Interview with John Darroch: The Mind Behind Apollo HVLP Sprayers!

[Applause] all right John we got the grand tour of your factory here in Vista California and I really appreciate it so pleas it was really cool cuz I actually learned a whole bunch from this trip I thought I was just going to come here you know hey shoot um some filming some stuff being made and and shoot a few cool videos but I'm not an expert at HVLP spring it's um new to me I mean I started off uh spraying with the aess sprayers for 20 years I met you um started spraying you know with hlps I went back to aess sprayers I've come back to HVLP sprayers again and you know I've come here and you've taught me a whole lot so I got to um you know say thank you for that you know I'm going to go back and Implement you know some of the stuff that I've learned from you and you know just you know my audience you know is here and they may not know you know a whole lot about Apollo sprayers and can you just give me just a little history of your company you are a family-owned and operated company um your son's been working with us today here shooting video and stuff we've got to see some employees that have worked here you know 23 years um so can you just give us a little bit of background CU I think it's important you know it's important for me that we support local family-owned and operated companies so yeah yeah you know um Apollo was originally founded in 1966 in uh in England and it was actually one of my father's friends that started the company and there still isn't Apollo sprayers in the UK right now which is a separate business from ours um but in the late 70s um we brought the product over to the US and started um selling it to Woodworkers and contractors and things like that and uh we basically um pioneered HVLP in this country there's been other brands that have come and gone since then but we're actually the oldest original manufacturer that still focuses just on HVLP turbine systems um my father has been doing it since like I said the late 70s um I became introduced into the company I remember as a little kid going to our little 500 square foot factory at the time and my dad would U build in bring in kits from England at that time and and we'd assemble them in the evening and then he'd load them into the car and the next day he'd go off and do some demos and sell them all and then come back and we' do the same thing and that's kind of how we started the business you know and things have grown obviously a lot since since those early days um but I think the biggest thing is that I've grown up in this business right um my dad's owned it uh since started it since I was around 13 years old and kind of like the same with what my son's been able to do now too so you kind might say that turbine systems are in our blood right uh and because it's our passion uh it's something that we do um and we try to do the very best right whenever I do anything in my life period I don't like to do something half-ass I just like to go after it if I'm really going to do something I try to put 110% into it right and that's what we do here here at Apollo everything that we do is built um around the contractor we listen to our customers that's how we're able to improve our our product you know I can't take the credit for everything that we have and what we've done today um because a lot of it has come from our customers and just listening to our customers and understanding what their pains are and how we can help them to have a better piece of equipment that's easier to use that performs better and so forth and that's really at the heart of what Apollo is all about I would highly recommend you know anybody doing cabinets anybody um doing Furniture anybody doing rod iron fences that they would use hlp sprayers and you know I have my reasons why I chose to go back to them and use them but can you just talk to my audience I mean um you've been in this business for almost your entire life and so you what's the benefit of an hvop sprayer over an airless sprayer the first thing that Apollo teaches um our customers is that there's really not one tool for everything so we do not out there telling you that the HVLP turbine system is the be all end all for every painting situation that you'll ever be in because that's absolutely not true if I wanted to spray the exterior of a house or uh that there's no way I'm going to do that with an HVLP turbine could I sure I mean I could um but it would take me 10 times longer and it just wouldn't be as efficient in that in efficient in the way of time really I think it's applying uh the right type of equipment to the right job and like you said you know certain types of uh finishing refinishing particularly like onsite work and things like that where you're doing something in somebody's home and you really want to be able to control the overspray and exactly and know exactly where that's going besides the fact that you're wasting that pain if it sticks to the you know the the Hardy Board and all the other your your masking but it's more about the environment and everything and the um reduction of your overall uh paint and the and the um the use uh or the experience really when you're using it right the benefits of the HVLP are the portability um the low overspray and so which what most people know right um and so that's why so you want to keep your projects to things that are realistic the the paints that you can spray out there some paints that are just not designed to spray through a turbine system they need to have an aess system to to spray them and so knowing your paints and knowing really what the job what how the tools work properly both an aess and an HVLP you that way you can then as a painter you can position them in your business right and that way