The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area Paint and Body Shop waste from sand blasting

I just finished blasting my cab this past weekend and was wondering what is the proper way to dispose of the waste from sand blasting? I believe the blasting media and old paint/rust mix is considered hazardous waste and was wondering if anyone had delt with disposing it before. Thanks for the help.

~Neil

Why would it be hazardous? Sand is sand and the paint would have come off naturally over time by itself.

You can strain the media through a screen and discard of the larger particles in a environmentally approved manner and then dump the sand.

Milhouse,

You are thinking 'green'...that's commendable. If the item being blasted had any lead in the primer or paint, the sand is now contaminated and considered hazardous waste.

They make a small, inexpensive test kit that's available at your local hardware to test for the presence of lead. I don't know if the paint or primer on your '55 contained lead or not, but the test kit may be able verify it for you.

California is about as regulated as it gets in this regard. I sandblasted two huge chip bins, but tested the paint before hand..it tested lead free, so I spread the used material around the yard and called it good.

How much energy you put into doing the 'right thing' depends on how involved the process is in CT, and how responsible you are.

Many times, the deciding factor in doing the 'right thing' is $$$$. Sweeping up the sand and disposing of it in small portions in your garbage would be rather innocuous. This is one reason people opt to take their blasting to a commercial outfit and let them deal with it.

Stuart

Could one mix it into a batch of concrete? I wonder if the lead (assuming it has lead in it) would leach out?

When I blasted the last chassis gusts of wind blew it accross to the neighbors and the car wash folks took care of it for me

Rusty Rod,

If we could find Jimmy Hoffa...I'll bet he would know about that 'extra heavy' cement..perhaps size 10 wide!

Stuart

I blast outside & leave it in the gravel driveway. Brian

A little information about lead paint dust:

Milhouse, it is not a hazardous waste unless the concentration is high enough. It is a regulated waste though and should be disposed of properly. Any landfill that is permitted to accept construction/demolition debris can accept waste containing lead.

Houston54, having the paint fall off naturally over the course of many miles and many years results in lower exposure concentrations than when it is taken off all at once over a weekend.

Rusty Rod, mixing it with concrete would not keep it from leaching out.

Achipmunk, hopefully your neighbor doesn't have any small children. Here is a link to the EPA site deatailing the health risks of lead exposure with children. http://www.epa.gov/lead/index.html

64fleetside, like Achipmunk above, hopefully your driveway doesn't serve as a playgorund for children.

We all know the dangers associated with our passion to restore old vehicles. We know not to dump antifreeze, paint thinners, petroleum based cleaning solvents or used oil on the ground where it could leach into the groundwater, harm our children, friends or pets. Let's not make the same mistake with the other wastes that we generate.

i agree with you dave o. better to treat it all as hazardous waste than risk exposing people or the environment. now days you can find any number of places that can handle a variety of waste material. it's just a matter of time and research.

Our small town has a program called S.T.O.P.(stop throwing out pollutants)at various times during the year.They will take antifreeze,paints,solvents,etc at no charge.I would bag it,tag it,and call your town to see if they have an environmental waste program.

Dave O, I try to prevent my kids from eating sand & paint dust from the driveway. Brian

hmmm, anyone gotten scolded lately?

Some people have a limited sense of humor or take responses too seriously.

If you really think it is a hazard to the environment by all means recycle it but if not you can always spread it on the ice on the sidewalk or driveway. I really doubt the paint from these old rigs will have a detrimental impact on the ground water in the concentrations we are envolved with.

Never a truer word was spoken. This is why we all must be careful in how we post and who we poke fun at.

Stuart

you can let it go now. hope you feel better.

think of it this way how many of these old trucks are out in farm fields rusting and polluting the ground used for mass food production

How much sand waste do you have? Under the EPA definitions if you generate less than 2200 lbs of hazardous waste per month you are a "conditionally exempt small quantity generator" and can legally send your waste to a subtitle D landfill (most municipal landfills). Some landfills and some states however have more strict limits of their own.

It's a hazardoue waste only if it fails the TCLP leachate test.

The EPA exempts household lead based paint (LBP)waste generated from household activities but again some states and landfills have more strict requirements. Their definition of household LBP is written for building renovations and repairs.

Mixing with concrete (I think it actually says Portland Cement in the regs.) is one of the EPA approved technologies for "solidification" waste treatment. Treatment facilities that do this have to prove it passes the TCLP test after solidification but it's a very commonly used treatment method.

With all this discussion about paint here, let it go. What you should be doing here is trying to stop the water that drains from our streets from going into our lakes. That's real danger.

use it in your cement brick work::
for your wife's garden new walk path, garden shed or to your front door or shop. how about around the mailbox as a planter

I have been considering buying a 20# sand baster from Harbor Freight for $46. My concern is that it is obnoxiously loud and frightening to use in my neighborhood. The "how to restore your chevy pickup" book comments on it being commonly restricted by neighborhood convenants. I would like to use it to remove rust from heavy pieces of steel. What is like to use these things?

your neighbors would not notice the sound from a 20# sand blaster. they may notice the dust cloud in your yard.

