Airless paint sprayers

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I'd agree. In a 'normal' room, emptying or covering furniture, one, two even three different lots of masking, I think total job time wouldn't be much different, so you'd be reliant on a better finish, ease of painting for the comparison.

One of the main reasons I chose to spray the internal wall was it was textured ( I live in France in the country where it is a popular wall finish:() Spraying gave a better finish than brush or roller with less waste or excess covering.
 
I'd agree. In a 'normal' room, emptying or covering furniture, one, two even three different lots of masking, I think total job time wouldn't be much different, so you'd be reliant on a better finish, ease of painting for the comparison.

I think even with a brush or rollers you'd have to empty a room or cover furniture up.

Cleaning the aireless - was just putting the feed tube in a bucket of water and running a few litres thru the hose/gun.

I'm not sure I would have been able to do the house in 1.5 days if I had used brushes\rollers.

p2edave - when you used the Q5 with emulsion, did you think it down and use the standard needle\cap in the paint (HVLP) gun?

Thanks

Dibs
 
I think even with a brush or rollers you'd have to empty a room or cover furniture up.
Cleaning the aireless - was just putting the feed tube in a bucket of water and running a few litres thru the hose/gun.
I'm not sure I would have been able to do the house in 1.5 days if I had used brushes\rollers.

p2edave - when you used the Q5 with emulsion, did you think it down and use the standard needle\cap in the paint (HVLP) gun?
Dibs

Agree 'some' masking necessary - not as much as for spraying though? Curious what the overhead is.

Sorry @Dibs-h - it was @PeteHB who has the Q5 from Fuji (marketed as a car sprayer).
 
One of the main reasons I chose to spray the internal wall was it was textured Spraying gave a better finish than brush or roller with less waste or excess covering.

Quite agree. Brushing a textured finish (Artex ceiling) is a b....
Almost enough to make me go for a sprayer by itself!
 
Agree 'some' masking necessary - not as much as for spraying though? Curious what the overhead is.

Sorry I meant, just moving\covering furniture or emptying the room would be required however you painted the room. Obviously spraying then requires masking off, whereas brushes\rollers wouldn't (really). For me I think it took a few hours to mask off. I used 1.5 inch masking tape, so was only concerned with lining up the edge that was important and as long as the other edge was somewhere on the masking paper - it was all good.

In some cases - I was just able to use a sheet of A4 card (the school\craft type) held against what I didn't want to paint.

Sorry @Dibs-h - it was @PeteHB who has the Q5 from Fuji (marketed as a car sprayer).

LOL - I should read better, sorry. @PeteHB - did you thin the emulsion for the Q5 and did you use the standard needle/cap etc.

Cheers

Dibs
 
I think even with a brush or rollers you'd have to empty a room or cover furniture up.

Cleaning the aireless - was just putting the feed tube in a bucket of water and running a few litres thru the hose/gun.

I'm not sure I would have been able to do the house in 1.5 days if I had used brushes\rollers.

p2edave - when you used the Q5 with emulsion, did you think it down and use the standard needle\cap in the paint (HVLP) gun?

Thanks

Dibs

I bought the largest cap available and recommended by Fuji, they give you a viscosity cup ( a plastic funnel with a hole in it) you time a fixed volume of paint to run out and thin accordingly. Getting the viscosity right is important for a good finish.
 
I bought the largest cap available and recommended by Fuji, they give you a viscosity cup ( a plastic funnel with a hole in it) you time a fixed volume of paint to run out and thin accordingly. Getting the viscosity right is important for a good finish.
I do like the viscosity cup idea. Very neat (and simple).
One of the Wagner airless says 'any paint' but sounds iffy. The Wagner solution is neat, but not as neat as the cup.
Wonder if you can buy cups to a viscosity of x (which raises the question - what is the unit of viscosity).
Brittanica tells me
The dimensions of dynamic viscosity are force × time ÷ area. The unit of viscosity, accordingly, is newton-second per square metre, which is usually expressed as pascal-second in SI units.
 
I bought the largest cap available and recommended by Fuji, they give you a viscosity cup ( a plastic funnel with a hole in it) you time a fixed volume of paint to run out and thin accordingly. Getting the viscosity right is important for a good finish.

Cheers about the cap.

I've got a viscosity cup somewhere - just thought you might recall roughly approx how much you thinned emulsion down.

Thanks

Dibs
 
One of the Wagner airless says 'any paint' but sounds iffy. The Wagner solution is neat, but not as neat as the cup.

I think I thinned the emulsion for the Wagner down with 25% water. I got a better finish as it was easier to put more on than wipe the wall down if it's gone on too think. LOL

Dibs
 
From videos, Wagner talk about 10%. Nothing clear found via Google search, viscosity tables,
but sprayer pressure seems to play a major role.

I had a few piece of plasterboard lying around, so tried neat, and then had a go at 10% and then went up to 25% - stopping when I was happy with how the finish was.

Trial & error sounds daunting but given how cheap emulsion is - it sounds far worse than it really is. LOL

Once you make a change, you do have to pull the trigger for about a minute for the sprayer to effectively empty what it has in the tube before the "new" stuff comes thru.
 
