I work at a condo property now and have been tasked with finding a good parking lot striper for us to buy. I don’t know much about them, and the board knows even less. So far the only thing I know for sure is that they won’t want to spend a lot on anything, but since I’m the one doing all of the work, I really don’t want some shitty machine that’s more trouble than it’s worth.
The property only has 124 condos, so it isn’t huge, but we do have a fire lane/no parking line that follows the road all the way through and back around.
Any recommendations? What should I look for? I’d like to buy one local if possible (Bellevue, WA area) but we’re ok with having one shipped.
Why don’t you guys contract out? Or at least suggest to your bosses they look at the costs involved between hiring someone and making y’all do it. I work with the local school district (120+ schools, that’s a lot of striping) and we always hire stripers. It’s just not cost effective to maintain the equipment, paint supplies, etc.
When I started they were talking about contracting it out, but somewhere along the line they decided otherwise. For us it’d be a much smaller project than what you’re dealing with, so there wouldn’t be a lot of equipment to maintain.
It’s hard enough finding projects to keep myself busy every day, so I welcome the extra work. I just don’t know anything about the equipment.
As for the extra “p” jokes, my boss actually asked me to look at different “stripping machines”.
This is one of those situations where I’m going to assume there’s a reason people get paid to do it.* You might think it’s a better idea to do it yourself, but are you sure you know how? I’m be concered that you’ll go out and spend all this money on a machine and wind up with a half assed looking job and no one to blame. Oh, and that’s assuming you’re just going over old lines. If your starting from scratch, I’d be even more concerned. Another vote for having it done. Call up some places, get some bids.
One more thing. I think they make manual machines as well. I’ve seen it done at schoold with a special spray paint can that works upside down and a thing that you loaded it into with a wheel on the bottom and a trigger on top. I’ll bet it wasn’t more then $100.
*There’s a reason people get paid to do it is a common saying of mine when you see a crappy tinting job on someones car windows.
I’m really not being given a choice. The guy I replaced either paid someone to do it last year or just got an estimate and the cost was around $600. Since a cheap machine can run around $100 that’s the way they want to do it.
I imagine I could figure out how to use one (and I’ve painted parking lines before, just not with a machine), but browsing around online comes up with a few different types.
What I don’t know is if there’s any real difference between them that’s worth the extra money, if the extra goodies and attachments are useful at all, if there are major maintenance differences between them I should know about… I’ve had no luck finding out that information, which is why I’m here. I was hoping maybe there’d be a doper or two that’s used one before.
To be honest I don’t think it’s a better idea to do it myself. It’ll be time consuming with a lot of prep work that a professional team has equipment more suited for. Unless I want to pay for the contractors myself, though, I’m getting paid to figure out the best way for me to do it.
