A blast room quote is only as good as the questions behind it. Two shops can ask for “a 12 by 20 blast room” and need equipment that differs by a factor of three in price, because one blasts a dozen aluminum castings a day with glass bead and the other runs steel grit on truck frames two shifts a day. Below is the information Kresco’s engineers collect before they price a room — the same form we fill out with you. Work through it before you call and you’ll get a tighter number faster, and you’ll catch the decisions (pit vs. raised floor, indoor vs. outdoor collector) that are expensive to change later.
Ready to go through it? Send us what you have or call (847) 833-7010 — partial answers are fine, that’s what the conversation is for.
1. Production: what has the room got to do?
- Operators — 1, 2, 3 or 4 blasting at once. This sets pot size, air demand and dust collector CFM more than anything else.
- Hours per day — 8, 16 or 24. Drives media storage capacity and whether you need a double-control pot so one operator can blast while the other reloads.
- Blasting autonomy — how many hours you want to blast before stopping to refill media. Sets storage hopper size: 6.4, 10, 30, 50 or 100 cu ft.
- Parts per day and the largest part: width, length, height and weight. The largest part plus room to walk around it sets the enclosure; weight sets floor grating and whether you need a monorail or cart.
2. The parts and the abrasive
- Part condition — new, used, painted, rusty. Coating removal produces far more dust and combustible fines than cleaning new steel.
- Material — steel, stainless, aluminum, cast iron, composites. Aluminum and magnesium change the dust collector spec (see combustible dust and NFPA protection).
- Abrasive and mesh size — aluminum oxide, glass bead, GMA garnet, steel shot, steel grit, stainless grit, plastic media, Jetmag or other. Steel abrasives want a mechanical (screw) recovery floor; light media can run pneumatic recovery. Our blast media chart covers the trade-offs.
3. Blast pot and hose
- Pot size — 3.4, 6.4 or 10.4 cu ft (roughly 350, 650 and 1,050 lb of media); 10.4 cu ft single- or dual-operator. Or a pot you already own — tell us the model.
- Control type — pressure release, pressure hold, or double control with a selector switch inside the room.
- Deadman remote — electric or pneumatic.
- Blast hose ID — 1″, 1¼”, 1½” or 2″.
- Nozzle — double-venturi bore 1/4″ to 1/2″. A 3/8″ nozzle at 100 PSI needs about 196 CFM; 7/16″ needs 254 CFM. Nozzle choice and your compressor have to agree.
- Catwalk around the pot platform; high-level detector in the storage hopper.
4. The enclosure
- Interior size — length, width, height in feet.
- Booth type — solid back, or drive-through for trailers, truck bodies and long structural steel.
- Panel gauge — 14 gauge standard; heavier on request. Finish — galvanized standard, or powder coated in a color.
- Product door — solid swing, roll-up, bi-fold or tri-fold, and the clear opening width and height. Personnel doors — how many, with safety switches that stop blasting when a door opens.
- Rubber lining — yes/no and how high: 8, 10, 12 or 16 feet. Grit rooms get lined; glass-bead rooms often don’t.
- Floor grating — standard 3/16″, rated 1,000 lb/sq ft, or custom for forklift traffic.
- Plenums — where air comes in (adjustable on the door, door side, side walls, or fixed) and where it leaves (door side, back wall, side walls). This is what gives the operator a clear view: air should sweep from behind the blaster toward the part and out.
5. Media recovery floor
This is the biggest fork in the road and the hardest to change after the concrete is poured.
- Excavated pit, raised floor (no excavation; you walk up a ramp), or above-floor pit.
- Mechanical recovery — screw conveyors under grating: corner chute, simple, U-shape, H-shape, T-shape, L-shape, or full-floor M or H layouts, with 6″ or 9″ screws sized to booth width and length. Best for steel grit and shot and for high-production rooms.
- Hybrid recovery — a 6″ screw trough combined with pneumatic sweep.
- Pneumatic recovery — corner chute, simple, double or full-floor floor hoppers in 22″ (rooms to 20′) or 36″ (rooms to 36′) pits, media moved by air. Lower cost, suited to lighter media and lower volumes.
- Mechanical loading or suction head — no recovery floor; the operator sweeps or vacuums spent media to a loading point and the system lifts it back to the pot. The entry-level option.
- Removable covers for maintenance, inside or outside the booth.
For how the screws, bucket elevator and air-wash separator fit together, see our blast room maintenance checklist.
6. Dust collector
- Design face velocity — 50, 70 or 100 FPM across the room. Higher velocity means better visibility and a bigger collector.
- Location — indoor or outside; blower on top or on the floor.
- Ductwork — by Kresco or by your contractor.
- Combustible dust — yes, no or to be determined. If yes or TBD: NFPA package (explosion panels, isolation valve, back-draft damper, spark arrestor, particle detector, explosion-proof panel, sprinklers above or below the filters).
- Return air to shop — yes (needs HEPA after-filter and usually a combustible-dust sign-off) or no.
- Options — muffler, HEPA, catwalk. On pneumatic-recovery rooms there is a second, smaller collector on the recovery system (baghouse or cartridge, with muffler, dust drum, automatic bag shaker).
Spec tables for the collectors themselves: Kresco CDC Series blast room dust collectors, 2,000–150,000 CFM.
7. Handling parts inside the room
Carts on rails, a drive-through for vehicles, an overhead monorail or bridge crane, a turntable, a pipe rotator — or nothing. Describe how the part gets in, gets turned and gets out. This is also where automation enters: a robot or oscillating nozzle manifold needs to be designed in, not bolted on.
8. Utilities
- Compressed air — existing or to come; HP, PSI and CFM available. One 3/8″ nozzle needs a 50 HP compressor on its own.
- Electrical — panel availability and voltage: 220, 380, 460 or 600 V.
9. Installation and timing
- Installed by Kresco, by your crew, or by your crew with Kresco supervision (and how many days).
- Expected delivery date and expected start-up date.
What to send with it
Photos or drawings of the parts with dimensions, a sketch of the floor space with ceiling height and column locations, and a photo of the compressor nameplate. With those four things and the answers above, a budget number comes back quickly and a firm quote follows. Start here, or read the blast rooms and sandblast booths page first.
Based on Kresco’s Blast Room Request for Quote and Sandblast Equipment Qualification forms (rev. 2026).