Hi Neil

Not sure what you can do with the waste where
you live, perhaps your municipality has a hazardeous waste program. In Canada we have a Hazardeous waste management site where we can bring old paint and other misc. chemicals for them to dispose of properly. Hopefully your municipaity can answer this for you.
On the subject of sandblasting, I was wondering about your method for blasting your cab?
Did you use #00 sand. Did you blast the inside and out with this system? What pressure did you set up at? What size compressor did you use? Has there been any signs of warping of sheetmetal?
I just finshed doing the compete exterior of mine by hand. What a job but came out good. Now I have to clean up the inside and I am not sure if I should blast the surface rust at low pressure on an angle or sand by hand, as I don't want to warp the dash etc.

Thanks for your time and consideration

Vic Leger

Wow... I never thought this question would get so many responses! Thank you for all the suggestions and ideas! My town does have a hazardous waste program that I will see if I can despose of the waste there. For the time being the waste is sitting in sealed buckets in the garage (it's too cold out to work in there right now anyways).

As for how I blasted the cab... I pulled the cab off of the chassis and made a wood jig with casters for it to sit on. I made a plastic blasting booth inside the garage by hanging 4 2x4s in a square from the ceiling, then draping/stapling plastic over the top and from the sides. For the blasting I used my Craftsman 2HP 30 gallon compressor (rated at 6.5 or so CFM at 90psi) hooked up to the Clarke 20 gallon pressurized pot blaster I bought. I ran the compressor and blaster at around 90psi and while the compressor would run nearly non-stop (I had to take breaks every 10 minutes or so to let the compressor catch up) it got the job done, and quite well. I used fine grit black beauty blasting media that I picked up from a local hardware store for about $13 per 100lbs bag. I was told on my '55 2nd series that the only section you needed to be concerned about blasting was the roof, so I blasted everything (inside and out) and left the roof alone to sand later (inside as well as outside). As far as I can tell there is no sign of any of the metal warping. The next step is I want to mock up the cab and fenders on the chassis to make sure things are aligning correctly before I weld in any of the patch panels.

A few things I learned during this process...

1. use thicker that 4mil plastic for walls (you can blow through it with the sand blasting, and I did in a couple of spots)

2. using anything more coarse than fine grit clogged the Clarke blaster (I used fine grit for the majority of the cab, then extra fine at the end because the hardware store ran out of the fine. The extra fine worked okay, but it took a bit longer and used up a lot more blasting media)

3. Find or rent a larger compressor with a greater CFM rating, or at least find an extra tank or two to tie into the system for reserve air. While the compressor running constantly wasn't a huge issue, I found once the compressor kicked on the moisture had a tendency to pass through the filter and into the sandblaster (I was running two filters... one on the tank and one on the blaster itself)

4. Buy extra face masks. The plastic insert was extremely hard to see through after a good 30-45 minutes of blasting.

5. Primer the cab as soon as you can when you are done. I made the mistake of not getting any primer before hand and may have to blast certain spots again where surface rust has started to form (it's been about 2 weeks now).

I'm very happy with the way the cab came out but it definitely took a little bit of time (not nearly as long as sanding it or wire brushing it would take though). I was certain to wear a resperator, ear plugs, face mask, and cover every inch of skin with clothing while I was blasting. I figured if I was going to have to spend $600 to send the cab out to be blasted I could spend at least up to that much getting the equipment myself and having the experience and satisfaction of doing it myself. If anyone has any suggestions as to the best way to post pictures I'd be happy to do so. Good luck!

~Neil

Oh, one other thing... I ended up using about 4 100lbs bags of the blasting media. You could get away with using only one or two bags and then recollecting what you've used, but you have to sift out the larger pieces before you can use it. I tried this with an old window screen I had laying around and while it worked, it took way too much time and was just easier to spend the extra money to buy more bags.

With any kind of media blasting by all means if you do this at home wear the appropriate "hepa" full face respirator.

Thanks Neil for the explanation on how you were successful in blasting your cab. I just spent approximately 2 weeks removing by hand all the paint and rust on the outside of my cab. I used everything from a D/A sander,palm sander with 80 grit paper to a 3m curly wheel on on my drill. Oh yes also loosened up the paint with citrus stripper which worked quite well. Now I would like to blast the interior. Based on the compressor you used my 3hp coleman 20 gallon should do fine.Thanks to your explanation I feel confident I can proceed with the interior.

I sweep up my paint chips, dust and rust then double bag and put it in the trash... this vehicle has been repainted twice, and there is little to none of the original paint left on it..