Author Topic: RF shielding paint, Like a tinfoil hat, for your house! (Read 3164 times)

Rx7man · « **on:** February 12, 2021, 04:27:15 am »

I searched for it and couldn't find a thread about it here
Facebook just sponsored another doozie of a post

Not sure if linking them is the best idea, but www.shieldingsolution.com

RF shielding paint, Like a tinfoil hat, for your house!

james_s · « **Reply #1 on:** February 12, 2021, 04:46:24 am »

I suppose there could be advantages to a shielded house, although to say I'm skeptical of any health benefits would be an understatement. I think most people would be annoyed by poor mobile phone performance though.

Rx7man · « **Reply #2 on:** February 12, 2021, 05:17:30 am »

Quote from: james_s on February 12, 2021, 04:46:24 am

I suppose there could be advantages to a shielded house, although to say I'm skeptical of any health benefits would be an understatement. I think most people would be annoyed by poor mobile phone performance though.

Probably the same people painting the house with it too lol.
What's getting me in the comments is people saying 5G goes "right through" a brick wall, etc... when in fact 5G is the most attenuated

Berni · « **Reply #3 on:** February 12, 2021, 07:12:17 am »

If this paint works then its actually a really nice thing for making RF shielded EMI testing chambers. It would be a lot easier if you could just paint the inside walls of a room including the door and have an instant shielded room. Much easier than putting up metal walls and joining them together to have good connection between the plates.

But yeah with the sort of snake oil claims they are making id assume the paint also doesn't actually do anything.

AVGresponding · « **Reply #4 on:** February 12, 2021, 08:14:45 am »

Quote from: Berni on February 12, 2021, 07:12:17 am

If this paint works then its actually a really nice thing for making RF shielded EMI testing chambers. It would be a lot easier if you could just paint the inside walls of a room including the door and have an instant shielded room. Much easier than putting up metal walls and joining them together to have good connection between the plates.

But yeah with the sort of snake oil claims they are making id assume the paint also doesn't actually do anything.

Like this?

It's not a new thing...

Rx7man · « **Reply #5 on:** February 12, 2021, 08:27:46 am »

yup, except without the negative connotations of what it protects against

AVGresponding · « **Reply #6 on:** February 12, 2021, 08:38:58 am »

Yeah, it does have to be said, that farcebook is a rapidly deteriorating opinion-bubble shithole these days.

Like all social mass-media.

daqq · « **Reply #7 on:** February 12, 2021, 08:48:02 am »

There are actually legit RF shielding paints, though they are intended for labs, measurement chambers and so forth, not to prevent the Reptilians reading your mind.

https://www.mgchemicals.com/category/conductive-paint/conductive-water-based-paints/
https://hollandshielding.com/wallshield-coating

Gyro · « **Reply #8 on:** February 12, 2021, 11:21:01 am »

I remember this came up a while back in the RF section... https://www.eevblog.com/forum/rf-microwave/rf-shielding-paint/

Haenk · « **Reply #9 on:** February 12, 2021, 12:18:52 pm »

This has been a thing for many years:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_hypersensitivity

And is just part of the tinfoil-hat-movement

I read about people investing tens of thousands of EURO to make their house "safe" and paiting it with shielding paint was the ultimate thing...

james_s · « **Reply #10 on:** February 12, 2021, 05:08:51 pm »

The placebo effect is a real thing. If you place a label saying "Caution: May induce headaches" on an inert device and place it in a room with people, a bunch of them are going to get headaches once they are aware of this allegedly headache-inducing object in their vicinity.

EE4all · « **Reply #11 on:** February 12, 2021, 05:18:20 pm »

Yes, but you can start two companies, one to paint houses with RF shielding paint, and another to install cell phone boosters with external antennas to keep their phones working.

Rx7man · « **Reply #12 on:** February 12, 2021, 05:44:39 pm »

Quote from: james_s on February 12, 2021, 05:08:51 pm

The placebo effect is a real thing. If you place a label saying "Caution: May induce headaches" on an inert device and place it in a room with people, a bunch of them are going to get headaches once they are aware of this allegedly headache-inducing object in their vicinity.

it's called a nocebo effect

AVGresponding · « **Reply #13 on:** February 13, 2021, 12:08:01 am »

Quote from: Rx7man on February 12, 2021, 05:44:39 pm

Quote from: james_s on February 12, 2021, 05:08:51 pm
The placebo effect is a real thing. If you place a label saying "Caution: May induce headaches" on an inert device and place it in a room with people, a bunch of them are going to get headaches once they are aware of this allegedly headache-inducing object in their vicinity.

it's called a nocebo effect

Indeed it is, but it amounts to the same thing; the majority of people are suggestible idiots.

helius · « **Reply #14 on:** February 13, 2021, 12:37:38 am »

EMI shielding paint has been used in computers for decades. The plastic housings of several 1990 Unix workstations were sprayed with copper paint on the inside (reduces cost as no metal inserts need to be fitted or staked in). The real thing is rather expensive, though, at around $1000/gal for copper, $650/gal for nickel, and $6,500/gal for silver: painting your house would be exorbitant.

