Ideas For Stripping Paint Off Siding?

[David Perata]

I have an old house to paint that needs the wood siding stripped down to bare wood. I know Porter Cable makes a paint stripping sander type tool. Anybody use one?

I've used a belt sander a lot but that gets pretty heavy after awhile. Any ideas out there?

[Alan Schwabacher]

We're in the middle of that job. It's a big one. An infrared paint remover is the way to go, and while they are expensive, you can make one quite cheaply by following instructions here:

http://www.oceanmanorhouse.com/?page=paintremover

I made mine according to the older instructions (link toward the top of the page). If I made a ceramic one, I'd consider making it lower powered than the one he made. If you look toward the bottom of the older page, you can see all the variants others have made following his instructions.

Once you heat up the paint you can just scrape it off, and then use a random orbit sander pass before primer. One advantage is that if you have lead paint (if it's an older house it does) you won't put a lot of lead dust into the air and your yard. These things evenly heat a reasonable area without burning, and work immeasurably better than a heat gun.

[Dave Wagner]

We are using a heat gun and putty knife/scrapers. It is very time consuming and we are being very careful. We have about 6-8 layers. I may invest in a infrared one here soon....especially for the clapboard siding

Also, be careful with old paint, especially sanding it, wear the proper protection to protect from lead dust.

We have so much detail, as shown, it does take a while..good luck.

[David Perata]

Thanks guys. I'm happy to have advice from guys that are doing the same thing I am doing. I bid pretty high on this house - maybe too high. But I have been burned before on hours. The whole house is long past due and all the paint is flaking off.

I do have to ladder a considerable amount of siding, but the house - while two story - is a smaller house. Very doable.

[Bob Lloyd]

David

I have the Porter Cable sander, got it used on Ebay. I only used it for small areas of Clapboards and more on wide flat trim. It works great but you have to be aware of the lead paint issue.

Bob

[David Perata]

Exactly how far back do you have to go as a reference line when a new house would not have had lead used in the paint? They took lead out of oil base for a few years before oil base became difficult to get, didn't they?

[Peter Quinn]

Clabboard or shake? Metabo makes a 'shaver' that is supposed to work great for clabboard, not so well for shakes. It has a hepa vacuum attachment to keep down dust, and is supposed to leave a pretty level paintable surface. I haven't used one, just looked at one at my local paint supplier. Pricey, but I hear its quick.


I use a Swedish infered rig called a Silent Stripper, works great, costs a small fortune. I haven't stripped a whole house with it. mostly I use it for sash restoration and flat trim. They make a great articulating arm that attaches to a ladder so you don't have to hold it the whole time. I don't own that as it is very expensive and I don't need it for my work. It won't light old wood on fire unless you really try, and it operates under the temperature at which lead aspirates unlike typical hair dryer style strippers, so you don't make lead fumes if lead is present. BUT, any mechanical scraping or stripping makes lead dust if the paint has lead. Scraping the freshly softened paint after hitting it with the silent stripper makes FAR LESS dust, but not NONE! So use precautions and follow the law if this is on somebody else's house. I have removed 11 coats of paint in one shot on old sashes. It breaks the bond between the paint and the wood and leaves a perfect surface for painting. Impressive.

I will say that those orbital sanders leave the worst surface I have ever seen. They give that 'waves on the ocean" sight line typical of a bad stripping job. Just awful up close. Better off to reside the darn thing. My paint store use to have one of those Metabo rigs set up with a display to try, maybe someone near you has similar or can put you in touch with a local owner that might let you try one if it is of interest to you?

[Bob Lloyd]

David

Lead in paint for consumer use was banned in 1978.

Bob

[Phil Thien]

I used the Metabo paint remover to do my garage. Concerned about lead, I connect a shop vac with 20' hose to the dust port on the Metabo. I used a HEPA filter on the shop vac.

It went quickly. If I had more to do than a garage, though, I would have gone with an actual Paint Shaver (PaintShaver?), which is a faster, more expensive commercial-type product. They were about twice the price of the Metabo unit.

I think the Metabo cost me about $225. I had thought I would use it, then sell it when I was done. But it worked so well that I decided to keep it in case I even need to touch something up.

[Peter Quinn]

After reading Phil's comments I got curious and hit a few links to realize it was actually the PaintShaver that had impressed me, not the metabo unit. Check http://www.paintshaver.com/ for a description. Guess I confused that product with being a metabo device. My local paint store does sell both.

Also check out http://www.silentpaintremover.com/spr/comparisons.htm.

they sell some pretty cool scrapers, chisels, and hands free attachments if you dig around the products and accessories page.

[Pat Germain]

Why can't you just sandblast the siding? I've seen them do on This Old House. Of course, that doesn't mean it's practical. But it sure is fast.

[Neal Clayton]

Exactly how far back do you have to go as a reference line when a new house would not have had lead used in the paint? They took lead out of oil base for a few years before oil base became difficult to get, didn't they?

lead paint is easy to spot.

it'll be very thin on the wood, some penetrated into it like a stain. it'll be chalky if it's been exposed to the weather.

[Bryan Cowing]

Propane torch is the fastest way to heat the paint, it's almost instant. I have tried the other methods, nothing beats the speed of flame.:eek:

[Jason Roehl]

lead paint is easy to spot.

it'll be very thin on the wood, some penetrated into it like a stain. it'll be chalky if it's been exposed to the weather.

