May 10, 2007

Safety and health concerns aren't just an unwelcome part of your overhead. They are a major factor in keeping well-trained personnel working at peak efficiency to grow your business. In this timely article, Michele Ostrove draws on Diamond Liners' expertise to explore the specifics of keeping your truck bed liner business in compliance with the myriad Occupational Safety and Health Administration, OSHA, and AQMD Air Quality Management District regulations you need to follow to not only stay legal, but to optimize your company's performance.

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Lights, Filters, Ventilation!

Bedliner Spray Booths Might Cost Up-Front,

But Could Save Money and Grief Down the Road

By Michele Ostrove

Photos by Lou Frank

As John Bender has discovered, there are some little-known regulations that govern the spray bedliner business — and they seem to be getting tougher nationwide.

When Bender moved his 53-year-old California company, J.H. Bender Equipment Co. and Diamond Liners, from South Gate to Santa Fe Springs, he decided it was time to update his operation. He had been spraying truck bedliners inside a small (legally permitted) spray booth that was poorly lit and modestly ventilated.

“Our prior booth wasn’t tall enough or wide enough, and there really wasn’t enough air movement,” he says. “Also, we were spraying black on a large percentage of the trucks, and it was like being inside a cave. Sometimes, we couldn’t see what we were doing.”

Bender decided to change things this time around. Knowing that California has some of the strictest environmental standards in the country, he went straight to what many consider “the enemy” — the Air Quality Management District (AQMD) — and enlisted its help.

“They have a Small Business Assistance Department with engineers that will help and guide you all the way,” he says. “So many people are just scared of them. They think if you just walk in the door, they’ll write you a fine. But it’s not that way. I met with five engineers and every one was helpful. They are also fascinated with our industry.”

Building a Better Booth

In planning for the move, Bender specified that the Santa Fe Springs spray booth would be taller, longer, and wider than its predecessor, with far more lighting, better ventilation, and a two-stage filter system. Custom-built at a cost of about $40,000, it is 30'-long, 16'-wide, and 12'-tall — huge compared to a body-shop booth, but, in hindsight, still not quite big enough, says Bender.

“Even though the improvements are terrific, I’d go to 14 or 15 feet tall and make it another two or three feet longer,” he says. “I get a lot of industrial-type trucks that barely fit. I would rather have even more space to move freely around and on top of those vehicles.”

Explosion-proof lighting is supplied by four 4' fluorescent tubes in 16 fixtures — double the conventional number of tubes per fixture — and it’s on two separate circuits, offering the energy-conservation option of switching on only half of them. Each fixture is equipped with a hinge so that it opens like a cabinet, making light-bulb changing easy. “Usually, you have to pull off the whole fixture to change bulbs,” Bender notes. Clear plastic tear-off sheets keep the fixture from becoming caked with overspray.

A cross-draft ventilation system, powered by a 10-HP motor, draws airborne particulates of overspray out of the booth at the rate of 32,355 cfm, capturing it in a two-stage filter bank, says Bender. The first line of defense is a 2"-thick, 4' x 10' polyester-fiber “blanket” where most of the build-up occurs. Any overspray that makes it through the blanket gets trapped by a 20" x 20" polyester-fiber filter before the air is vented through the top of the building. A manometer signals when there is poor circulation and it’s time to change the filters.

“That manometer is the first place an AQMD inspector goes when we get a visit here at the shop,” says Bender. “He wants to know the health of those filters.”

Going with the Flow

The circulation system makes spraying far more efficient, says Bender, who no longer has to wait 10 minutes after an applicator stops spraying to go inside the booth with street clothes. “Some guys put in a circular fan and draw the air out with low flow,” he notes. “With one of those, if you take the plastic off a freshly sprayed truck too soon, you’ll get overspray on the truck. It just slows your whole process down. Now, the second you hang up your spray gun, you’re ready to trim the truck, get the plastic off, and get on to the next one.”

More important than overspray problems is the safety factor. “You don’t want to keep isocyanate vapor in the air, because if you get sensitized, you’re sensitized for life,” says Bender. He’s seen worst-case-scenario spray booths that ventilated their exhaust air to the inside of the building.

“What about the poor guy who’s sanding and taping for the next job, and getting exposed as much as the guy who’s spraying?” he asks. “I don’t want to see anyone lose their ability to work. This system gets the ‘iso’ away from the sprayer to the filter bank and out of the booth more quickly.”

Of course, the system calls for strict monitoring of the manometer, which will indicate when a filter change-out is needed — and does not eliminate the need for a fresh-air respirator, Bender points out. His team uses a hood fresh-air unit that covers the entire head, doesn’t need to be fit-tested, and uses tear-offs to keep vision clear of overspray. He says it’s ideal for any sprayer, regardless of facial hair.

Schoolhouse Block

One of the little-known laws Bender discovered late in the game ended up complicating his construction process considerably.

“Here in Los Angeles County, you can’t be within 1,000 feet of a school,” he says. “It’s measured from the property of the school to where your exhaust tower will be.” He didn’t learn about the rule until after he had bought the property and went to pull the permits to install the spray booth. “It was 996 feet,” Bender laments. “I missed it by four feet!”

Those four critical feet obligated him to give “public notice” of his intent to install spray booths. That meant sending letters to every student attending the school, as well as surrounding businesses up to 1,000 feet out, and waiting 90 days for them to respond with their approval — or their concerns. “The AQMD requires concerns to be addressed to them, so I let them answer any questions,” he noted. At the
end of the three-month period, Bender got the green light. He chalks up his school experience to education.

“I bet if I asked 100 people if they knew about that law, maybe one might know it,” he says.

Pay Now – Or Pay Later

Since he has installed his new unit, Bender has seen spray booths being sold for as much as $70,000, but feels that is excessive. He suggests that one way to save money would be to buy a used auto-body cross-flow spray booth and customize it, as more and more body shops upgrade to down-draft-type exhaust systems. The auto-body booth may not be big enough for some, he adds.

He recommends that prospective buyers shop around before making a decision. “There are hundreds of booth manufacturers out there, and so many are geared to the body shop industry,” says Bender. “You don’t need to be that elaborate. I’d suggest you get ahold of the distributor of your paint equipment. Their rep should be able to help.”

Bender says that businesses using “homemade” booths constructed of 2' x 4's and drywall or plastic sheeting might be wise to plan now for making a future investment, before they are shut down by environmental authorities for failure to comply with regulations. California ordinances may be the standard-setting, but other states are not far behind, especially in light of the OSHA investigation of an incident in Michigan last year in which a spray bedliner applicator reportedly died from isocyanate over-exposure.

“It’s better to start thinking about it now than to be shut down until you comply,” he says. “It may take three months to get a spray booth permit and another two to get it installed, so you should start looking into it now for the future.”

Bender figures that the $40,000 he’s invested in his new spray booth will more than pay for itself over time. “We’re all guilty of trying to do things the cheapest way,” he admits. “But sometimes that’s not the long-term cheapest way — especially when there’s worker’s compensation involved.”

He adds that the new booth has helped his business enormously. Gone is the cloud of overspray and the ever-present threat of isocyanate exposure, replaced by a fresh-air environment and a much more efficient and safe operation. Bender, whose shop not only sprays bedliners, but also serves as an R&D and test facility for many manufacturers of chemicals and equipment, says that he will gladly offer his consulting services to anyone who might benefit from his experience. He can be reached at jhbender@diamondliners.com. CP