Before painting the exterior of a house using an airless sprayer, it is essential to move all outdoor furniture and other items away from the area to be sprayed. Select the spray tip that’s best suited for the paint you are using and the surface to be sprayed. Clean-up is also crucial.
Graco sprayers are easy to use and finish in a fraction of the time it takes to paint with a traditional roller or brush. This article will guide you through the process of painting the exterior with airless sprayer tips and how to spray exterior house siding. Simple paint sprayer tips to paint like a professional painter are used in this video.
The equipment list for exterior painting includes a homeowner grade airless paint sprayer or a carbide scraper. Start at the top of the area and work your way down, spraying any eaves or undersides of any overhangs. The direction you will spray depends on the construction, but as a general rule, spray any exposed trusses, wood beams, or boards by aiming the spray fan pattern to follow lengthwise.
Airless paint sprayers are by far the most efficient way to paint the exterior of your house. Press the trigger while the external paint sprayer gun is off to the side and then move it toward the surface you are painting. Work across the surface using horizontal strokes about 10-12 inches long, slightly overlapping each pass. You will need a beefy 12-gauge extension cord and a tip for the gun.
📹 DIY Painting Exterior Wood Siding with Airless Sprayer – Graco Magnum X7 – Painting New Construction
DIY Painting New Construction Exterior Siding: Dad and I painted all the wood board and batten siding on the outside of the …
📹 How To Paint A House With An Airless Paint Sprayer
Home improvement tips, tools, projects, hacks and more! Oh, and how to paint a house for the DIY or professional painter.
Lil’ tip…when you prime the sprayer with paint, the smaller drain tube needs to be on the outside of your paint bucket (and in the waste pail) so that water in the sprayer from when you primed with water doesn’t drain and mix into your paint, which is what happened. Nice work though and great article overall! 👍
Great article and I appreciate the tips, just started spraying yesterday and feel like I unlocked a new hack. Been a contractor forever but painting the exterior of a house, this is a must have. More important than the machine is a mask and eye protection. I was glad to see your dad wearing it, please wear them next time so we can enjoy more vids from you and you can enjoy that in which you work on. All the best.
You can go down to a .12 and a .10 so a 310 / 312. Depending on how rough the surface is, even way down to a 308 / 408 with acrylic / latex paint straight out of the tin. Also the tip to use is a FFLP tip so cuts way down on overspray, sprays about half the pressure doesn’t go through near enough materials. The tail is a block in your gun filter. After you’ve finished take the handle apart and run water through it with the gun handle off using the machine. And stick a new filter in the gun for next use. So you’ve prob cleaned your filter after using it I find they are a throw away item after use. Old guys spraying alright though make those few changes and you won’t be able to tell, his technique is spot on almost. Actually both you going alright on that I’d have you labour for me for sure.
You and your dad did a great job painting the hous3. It turned out great. Few professional tips for your sprayer cleanup process. 1st, always have a 2nd bucket. Prime into a waste bucket, both when switching into paint and when cleaning, you don’t want to dump dirty water into your paint, nor paint into your clean water. Also remove the tip during this process. Your spray tip wears out, and this is exponentially faster if you’re wasting it’s lifespan during the cleaning and priming process where you rapidly run a bunch of material thru the orifice. Simply do a few spits with it after the machine is clean in the reverse position first then verify it has a clean spray fan in the spray position. Also, absolutely zero need to be disconnecting the line from the gun and sprayer just to clean the unit or to drain it for long term storage. You’re better off putting some pump armor in the line and pump after cleaning. Glad you cleaned the filter in the gun, better units also have a manifold filter on the machine itself. If these are cleaned between each use, or at least every few uses, there’s almost no reason for them not to last years and years and years of even daily use. You basically have to ignore these filters and allow massive cakeup of paint that ends up rupturing them to ruin one of the 60mesh default filters.
:thanksdoc: you all did good,. I would add safety glasses and a mask. and maybe some gloves. be careful laying on that ladder, I use to do that, I got a sore on my shin, it took over a year to heal, I am a diabetic., i wound use a tip extinction. like 12 inches.. oil the pump before you start and use hot soapy water. when you get through, use RV anti freeze before putting it up, don’t want it to frezze. maybe ware gloves. I enjoyed perusal, my daughter use to work like you all do. we had fun. do spray laytex when the temp i below 50 F. get a longer piece of cardboard. keep having fun. John.
I’m also a novice painter, but I’m very impressed with the results and the superb job you did in documenting this project. your photography and narration were excellent and you captured all the important steps with crystal clear article and great sound quality. Thanks a lot for doing this. I just did the front of my house with a Magnum X5 and the steps for the pump, hose and gun all seem to be 100% identical. I got good results too applying a Baer primer to the wood paneling, under the eves, and the trim.. and I’m now motivated to do the back side of the house and under the patio. I agree 100% on your comments about using Sherman Williams and getting their paint on sale.. It wasn’t on sale below 20%, so was too steep for me… so I got my Premium paint and primer at Home Depot for about 1/2 of the cost of the Shermam Williamd mid-grade. I hope that doesn’t turn out 10 years later to have been a mistake.
