Stripping Paint from Radiators

Stripping paint from radiators can be tricky. This is because many radiators have two coats of paint – a water based electrocoat primer and a fusion bonded powder paint topcoat. The really difficult layer to remove is usually the water based primer, as many traditional solvent based paint strippers will not attack modern water based paints. Traditional solvent based strippers such as Nitromors are often nasty to use and many of them which contain DCM (dichloro methane) are about to be banned anyway.

The easy way to strip all types of radiators is to use a product called Biostrip. This is a modern, safe, eco friendly, water based technology that will strip both coats of paint from a radiator in about 20 minutes. The best way to do this is to dip the radiator in a tank of biostrip, leave for about 20 minutes and then rinse off the radiator, dry it and repaint. Alternatively, the radiator can be painted with Biostrip, much like any other DIY stripper, left for about 20 minutes and the blistered paint can then be easily scraped off. Simply wipe the radiator with a wet rag to remove any traces of biostrip, allow to dry and then repaint.

The picture below shows a radiator that has been part immersed in biostrip for 20 minutes – the paint just fell off in sheets as the radiator was removed from the stripper.

You can find out a lot more about Biostrip Here