Not to mention that without treating the windows and properly ground bonding the surface it would be a huge waste of time. The same issues with TEMPEST treated rooms would apply: conducted emissions from power or other cables can carry RF in/out of the room even if it is metal shielded.

AVGresponding · « **Reply #15 on:** February 13, 2021, 07:37:26 am »

Definitely much cheaper to just wallpaper your house with aluminium foil. An added bonus will be increased thermal efficiency!

Haenk · « **Reply #16 on:** February 14, 2021, 06:17:10 pm »

Quote from: AVGresponding on February 13, 2021, 07:37:26 am

Definitely much cheaper to just wallpaper your house with aluminium foil. An added bonus will be increased thermal efficiency!

I thnk we have a business model here

Gyro · « **Reply #17 on:** February 14, 2021, 07:43:51 pm »

The conductive wallpaper paste could be a bit expensive (unless you went for a really decent overlap!).

... and some Star Trek 'transparent Aluminium' for the windows. It would be a bit embarrassing to use all of that foil and still get a mobile phone signal!

CatalinaWOW · « **Reply #18 on:** February 14, 2021, 07:50:54 pm »

Quote from: helius on February 13, 2021, 12:37:38 am

EMI shielding paint has been used in computers for decades. The plastic housings of several 1990 Unix workstations were sprayed with copper paint on the inside (reduces cost as no metal inserts need to be fitted or staked in). The real thing is rather expensive, though, at around $1000/gal for copper, $650/gal for nickel, and $6,500/gal for silver: painting your house would be exorbitant.

Not to mention that without treating the windows and properly ground bonding the surface it would be a huge waste of time. The same issues with TEMPEST treated rooms would apply: conducted emissions from power or other cables can carry RF in/out of the room even if it is metal shielded.

Not a total waste of time. If you want perfect shielding you do have to do windows and floors - all to at least skin depth for the frequencies of interest. But their will be some shielding effect even if windows are left uncoated and the paint is unbonded. If that were not so WiFi signals would not be degraded by the many unbonded and discontinuous surfaces that do play havoc with the signal.

The lie comes in the health impact.

twospoons · « **Reply #19 on:** February 14, 2021, 08:05:06 pm »

Some years back I was working for Panasonic on their giant LED screens, trying to fix EMI issues. At one point I decided to try a graphite based acrylic EMI paint on the back of the panels.
It was without doubt THE best EMI bandaid I've ever tried - broadband attenuation of 25-30dB. The coating has a sheet resistance of ~100ohms/square, so I suspect its effectiveness comes from being dissipative, compared to metal coatings which are more likely to be reflective.

So the paint definitely works, and works well. Though the only effects from painting your home with it are going to be total lack of cell/wifi/gps coverage, and a deep hole in your wallet.

helius · « **Reply #20 on:** February 15, 2021, 12:44:45 am »

Suppose you wanted to do the windows too, just for kicks. I know that transparent conductive coatings can be vacuum deposited on glass, but is there any easier way? Are any window tinting films conductive?

CatalinaWOW · « **Reply #21 on:** February 15, 2021, 03:03:20 am »

Easiest way to do windows might be to fill double pane glass with salt water. Totally screws up the thermal barrier but you can't have everything.

Berni · « **Reply #22 on:** February 15, 2021, 06:12:41 am »

You can get glass with ITO coating (Indium Tin Oxide) that is conductive. This is what is used to create transparent traces to the pixels on LCD screens. Tho getting your hands on very large window sized panes of it might be difficult.

Otherwise you could put a metal mesh in the window much like a microwave door.

Gyro · « **Reply #23 on:** February 15, 2021, 11:29:56 am »

I believe ITO is what they use for those big floor to ceiling LCD window panels that go opaque on demand, so yes, they do manufacture large panes. Buying them is another matter.

AVGresponding · « **Reply #24 on:** February 15, 2021, 06:20:18 pm »

I'd just put foil over the windows too. After all, you don't want the gubbermint spying on you from the ISS, do you?

I don't want to have to look outside at the neighbours being all tanned and happy anyway.


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Author Topic: RF shielding paint, Like a tinfoil hat, for your house! (Read 3164 times)

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