Nice work. I always like working with my Dad on projects. Cherish it while u can! I just acquired a new Graco Magnum x5 which is I think one model under yours and I used it to spray all the trim and casings in a 4 bedroom house recently and I absolutely loved it! I took a chance on it at my local Lowe’s on sale for $329 and it’s been well worth the money. Keep up the good work 👍👍
Good afternoon! My name is Rodrigo, I live in Brazil in the state of São Paulo. I have worked with paintings since 2005 and managed to buy a national Airless machine. For a Graco 390 Airless is costing about 9 thousand reais equivalent to about 2,700 dollars. The tax for imported goods is too high so I bought a cheaper machine! I signed up for your website because I really like the way they work and I learn a lot, even though I do not know any English. GOD bless you and you have won another website subscriber, sorry for my English that is from Google translator.
Yeah risk your life to avoid lap marks? How about feather the fan in and out of each section and don’t pull the trigger directly onto the surface. The initial burst of the sprayer when you pull the trigger is higher then when you hold the trigger down. Do not start and stop on the substrate and feather it out and you won’t have start stop marks or heavy edges. BTW that wand is way overkill man lol
It’s better to hit the corners on point first with a horizontal spray pattern, then spray the walls out towards them working from the top down. The paint distortions are called “dry laps” and areas where the coat is too thin are called “holidays”. It’s ok to spot check the product with a “wet mil” gauge and follow the application recommendations. Back rolling/brushing is not necessary when the prep is done properly and all angles are covered. Rolling scaffolds are preferred over ladders when painting most walls. Long tip extensions should only be used for very hard to reach areas and use a smaller diameter “whip line” at the last few feet of spray hose on airless and conventional sprayers to help reduce fatigue on continuous spray jobs where it’s not uncommon for a painter to spray 25-50 gallons a day depending on hours, wind loss and mil density. When painting the side of a steel building like a power plant or factory from a “window washer scaffold”, each pass from the top to the ground is called a “drop”. One could also encounter several “drops” on a large house from a ladder or standard scaffolding. Try to avoid dry lap on the previous drop. Stay very aware of wind direction when spraying outdoors and avoid overspray blowing on all visible roofing and on other peoples property, especially automobiles. Even when running crews of up to a dozen industrial painters, I still grabbed a gun and painted right along with them and preferred the shorter trigger myself. I was in the paint business for about 25 yrs before I switched trades and became a control room operator at a power plant and have seen my share of product, equipment and technique on all types of surfaces including automotive.
How do you handle spraying interior walls where the ceiling is about 50% higher than a typical bedroom wall. Would you spray horizontally and work up the wall that way by using a raised platform as you get higher and higher up the wall? Or would you do it vertically and go up as far as you can and then get on a raised platform and then spray the second half vertically. My guess is horizontally like you are doing in this article.
Ugh—- the homes here on the west coast of BC in vancouver are 3 stories high, acrylics, stucco, hardiboards, cement boards, all sorts of peaks and valleys, no ladders hopping allowed due to being watched by wcb in the city, steel toed boots all the time,proper scaffolding that conforms with wcb, lowest voc paints,They’ll shut a company down in a heartbeat.Very expensive homes in an expensive city. Lots of competition, tough to make a decent buck unless you specialize, with stains, etc. Spraying a shed like your doing here is rare here. Good article
2 questions, do you get spits with you 30 inch extension? I watch closely and can not tell, even when you stop and go at tradition points. I have a 10 inch extension and sometimes I do spit and sometimes not. 2, how can I safely paint a gable wall that sits above a steep metal roof? Thanks for your help. I have spent hours perusal you articles. Thank you for your time
Apologies if you’ve covered this already, but do you happen to know, or have a rule of thumb, when it comes to determining how much paint is needed to spray vinyl siding? Aside from what’s on the can obviously. Just curious if there’s a trick to the trade when estimating something like that on a 1500sqft home. Thanks!
Well the 1×4 trim that is used not on a corner, window or door trim is something not common in our area. It helps you find a start and stop point but we typically use hardy plank siding and the house won’t have random trim pieces, in random spots down a wall, to have this luxury when spraying. How do you start and stop on a 60’ wall that doesn’t have these?
I’ve been spraying behr exterior flat paint. The t111 siding finish came out looking uneven. Behr flat paint isn’t really flat, (it kind of has a sheen to it.) would I still have This problem if I used a paint like kellymoore flat paint. Kelly Moore flat paint has a true flat finish. With the behr paint You can really see the places where I started and stopped, it looks heavy in places is the best way I can explain it. Can you explain any of this for me? Thank you for your vids.
I am currently painting my house for the first time. I have noticed with my air sprayer that is leaves quite bit of paint at the bottom of the can. I still need that paint for my project. I am currently combining cans to make a full can. Do you have any other suggestions? I really enjoy your website and it has helped me so much! Thank you.
You are just another painter showing people how not to paint. No respirator, ever heard of IPF? (idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis). Getting this material in your lungs and sinus passages not good. Safety is first thing you should communicate As far as your technique you are not applying an even coat because you are hooking it. The objective is for the fan of the spray to be held in same distance as much as possible for each side to side movement. Fan of spray is always perpendicular the surface. Just watch robot painting machines. The results will vary especially using cheap paint, and in this case if you are using cheap paint without a back brushing with 4 inch brush is not an even coat. I am a licensed California C-33 painting contractor for over 30 years.