# Level 5 with a spray rig



## thefinisher

We have a big pull behind spray rig with a 20hp motor and will be doing a level five finish on a house in a month or so. Instead of rolling on the mud and skimming it back off, we think it might be better/faster to hook up our spray rig and spray a very heavy orange peel and then skim it off. Anybody ever do this?


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## 2buckcanuck

Not going to read through it for you, But maybe your answer is in this thread

http://www.drywalltalk.com/f7/level-5-spraying-mud-1282/


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## Tim0282

Never-Miss makes a product called Final Coat that is best for making a level five. Spray it on with an airless. No wipe off. Works fantastic!
http://www.wix.com/paulatuberville/never-miss 
Check out their website. Makes far better sense than spraying orange peel on and wiping it off. I've tried that. Doesn't work the best. Final Coat works far better!


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## thefinisher

If we wanted to spray a surfacer we would do that with our other very heavy duty paint sprayer and rucoat equalizer plus. The thing is however that the cost of materials and labor for that is way too much compared to using mud mixed with water and primer. Just wanted to know if anyone has used a big spray rig to put it on. We will have about 5 people wiping down so I think we can do a 400 board house in about 4 hours.:blink:


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## moore

2buckcanuck said:


> Not going to read through it for you, But maybe your answer is in this thread
> 
> http://www.drywalltalk.com/f7/level-5-spraying-mud-1282/


 That was a good read!


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## Mudslinger

thefinisher said:


> We have a big pull behind spray rig with a 20hp motor and will be doing a level five finish on a house in a month or so. Instead of rolling on the mud and skimming it back off, we think it might be better/faster to hook up our spray rig and spray a very heavy orange peel and then skim it off. Anybody ever do this?


I've done it quite a few times with my 300 gallon Spray King. I have a 35 cfm compressor on mine, but you could do it with less. Just throw a small tip in, and spray it on heavy. With that many guys it should go just fine. First time I tried it there was only 2 of us, and we were skimming with a squeegee. It worked great as long as you caught it just right, but if it dried a little everything went to crap lol. Now we just use our trowels, and it's a lot more forgiving when it dries up some.


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## thefinisher

Mudslinger said:


> I've done it quite a few times with my 300 gallon Spray King. I have a 35 cfm compressor on mine, but you could do it with less. Just throw a small tip in, and spray it on heavy. With that many guys it should go just fine. First time I tried it there was only 2 of us, and we were skimming with a squeegee. It worked great as long as you caught it just right, but if it dried a little everything went to crap lol. Now we just use our trowels, and it's a lot more forgiving when it dries up some.


Thank you sir :thumbsup: Just the information I was looking for


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## betterdrywall

You may want to try a binks gun with flat tips


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## NDmudman

Yes I did it all the time in Calif . you want to use a topping mud that will sand easy and make sure the spayer dosent get to far ahead of the guys wiping down We kept mud pretty thin and sprayed what we called a fog lots of air and solid on wall . It's a messy job Alot of guys did switch over to produts to spray out of airless and didnt have to wipe down But you can do it, might be a little learnig curve 1st time out Good luck


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## Mrdrywall

yes done quite a bit of them. some with pole gun with1/4 popcorn tip. some with a binks gun. but by far the fastest,cleanest, and the cheapest is with my graco 230 spraying with a 1239 tip. I know you were asking about sprayrigs. so if that was all i had i would use a binks gun


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## Bazooka

I've tried it and it dries out very quickly. On my last job there were four of us. Two of us rolling the material on with a paint roller and two other wiping off the mud tight and clean. The mud will not get away from you and there is very little waste with less masking.


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## thefinisher

We did a 400+ board house in 8 hours (including masking off) with the help of some extra wipers. It was a pain in the @$$ to say the least. Would have worked better if we had more help, but in the end it turned out pretty decent. Going to crank up our Speedflo 6900 next time out.


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## SlimPickins

I'd like to see some number crunching on this please.

6 (1 spraying 5 wiping) guys at 8 hours and spraying mud vs. one man spraying a leveling primer.


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## thefinisher

SlimPickins said:


> I'd like to see some number crunching on this please.
> 
> 6 (1 spraying 5 wiping) guys at 8 hours and spraying mud vs. one man spraying a leveling primer.


Probably cheaper to use mud. Surfacers cost a lot (around $40 a bucket) where a box of mud is $8.50 and will cover about the same.


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## chris

SlimPickins said:


> I'd like to see some number crunching on this please.
> 
> 6 (1 spraying 5 wiping) guys at 8 hours and spraying mud vs. one man spraying a leveling primer.


 Some guys cost more per hour:whistling2: 6 guys would cost me over a grand in for 1 day


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## SlimPickins

chris said:


> Some guys cost more per hour:whistling2: 6 guys would cost me over a grand in for 1 day


That's where I was going with my line of questioning.

They must be really cheap to offset the cost enough to have 5 extra bodies on site.

Let's see.....mud costs $8.50, which is $31.50 less than leveling material. But, we have 5 extra guys on site. How many buckets of material get sprayed per hour? 2? 3? Let's say 3. So that's $94.50 saved in material. Which has to put the labor cost per man at less than $18.90 each. I guess we're not talking about journeymen here, so it seems feasible.


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## SlimPickins

Why does my above post have such weird line spacing?


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