How can i get my model room fume free???

HEY,
You could use one of those masks with the filter in it that pro car painters use. It will still smell, but you wont be able to smell it. Does the door go outside? Are there any windows? If there are you could get a fan for the doorway or window that will help. Sorry i couldnt help more.

Randy

Yea, i already have a resperator- but after 10minutes or so with it, the thing starts to get annoying. And no, there are no windows, and the door leads to another room in the basement- with no windows or doors leading outside. My parents were nice enough to pretty much give me this room in the basement- but after an hour in there you atart to get a headache because of the fumes!! i dunno, i may try to talk my dad into making me a rolly cart model bench thing and using it in a rrom in the basement with alot of windows and a door leading outside . my mom is already ok with the plan, but the room has a pool table in it, and i dont thing my dad will like having to stick the stick straight up to avaoid my models!! oh well, thanks.
-mark

HEY,
Sorry i couldnt help more. HMMMM. Im sure one of us will think of something.

Randy

Given that you are working in the basement, I’m guessing that there is SOME ventilation coming into the room. (i.e. heat and/or air conditioning) If nothing else, I’m sure that there is some method of moisture control. (de-humidifier)

If these presumptions are correct, there may well be a way to draw more fresh air into the room. You can hook into the existing air ventilation system and apply a local fan to the duct to draw air into the room, that should at least help with the fume issue.

Granted, this will cause the fumes to migrate out of your work area, and into the other basement rooms, but the fumes will also have an opportunity to mix with a higher volume of ‘clean’ air. This should at the very least mitigate the concentration of the smell. However, BE VERY CAREFUL that these fumes will NOT be drifting towards a gas or oil fired appliance. (gas clothes dryer, furnace or some such) The potential for a flash fire is a VERY serious potential risk!

Another way to deal with the situation would be to find a way to hook up a clothes dryer type duct from your work area to the outside of the building. (If your clothes dryer is in the basement, take a look at that installation for ideas of how you might be able to mount a duct in your work area.) With the addition of a quality brushless fan and a little bit of ingenuity, you’d easily be able to create a ‘negative pressure area’ near your painting and gluing work area. Think of it in the same terms as a cooking vent hood in your kitchen. You’re not going to get all of the fumes and vapors, but you’ll be able to force most of them out of the room, and draw fresh air into the room at the same time.

The other thing you can do is to mitigate the creation of fumes in your work area. Water base paints are one good way to do this as they created FAR less fumes than do traditional enamels or lacquer based paints. The fewer fumes you release into the air, the less volume of noxious vapors you have to manage.

These are just some basic thoughts and ideas. Without knowing more details about your house and your room, it’s hard for me to get too specific with potential solutions.


Best of Luck,

Since you're not airbrushing or otherwise spraying paints, it sounds to me like the vapors you are generating are more of an annoyance than an exposure problem. Therefore, there are some simple things you can do to help alleviate the problem.

1. Substitiute the products you are using for some less "smelly" materials. For example, Ambroid cement contains methylene chloride and evaporates considerably faster than Testor's liquid cement that contains MEK. By using Testor's over Tamiya, Ambroid, or Tenax, you stand to reduce evaporation rates, and therefore vapor concentrations in your breathing zone. If paint is an issue, look at brushing acrylics instead of enamels or lacquers.

2. This one's behavior-based: Put the tops back on the containers as soon as you finish using them. Don't leave them open to air. In addition, look at how you are applying your materials. For example, applying putty in small quanitities with a toothpick is better than glopping it on with a putty knife. Apply glues with a small paint brush (a 1/0 round sable is great for this).

3. Empty your trash can regularly, and clean your workspace. Solvent or paint-soaked rags or paper towels can add to the vapor load in your space.

4. Put a small room fan in your basement with the fan pointed toward your back, and leave the door open. Assuming a small frequency and duration of materials usage, the use of a fan to provide dilution ventilation should reduce the smell to an acceptable level, or even reduce it altogether. Putting the fan at your back, or slightly to the side will blow generated vapors away from your breathing zone.

5. Finally, I would give serious consideration to moving your modeling location to a non-enclosed area. As an example, I've been trying to prepare for a show, and am trying to hammer out a howitzer at the kitchen table. I'll airbrush in a back bedroom where I can turn on a couple fans and open a window.

Hope this helps. Keep us posted on your efforts.
Gip Winecoff

QUOTE: Originally posted by juniormodeler My model room is in the basement in a closed room with one door. What stuff should i buy to make it not smell so bad and fumey? i need the price to be under 300$. Are their air filters/freshner systems that suck harmfull fumes out or what? im mainly concerned about the glue, putty, exc fumes- in other words i dont airbrush in here, but i do brushpaint.. thanks guys- mark.

I feel your pain, man. My model workshop is in the basement too. I have one door that leads to the stairs that go upstairs and the tiniest window in the friggin world! That isn't too bad b/c I have the window opened as wide as it'll go and have a double fan in front of it blowing out to suck the fumes out. And my door is closed. But the terrible thing is that there's an air vent that pulls air into it and into the furnace (don't worry I spray outside and use mainly acrylics, but still slight fumes and nothing explodes). Then the furnace curculates the air through the whole house!!!! So the whole house smells. My grandparents (mainly my grandfater) gets upset. It doesn't bother my grandmother much. But I don't think there's too much that can be done with basements like ours.

a simple fan with an added filter of impregnated active charcoal,found at a fish store works great.. the electronic stores sell a fume type fan for use in sucking up solder fumes... constructed same as described above...