you go into a job you know you have both tools and the right tool for that particular job yeah I I think you know you touched on you know a big part of it the right tool for the job and and I think you know one of the reasons why you know I transferred back to you know HVLP spray and with um I kind of like migrated to spraying you know a lot of 2K poly you know products and you know with an airless sprayer I started getting runs all the time cuz I like to spray you know the product um the substrate hanging like doors I can spray all four edges both sides all in one shot it saves a lot of time but I started getting a lot of runs and you know so then you know I started experimenting with HVLP spraying you know recently with furniture and cabinets and stuff and you know after 3 months I haven't had a run you know since then so what I say you know it is taking the pain out of painting and another thing is is the cleanup the the overspray you touched on overspray um transfer rate transfer weight of the product um to the substrate and not having a lot of Fallout one of the Pains of painting is going home and and having paint all over you cleaning paint up off your skin uh cleaning paint up off out of your ears your nose everything and so with hlp sprayers you know you can spray all day long in a booth and you don't have overspray all over you you don't have a massive mess on the floor I know um you also touched on it you know because we're really big on um painting cabinets you know kitchen cabinets on site so you can take an hvl piece rare easily on site you're going to create uh significantly less dust silica dust um just overspray dust too so your spray system has been um you know one of those game-changing systems for me and and I'm glad I'm actually transferring you back to it and spraying Furniture is has been you know it's it's made it actually really fun you do have now you know um what we came here to see is the Precision six and so that has just come out you um so what's that all about yeah you know so we've been able to take the latest and greatest uh turbine technology from uh the manufacturers here in the in the states and be able to build that into a new more powerful system so the same basic features that you have built into your Precision 5 that you've had in love you now have that same machine with now 12 % more power so what that enables the painter to do is to be able to even spray heavier finishes in that with their uh with the HVLP rather than having to use their airless because that's the only thing that'll use that that can uh spray it you know an experiment that we did years ago you know with an hlp sprayer you know we sprayed um some pool fences with an airless sprayer we sprayed it with an HVLP sprayer one pool fence took three gallons the same um with an HVLP the other one same size took 17 gallons with um an airless so it's really the cost you know in savings and product you know using um an HVLP is really going to make up the difference also you know people have probably seen me you know in some of my videos uh you know I was painting a rod iron fence right near a brand new car lot using oilbased product you know just you know not being afraid of having overspray floating out there you know um being carried in the wind you talk about just a little bit like overspray airless sprayers you'll run in a specific PSI hlp sprayers run it significantly less PSI and how does that affect overspray well obviously the more pressure you have the more uh Force you have behind those particles coming out of the spray gun and the more bounce back that you're going to get so as those particles come out of the out of the gun if they have a lot of velocity behind them it's going to be so much that they actually bounce off the substrate it's kind of I use an analogy a lot of a tennis ball if you throw tennis ball at a wall and you throw that ball overhand that Ball's going to come straight back at you well that's similar to what's happening with the airless systems is they're blasting those particles out of the gun so so fast that a lot of that is coming right back at you that's why you end up getting covered in paint Head To Toe with the turbine system it's more like tossing the ball underhand so it hits the wall and basically just drops right at the foot of the wall because there's no velocity behind it it's not going to rebound off that substrate and so by allowing the uh particles to still be finally atomized you can get them to lay onto the surface without them bouncing off and that's what makes it so much more efficient right I think a lot of it also comes down to the controls uh you know we talked a lot today about how much more control we have over the atomizer gun versus any any kind of airless gun airless guns seem to be more getting dumbed down more or less nowadays where you've got basically your most of your control is in the pump and the tip right that's really the only controls you have whereas uh with the HVLP we you've got only different tip and air cap sizes but then we can control the fan pattern widths uh within the within those nozzle sizes and we can control the fluid flow much more accurately and then when we start talking about pressures and that too right we're talking a tenths of a PSI as far as efficiencies and that versus hundreds of PSIs with a with an airless system so it's really kind of a whole different animal in in general and that's why I think um like for you when when you were talking about uh switching back and forth and having uh getting frustrated and not finding uh originally your path with HVLP because I think a lot of your your audience also shares those same common um concerns and that is it's a lot more complicated and wow is it going to be really tough for me to learn this and I