On the basis that a lot of pros are using sprayers to do whole homes you have to assume its cheaper otherwise they'd be rolling it. Now thats probably easier when your ceiling and walls are all the same pot of paint. For a room with one feature wall you'd do that first and then mask it off. Doing a single room that's got carpet down, rubbish in the way and so on I imagine change the equation slightly. But when you see how fast a room can be done and the finish you get, you're only masking most of it once. Once the floor is protected you don't have to do it again, once the switches and sockets are protected you don't do it again, both of which probably need doing anyway for a brush and roller The only extra masking to add at any point to to protect the woodwork once finished and then any feature being done. Not hard when you're using the rolls of film or paper with tape on them already.

When you want 3 different shades of not quite white on the walls and ceiling it might be more work.

I'm going to be doing my daughters new room next week hopefully. White ceiling and walls, pink feature wall and white skirting, window sill and door.
 
Hi

I can see the advantage of new build before anyones moved in, also it does not have to be perfect as they probably expect the buyer to decorate it anyway within a few years. Watching the pressure sales channels they seem to paint a lot of fences and outdoor stuff, but I much prefer taking a bit longer and giving it a good coating rather than a misting. I think to get the best results there is a reasonable initial outlay for decent kit, a lot of people have been put off by the cheap sprayers that don't deliver. I was almost tempted by a Wagner sprayer at a home renovation show a while back, very nice bit of kit with good coverage and minimal over spray but at £500 I thought that buys a lot of decent brushes and roller sleeves.
 
Hi

I can see the advantage of new build before anyones moved in, also it does not have to be perfect as they probably expect the buyer to decorate it anyway within a few years. Watching the pressure sales channels they seem to paint a lot of fences and outdoor stuff, but I much prefer taking a bit longer and giving it a good coating rather than a misting. I think to get the best results there is a reasonable initial outlay for decent kit, a lot of people have been put off by the cheap sprayers that don't deliver. I was almost tempted by a Wagner sprayer at a home renovation show a while back, very nice bit of kit with good coverage and minimal over spray but at £500 I thought that buys a lot of decent brushes and roller sleeves.
Have a look at the recent Wagner 590 reviews
(and prices).
 
Yes the 590 gets mixed reviews but tend to be more positive from the DIY end. The Wagner Control Pro 250M is also not a bad tool but still don't like the price. If anyone was about in the seventies they probably had their first experience with an electric sprayer, who remembers that item that made a lot of noise and vibrations that could occasionally throw some paint out, and what a mess trying to clean it. I could have painted better with a broom.
 
I can see the advantage of new build before anyones moved in, also it does not have to be perfect as they probably expect the buyer to decorate it anyway within a few years.
From what I gather the decorators on some of these new builds have to make the finish deliberately worse just so that it can be touched upwwith a roller. Some developers just refuse to let them spray to finish, so they have to spray the whole room in 4 minutes and then roll a 12" roller over everything.

As I said before, I've not used it yet but I've no worries about the quality of the finish I'll get.The room I'm doing is empty so that makes life easier. The purchase of the graco was in part to use on woodwork projects that need painting or other water based finishes.
 
A viscosity cup would be easy to make or you could buy one from Axminster but you would have to then calibrate it to your sprayer. The Fuji system gives you target times for each size of nozzle and suggestions as to thinning requirements for different paints and lacquers. So you mix up a small amount in a jar thin to the suggested rate pour into the cup and then time the runout, if necessary adjust the thinners and retime. Once you have done it no need to repeat make up a batch when it's run out simply make up a new one.
From memory I thinned the Latex emulsion by about 15%. A fairly heavy light grey paint ( lots of solids) about 20% the thinner was white spirit and a lacquer only needed about 5% white spirit. Both the paint and the lacquer used the same fine nozzle and the finish was absolutely silky smooth 3 coats, better than I can achieve with a roller and brush, I could perhaps have gotten away with 2. For the heavily textured wall only one coat required with a big nozzle I think that a smooth finish could be obtained with one coat perhaps thinned a little more I will be doing that latter this year.

I stress that I chose the Fuji because I wanted it to do internal walls ceilings but also woodwork and cabinetry stuff and I haven't been disappointed. I looked at the Groco ones but the ones I saw seemed to be aimed at professional interior decorators here in France and would not I think been suited to my needs for spraying cabinets and doors. They were a similar price to the Fuji as well. I didn't see any Wagner units but they are available and have very mixed reviews whether that is down to the operator, paint or just the limitation of the equipment it's hard to say but I thought €500 was a bit too much to risk when the Fuji was a well reviewed product.
I am a believer in you get what you pay for and if I had to limit myself to €500 then I would either hire one if I could and see if it was any good or stick to brush and roller.
 
Yes the 590 gets mixed reviews but tend to be more positive from the DIY end. The Wagner Control Pro 250M is also not a bad tool but still don't like the price. If anyone was about in the seventies they probably had their first experience with an electric sprayer, who remembers that item that made a lot of noise and vibrations that could occasionally throw some paint out, and what a mess trying to clean it. I could have painted better with a broom.
If you've used both I'd be interested in your review.
 
You have raised the issue of finish, you say you have no worries about the quality of the finish you will get but what finish are you after? This is something very subjective and to some extent personel preference. We do not want runs or patches but then it can range from orange peel to glass smooth. With metal I do like the smooth glass finish but with wood you can add character by having a less glass finish, but then what about MDF. This does lend itself very well to the modern glass finish look whereas I would use ply to get more character in my opinion. When using a roller I only apply the paint with it and then lay it off with a decent laying off brush like Buy Staalmmester Brushes | Staalmeester One | Staalmeester UK
 

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