hi Guys, have just invested £1000 on a Q-tech spray gun. I’m a builder and thought it might be a good investment for spray painting new builds with my own lads who are skilled but not in painting (they are also quick learners

).
A few questions I would appreciate some comment on are:-
1...it’s all new plasterwork so would you advise mist coat @ say50% followed by either one or two top coats.
2...the walls and ceilings will be white so is a Leyland super latex the best bet or should I use a Leyland contract paint. I always think contract paints seem a cheap and inferior alternative. But don’t really know what a ‘latex’ paint is.
Thanks for any help
Latex is more of American term.....its waterbased paint, not sure theres any diff from emulsion.
Your Q tech airless gun will be powerful enough to spray emulsion straight from the tin, but you would be best to thin the first coat quite a bit as a mist coat. I expect you will need to keep the gun a bit further from the work and float a light coat on as a mist coat may run otherwise.
Subsequent coats may need a little thinning to avoid orange peel.
When you set the gun up, once its primed do some spray outs on some offcuts to get a feel. What you will find is that at low pressures the edges of the spray pattern will have a 'tail' which creates a line. Increase pressure until those tails disappear because the pressure has atomised them.
You will find thinner paint can be sprayed at lower pressure -so for mist coats always adjust to suit.
Tips for spraying:
Fan pattern should be a nice oval. If its 'S' shaped the tip is blocked.
If you cant get rid of tails -the tip could be blocked.
Keep your paint really clean, dont let dry bits or build up from the tin lid to fall in the paint. You will get blocking tips.
Clean main filter and gun filter often, they get clogged quite quickly.
Have a few clean buckets for cleaning.
Take tip off, put tube in bucket of water, pump paint in line back into paint tin.
Then when it starts to run watery, sparay into a bucket.
When it runs clear after 1 or 2 bucjets of water, put spray tip back on, increase pressure back upto spraying pressure and run some clean water through tip.
You will find doing this leaves tips pretty clean.
Some gun cleaner thinners is good to have for cleaning spray cap etc.
I have lots of experience with air assisted airless, your gun has no air but the system is pretty similar.
They are powerful systems which can push out a lot of material.
There are some pro American decorating sites that discuss spray painting walls. From memory quite a few of them recommended using a roller after spraying to get the right finish texture and eliminate spray stripes.