Furniture Stripping : Our Stipping Process :
Furniture Stripping Portfolio : Furniture "Stripping Only" Pricing

The process of using methylene chloride chemicals for stripping of finish from furniture items for eventual refinishing generates a potential hazard waste, if not handled correctly. Just like having a correct process to utilize for the methylene chloride chemicals for the finish removal and the eventual processing and disposal of the chemicals, there must also be a tracking process for the water used to rinse the stripped item.

The rinse booth or other rinse area should reasonably confine the water usage and spray to within a limited area. An appropriate exhaust fan should remove the water mist away from the operator. The air flow requirements are much like those for a spray booth for lacquer finishing. The target booth design is 100-125 fpm at the face of the booth. Our booth accomplishes the flow rate by using sneeze curtains to reduce the area of in-flow. The stripped and rinsed furniture item should be removed to a proper enclosed drying area that also exhausts the drying vapors.

The question becomes how to properly handle the contaminated rinse water. The dirty water still contains some residues of the removed finish and certainly some of the methylene chloride chemical. A goal should be to remove as much of the stripper while still in the strip tray by various means, to include using a squeegee.

You can NOT dispose of contaminated rinse water into:

the ground, period.

the storm drain system, period.

the sanitary sewer system, without a proper permit from your sanitary sewer district.

The sewer district will likely be unfamiliar with such a permit requirement. Ours had to be helped along by the state environmental officials we were working with. In the end they basically needed to know about how much water would be dumped at a time and how often. They then said fine if we tested the water for proper pH. The only time we’ve tested the water and found it out of range was tracked back to having stripped 4 painted chairs that started with a metallic paint before other paint layers. We then had to treat the water to proper pH with chemicals used for swimming pools and hot tub spas.

Our rinse booth unit has a tapered bottom about 18" off the floor that allows the water to flow out and down into a collection tank. The collection tank is about 12" wide by 30" long and 15" high. It is divided into three sections with metal screens to collect the more massive globs in the rinse water. In the 3^rd tank area is a sewage grade sump pump that is controlled by an off/on float.

The pump raises the dirty water up to about 30" and is piped over to a farm animal watering tank located behind the rinse booth.

The farm tank is of 300 gallons. Based on its total capacity we have created a dip stick that tells us about how many gallons it is holding. The tank is capped with a hinged exterior mdf cover to control for the off-gassing that will occur.

The bottom of the tank has a 12’ long loop of ½ copper tubing with a 100+ of 1/16^th holes drilled into it. It is fed by a shop air line with a control valve for quantity of air needed. Since our rinse pump is a high pressure but low volume pump, we can normally strip 2 to 3 times before the farm tank gets ¾ full. When that point arrives we pump air into the copper tubing and out the small holes in the bottom of the tank. The goal is to reach something like a slow boil on the stove when cooking. The process is called spurging. We operate it for three 8 hour work days. The bubbling effect lifts the remaining methylene chloride chemicals to the top of the water and they then off-gas.

The tank cover has a 5" flexible tubing that goes up to a heavy duty bathroom exhaust fan that sucks the air in the tank and puts it outside the building.

We log the gallons of water for disposal using the dip stick. We test the air treated water for pH being within normal range. The pH testing strips come from any garden center and are used by those with fish ponds.

Another sewage type sump pump controlled with an off/on switch is then used to lift the water up to about 36" to the pipe we had installed to carry the water some 80’ away to the building’s sanitary sewer system. Once pumped to the sewer system we then flush the 80’ of piping to ensure we keep it clean, using a garden hose attachment to the pipe.

We also use the rinse booth to further clean the floor mop and personal protective equipment used.

Once a year we fully drain the tank and clean remaining settled sludge out of it. We then treat the residue like stripper sludge with processing through stripper sludge recycler.

This total water capture and treatment process has no special chemical additive requirements. It does require staff attention to the process. The concepts were provided us by the state environmental officials as a reasonable solution.

The equipment set up costs include the farm tank, two sewage sump pumps, heavy duty bath exhaust fan, and water and air piping with controls.