Don't paint in the basement then there will be no fumes. But seriously, you need to find a source of ventilation out of the basement and some sort of blower to get the fumes out of the basement. It's really bad for your health to be breathing fumes in an enclosed area.

I wouldn't recommend airbrushing in an unventilated basement for a couple of reasons besides the aforementioned health risks.

More than likely your furnace/airconditioner are located in the basement which can
A. Circulate the fumes throughout the house and
B. If the fumes build up enough, things can get explosive real quick. (couple of winters ago there was an explosion in a garage up in KC. Seems this guy was painting his street rod in the garage and had heated the garage and car up with a space heater. Shut that off and started painting. The garage was not ventilated or insulated so, being the rocket scientist he was, the guy plugged the space heater back in to raise the temperature to help the paint dry. Needless to say, the car and the garage were destroyed in the resulting explosion and he ended up in the hospital with severe burns)

get a range hood for your fumes and perhaps make a box to work in which would contain the fumes better.... apparently there is a product /box for sand blasting that may or may not serve this purpose .......i've yet to research it .it may not have ventelation. where sand just hits the ground unlike fumes but if the box is good a retro fit with a range hood would be an idea......but if you use the box for painting.. the idea is to blow air in to the box not suck it in so the paint doesn't clog the fan....so a bathroom fan may be the alternative there .... i got a figure of 60 or 160 cfm is what is typically required for airflow when painting i dunno how accurate that is either way but the guy who told me that is a know it all dink so ya never know.......he says he used to sell painting equipment ....but then i'm sure if ya ask he'd probably say he sold plutonium too so what ever try it out i intend to........oh and as far as you bein in the basement... if it's unfinished consider making a hole for a proper vent......and just duct all that crap out there rather than filtering it all.... but you may want to filter the air going in so you keep the dirt out if you are painting .... less replacement if it's dirt rather than paint...i'm sure you know what i mean .......and hooking a fan up to a switch is childs play .. i used to do electrical constuction if ya need help let me know ya might even use a dimmer switch to control speed i just can't remember if you can use a dimmer with a transformer that might be in a fan i'll figure it out eventually .....when i try it and let ya know

There are many ways to take care of this if you're serious and you'll find plenty of posts about it here.
But you have to decide...I have built models from the ages of 5 to 15 and I can't remember a time without an open tube of cement or enamel paint. After 15 I had career aspirations in a similiar field with similiar and worse chemicals. By 18, I had my own shop with an unventilated room below ground for mold-making. By 21, I was out of business with 8 inch tumor on my spinal cord and a life changed in ways you can't imagine.
That was a 18 years ago and now with kids I am slowly getting back this, strictly with non-toxics and a lot of precautions. A lot of precautions.
I don't mean to scare you, I thought I wouldn't get caught but I did. I am real lucky to be where I am now. Carefully weigh the risks and be smart. As Gip says, some simple things go along way.

I should begin the following observations by getting a confession out of the way: I am 53 years old. When I started building models, in 1956, the only paints available were the old Testor's enamels (and "model airplane dope," which I quickly learned had an extremely deleterious effect on plastic). I used Testor's and Pactra enamels, Floquil xylene-based lacquers, and various other solven-based paints for about 25 years, working mainly in the basement. I suspect the fumes from those substances may explain the thoroughly rotten state my brain is in today.

Then, in the late 1970s, the hobby shop where I had a part-time job started stocking Poly-S paint (since reformulated as PolyScale). I bought a couple of jars and took them home to try out. Initially the results were uninspiring, but I kept at it and discovered that, though the new stuff required some different techniques, it actually was excellent paint. Over several months I converted to it almost completely. Then I noticed that instead of putting in sessions of two hours, I was tearing myself loose from the basement after four, five, or more. I hadn't realized it, but I'd been getting headaches from the fumes. Since then I've used acrylics almost exclusively. No headaches - though the change was far too late to save the brain.

I suspect even acrylic paint emits some sort of effluvia that's medically harmful, but if so it isn't obvious. My best suggestion to the fume problem is: go acrylic.

best solution imho: cut away a pice of wall FACING THE OUTSIDE OF THE HOUSE (important). put in a wall fan. rinse hands. repeat as nessicary

I model in my bedroom. I have an AC unit and i turn on the fan every time I model and I sometimes put a second fan in one of my three windows to have even more ventilation. I don't airbrush. I always model atleast 5 hours before I have to go to sleep so I can leave the fan on and the fumes will go away. I was wondering if there are any health problems with my setup. And if theres any chance of my fan sparking and causing a fire if I turn it on exaust to suck out the fumes rather than trying to dilute them. I work with liquid cements, putties, acrylics(brush painted), and CA glue.

wow, thanks for the input. i bought a 50$ resperator, a air purifier, acrylic paints, and moved my model room to a room with two windows and a door with a fan blowing behing me to blow the fumes out the window. i blew about 500$ on the new setup but now i aint scared!