings

For building painting, airless paint spray is usually used because there is no air to blow the paint away from the job, so overspray is minimal and most of the paint is transferred onto the surface sprayed. Most architectural coatings can be sprayed with airless equipment that produces up to 2,500 psi paint pressure at the spraygun. Pressure loss in the paint hose means that you need up to about 3,000 psi at the pump. The spray nozzle is called the spray tip and must be chosen to suit the paint and the size of the job. Large spray tips require more powerful pumps, so the maximum tip size that a pump will support is important in deciding if it will do a particular job. A powerful pump can support several airless spray guns or a single gun with a large spray tip.

For small volumes of paint or multicoloured (fleck) paints, a low pressure HVLP system can be used that is powered by a multi-stage air turbine.

Spraying a building is:

10 - 15 times faster than a roller
saves labour costs
produces a superior finish
does a better job
saves paint
saves material costs
allows a faster return to use
reduces loss of use

The equipment in this section will handle all decorating jobs, particularly commercial buildings where a high application rate is required, or where multiple guns need to be used. They can handle all smooth decorative paints from stains and varnish, through gloss, primers, acrylics, vinyl emulsions to heavy masonry coatings. These units will not spray structured coatings, but please see our section on spraying special coatings for the spray painting equipment to handle them.

The power of the airless pump that you need for different types of work, depends on the maximum spray tip (nozzle) size that you need to work with, or the combination of tips in multiple sprayguns. The larger the spray tip, the more powerful the pump has to be at the same pressure. Most architectural coatings can be sprayed at less than 2,500 psi at the spraygun, but you need to allow for pressure loss between the pump and the gun.

Useful accessories include:

Please see our section on Power Painting® accessories for more details.