OK, so here's my review of the PreVal sprayer unit:
The good:
- The idea of being able to spray various types of materials/mediums with a small, simple sprayer is brilliant
- This unit is ideal for small projects that DON'T require latex paints
- The price (at least w/o shipping) is easy on your pocketbook
- Measuring the volume of liquid added to the glass container is very easy
- It uses very little paint; hardly any 'overspray' occurs
The bad:
- It does NOT spray all materials well, particularly latex interior paints
- The thinning information for "water-based paints" (which therefore includes latex) is confusing; the PreVal box says thin it at a ratio of 3 to 1 but PreVal's website says thin it at a ratio of 3 to 2. Furthermore, PreVal's
customer service reps say you'll need to experiment with a thinning ratio
for latex to find out what works. This is an unnecessary pain in the rear.
- The plastic pick-up "straw" that extends into the glass container is fragile; I broke two separate units by trying to swivel the sprayer nozzle in line with the
tri-angular vent/notch per PreVal's instructions. The pick-up straw broke where
it enters the bottom of the sprayer. (BTW, if PreVal directs you to "Turn the
button on the Power Unit so the red insert in the button points in the same
direction as the air vent on the coupling" why don't they just manufacture it
that way?) I finally ended up NOT trying to twist the nozzle face in line with the vent and just left the unit as it came out of the box; about 90 degrees out of line and it worked just fine.
- The unit cannot be tilted more than 45 degrees or paint will run out the vent hole
- The unit MUST be cleaned after finishing using it or the paint will dry and
inevitably lead to clogging. Of course you'd expect this if you pulled the pick-
up tube out of your paint bottle and left it but clogging occurs even if you
leave the pick-up tube totally submerged in your paint, for instance, if you want
to come back later and spray an additional coat on your project
- You may not be able to remove all clogs; the instructions say to remove a clog that you need to hold your finger over the nozzle ejector and push the nozzle down thereby forcing propellant to go backwards through the nozzle and expel the clog, but I had some paint that got trapped in between the nozzle head and the pickup tube filter and there was no way to get it out (hence, another reason why you MUST clean the unit out by spraying thinner through it when you're done each time)
So here's my experience with this product so far: I needed to spray a ceiling medallion with a high quality, white acrylic latex paint before I glued the medallion to my ceiling. Because latex is very thick it needed to be thinned. Some mediums need to be thinned at 8 to 1 or even 4 to 1 but latex needs to be thinned at a whopping 3 to 2 ratio. When I asked PreVal customer service if the high ratio of the thinning additive would discolor or alter the capabilities of the paint, they said "no" and referred me to the thinning product they recommended (X-I-M Latex X-tender). However, when you read the X-I-M Latex X-tender product sheet it boasts no dis-colorization or paint detriment when you use the product at a rate of 2-6 ounces per gallon, not at the enormous rate of 3 to 2. So the jury's still out on how your applied latex paint will perform in the long run. So after thinning at both a 3-2 ratio and even a 3-3 ratio, latex paint still does NOT dispense from the nozzle in a fine, highly atomized form like a spray paint can. Not good. It shoots small globules of paint; very small, but globules nonetheless. (Note: I didn't try to thin it down more than 50-50 because I felt I really needed more paint than thinning product on my medallion but that's just me.) True, at a ratio of 3-2 or 3-3 the paint does flatten out a lot when drying but I was never able to get a perfectly even, globule-less coat of paint; if I hold my project at various angles after the paint dried I'd see what looked like very small, light `freckles' close to each other on the medallion (this is the paint globules/spatters after they dried). Next I decided to move the spray unit across the surface more slowly and load it up with more paint. When I did this the `freckling' was not a problem; paint would dry in a nice, smooth coat. However, now the problem was that your paint is so thinned out, and put on so heavy, it runs. Remember, you can't tilt the sprayer more than 45 degrees while spraying. So you can't put your project down flat because you don't want to tilt the sprayer more than 45 degrees and get paint to leak from the sprayer, nor can you hold the sprayer upright and tilt your project up off your workbench (because paint begins to run). This was EXTREMELY irritating!!! I ended up tilting my medallion about 15-20 degrees and held the PreVal unit a little less than 45 degrees and tried to quickly paint my medallion before paint started to run. It seemed to work but what a hassle!
Keep in mind that my review deals strictly with spraying latex paint.
answer. Your company makes a BRILLIANT product, in theory, but I'd have to see a demo of it on YouTube, spraying with LATEX, before I'll sing your praises. BTW, if you want to give your product the PR you think it deserves, I recommend you go on Amazon and refute my reviews there....I must have posted the same review at least 3 or 4 times on Amazon because I was so frustrated with it.
