Wallpaper Stripper

[Gregg Mcaleer]

Forumsters, can anyone recommend a Wallpaper Stripper for domestic use.Any advice welcome. Regards

[John]

Depending upon where you are, I'm pretty good with a steamer and a scraper, just keep the tea coming!!

John

[Andrew Gabriel]

Any one with a boiler tank which sits on the floor connected to a steam applicator with a hose should do. A few weeks ago, I bought one from Wickes which was the cheapest local supplier.

Avoid the Black and Decker one which looks like a steam iron. It doesn't have the power to work fast enough, and after a while, all its internal waterways get clogged up and it starts ejecting steam from the wrong places in the wrong direction...

[Gregg Mcaleer]

[Andrew Gabriel]

The floor standing ones usually have a standard 2.4kW kettle element in them. I've not bubbled lime plaster with it, and I haven't used it much on gypsom plaster. One reason for bubbling plasterwork is if the plaster was wet; the steam stripper causes the moisture in the plaster to boil blowing the face off.

The Black and Decker steam iron type stripper is 1.4kW which cycles on and off, and so is probably a lot less than

1.4kW in effect. It might not be available anymore. I bought mine years ago, but didn't use it at the time, and only recently tried to do so. Gave up after doing a couple of walls which is when I went out and bought the Wickes one. This worked at least 10 times faster, bringing off the strips in almost whole pieces, verses the B&D one which managed only a few inches at a time.

Oh, another tip, don't let the steam get into smoke detectors. After it set mine off (and it refused to reset for about 10 minutes, probably until the condensation inside dried out), I wrapped the thing in cling film when using the stripper again. Even then, the steam got inside once more and set it off again. If you disable a detector, make it obvious so you don't forget to reenable it afterwards. At work, the decorators stretched a latex glove over each detector which looked quite amusing with all these 'hands' sticking out of the ceiling, but at least no one was likely to overlook removing them afterwards.

[William Gould]

I've got the Earlex machine, which includes loads of accessories for carpet cleaning etc too! The best thing about it is the long pipe which leads to the handset, and is much better than the short one which came with my Bosch unit.

I've done a lot of stripping recently, and I really prefer not to use the steamer now.... I just use some wallpaper stripper in water. Much more civilised!!

Will.