think uh as you found out once you kind of understand the way it works and that it really is very simple to get them and to to use those controls to your advantage yeah it I mean it it just took me you know just a little bit of time I mean I I would think you know or say probably took me about like a week you know I was working you know spraying Furniture in a booth and I just committed myself to you know learning it and figuring it out and I'm so glad I did cuz it's actually simpler and easier than an aess sprayer and what's interesting is you know airless sprayers you know one of the biggest fears with airless sprayers is overspray and that's you know in other countries and southern Europe everybody's afraid of overspray some of the major manufacturers have tried tried to you know tackle that problem by creating uh low pressure tips and those low press tips are running at 800 to 1,000 PSI and that is low compared to what you know we used to run them at like 2200 to 2800 PSI the Apollo I'm typically running at 6.5 PSI right so I mean we're talking massive difference night and day and so you just don't have the overspray problems you don't have you know the dust on the ground in the booth I think it's incredible I've been painting you know in my booth now you know pretty consistently for the last 3 months and I vacuumed my booth one time and and I think with if I was doing the exact same thing with an airless sprayer I'd be vacuuming the booth like every two days and I got to say it's like you know once you know I was committed to you know getting back to an hvop it's been uh you know simple and easy so absolutely glad that I've made that transition back to hlp spr so yeah I mean basically uh we were um talking earlier about uh how you went through all of this process and that and I think one of the greatest things that you now have is that that knowledge coming from heiress and going at hlp going through those frustrations that other uh people have done as well and now your audience can benefit from that right and so instead of uh it taking them a week or two like it did you to to learn the system now you've got the knowledge coming right from from Chris himself who's gone through that process and can help you and walk you through the because he understands where you're coming from and he understands the frustrations and that's a big part of it right and learning how to be able to make that crossover and feel good about it yeah I think that's you know part of my experience you know with um just painting in general I started off painting and and I never had a journeyman I worked under I just started my painting company I had no idea you know what I was doing so as I was self-taught it actually gave me this perspective of um how not to do things cuz I would do things wrong and then it gave me a perspective how to fix the things that I did wrong and then once I fixed it then I had the perspective of how to do it right and so you know I had like three different perspectives which you know the guys I would hire you after all my years of painting you we just teach them how to do it right and they never like really experienced failing because we just said this is how you do it to have success and they right off the bat started having success and I think that's kind of one of the cool things about you know HVLP spraying now as I've been just in there I haven't had somebody looking over my shoulder saying no do this I've been experimenting learning and what are the cool things about coming here it's a simple um thing the overspray control valve I had no idea that you know I should be running it you know all the way wide open and I learned that from you and now I get to go back CU I've been doing it you know the opposite way so I'll see the effect that it has by open It Wide Open controlling the overspray by you know the machine itself the digital readout I just like to learn that way and um just to give me a different perspective and that way I can share my perspective to my audience of how you know I was attempting to learn and I think that's the value of our platform too where people can get on CU I I read you know we get thousands of comments you know every month and I read the comments and I um respond back to a lot of the comments and it's kind of a platform where we can share ideas and stuff so that's really cool no it's it's an awesome opportunity I think what uh what you guys do at paint life is is is really a great uh um it's that learning tool that you don't have uh in in the contractor business unless you're lucky enough to be able to journeyman under somebody else and or have that apprenticeship how else are you going to learn yeah and there's nobody else out really out there that I don't believe has has has your skill and and um experience and by sharing those experiences your audience can learn 10 times faster there's no reason for them to go through the same mistakes that you did well John it's been an absolutely amazing experience coming here I really appreciate you hosting us man uh serving us lunch serving us coffee man and and really giving us a tour of you know uh the inside look of Apollo sprayers and stuff I've been a big fan of you I've been a fan of your company uh and your products so this has been great to come down here and see this and and experience it get some tips and tricks that I can share stay tuned for some of the really cool howto videos and frequently ask questions that you know John and I did so I appreciate it John thanks Chris really appreciate you coming out here you and Lisa have been awesome uh we appreciate you guys taking the time to come down here and uh see us in Sun sunny Southern California yeah thank you very much for watching Apollo sprayers with John Derek here in Vista California out