Absolutely inaccurate. A lab test or a hand-held scanner device are the only practical ways to know for sure. Even the lead test kits you see at the store have high error rates.

Modern oil-based exterior paints can look like what you just described.

[george wilson]

I vote for heat stripping. We had to strip a lot of paint in this 1949 house,and heat worked the best,though it can make smoke to breathe. Probably better than sanding it off and breathing that. wear a mask.

[Larry Fox]

I vote for an infared (sp?) heater. The one I used was called the Silent Paint Remover - link below.

http://www.silentpaintremover.com/

I bought mine when I was doing this sort of thing but they also rent them.

I was able to do both sides of the garage below in a week by myself without damaging the clabording . I am not going to say that it was an easy week, but it was a week. Another think about the SPR is that the surface is ready for paint as soon as you are done scraping a section.

123195

123196

Also, do yourself a favor and get a lead test done if it is an older house. I did mine and it cost $500 and the guy comes out with a very fancy electronic gizmo that measures the lead content on pretty much every surface in the house on a scale from nothing to horrible and the vendor I used produced an extremely detailed and comprehensive report. It is nice to know where it is and I was surprised where the worst areas were. The scale that they used was something like 0 - 99. 0 being lead free and >99 being extremely heavy and my house had readings all along the scale. The only place that read more than about 60 in the house were the yellow and blue tiles in the house and they read >99. Not the grey, not the pink but the yellow and blue. Guy was shocked and said that he had been doing it for a good while and (other than calibration readings) he rarely if ever sees >99 in a residential setting. His adise was don't mess with them - so I didn't. :) Point being, don't rely on just looking at it or one of those Home Depot tests.

[Jason White]

Currently doing mine with a combination of an infrared paint remover (silentpaintremover dot com) and my Festool ROTEX sander. Have removed several layers of old gunked-on paint, much of it lead. Smooth and bare as a baby's bottom!

JW


I have an old house to paint that needs the wood siding stripped down to bare wood. I know Porter Cable makes a paint stripping sander type tool. Anybody use one?

I've used a belt sander a lot but that gets pretty heavy after awhile. Any ideas out there?

[David Perata]

I must say that silent paint remover looks like a good way to go. They make it sound and look very easy and effective, even for a large house. I don't relish a heavy sander for four weeks. Did the spr work well?

[Neal Clayton]

Absolutely inaccurate. A lab test or a hand-held scanner device are the only practical ways to know for sure. Even the lead test kits you see at the store have high error rates.

Modern oil-based exterior paints can look like what you just described.

modern exterior paints, unless they're grey in color to start with, don't develop that greyish hue that lead paints do.

modern paints also peel much easier when heat is applied to them. linseed oil/lead paints don't, really, they will bubble and separate a bit with heat, but when they cool they tend to re-grip the surface they're applied to just as well as they did before.

[Larry Fox]

SPr worked very well in my opinion. One thing to pay attention to is their advise to keep your scrapers sharp. Things went sooo much faster when the scrapers were sharp. I bought about 6 of the triangle ones which yielded 18 scraping edges. I used sharpening sessions as a break of sorts.

I also recommend the hands-free gizmo. I built my own using a bracket and some EMT with a hook on the end. to move it along a bar I attached. I wasworking alone and found it tough to keep up with the SPR. The pattern was, heat a section, move the SPR to the next section and scrape the one you just moved it from. By the time you were done scraping the SPR was ready to move. Thing gave me a workout with the scraping but it performed very well. I was working 12-hour days (at least) and as I said in my original post, I stripped both sides of the garage in a week.

[Larry Fox]

I found pic that shows my home-made hands-free gizmo (sorta) to give you a sense of how I worked it - if it helps. You can see it laying across the scaffold board there. Not a great pic - sorry.

123211

[Dave Cavner]

Thanks for all the info!

For those considering infrared heaters:

1) Speedheater's low-down on the Silent Paint Remover:
http://www.eco-strip.com/Tempted.html

2) Silent Paint Remover - Their product page says the item is made in the US but their customer service page says they are the exclusive importer... It appears the info on eco-strip.com is correct. I was hoping to find out if the silent paint remover now sold is still UL listed like the original one they used to import. My e-mail to them got this auto-reply message back...
"Viking Sales, Inc. will be closed for the next 2 weeks. We will
resume normal business hours on the 17th of August.

Thank you"

... glad I didn't just get one and have a technical or service related question. Not a big deal to me at the moment but I could see where this could be very annoying if you need a part or something.

3) The other "knock-off" mentioned in the link under #1 above appears to be the 'heat-n-strip' from the same folks who make the paint shaver pro.
http://www.paintshaver.com/heat-n-strip.html

[Howard Acheson]

>> be careful with old paint, especially sanding it, wear the proper protection to protect from lead dust.

You also need to be careful of where the dust goes. Technically, removal of lead based paint requires a lincenced remover in many cases. In New York where I used to live, a guy used a sander and became liable for a considerable (thousands of dollars) when his next door neighbor reported him. The neighbor had a couple of young children.

Heating the the paint can be problematic too. The gunk you scrap off is considered hazardous waste and must be disposed of properly. And, the fumes from lead are just as dangerous as the dust as far as I know.

I know a lot of folks do this job themselves but that doesn't make it the right thing to do.

Here is some info the may be helpful: http://www.health.state.ny.us/environmental/lead/leadbroc.htm