takes the labour out of stripping (Earlex Wallpaper Stripper)

Member Name: freediveheaven

Product:	Earlex Wallpaper Stripper
Date:	16/07/04 (1342 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Easy to operate

Disadvantages: none

The plan was a simple one and the work required would probably take up two days of my weekend to fully decorate my son?s bedroom. This involved removing a paper border from the middle of three of the walls and painting over the existing paper, which was in good condition. The reality was rather different and has involved the removal from four walls, three layers of borders and two layers of paper each having had at least two colours of paint on them.

This prompted the need for a steam wallpaper stripper and the Ealex has fitted the bill perfectly. In my local Homebase this was the mid priced product weighing in at £28. I chose it primarily because of the additional items it came with and it was the only one that came on wheels making it easy to move about and less likely to pull over if you try and work outside of its range.

So what do you get for your money, well the most important thing is that it does work, it has taken about a day and a half to fully strip a 17x14 room without leaving my arms feeling like jelly and no nasty scours in the wall from some over enthusiastic scraping, if only the previous owners had been as diligent. The operation is easy and there is minimal assembly required, basically it is ready to go straight from the box just add hot or cold tap water.

Components

The base unit is square and made from white plastic through which you can see the water level from all four sides. A metal rim runs around the top and there is a carrying handle on the top. The water is poured in at the top of the unit by removing a large round screw top.

The unit comes with a flexible hose and fully fitted plug and lead, which gives a range of about 19ft although it is not recommended to work with the unit fully extended.

Two steam plates are provided, the main large one is again made from white plastic making it lightweight to use and a smaller black stripping plate is provided for corners and edges or for when yo
u want a concentrated blast of steam.

Finally a 3 inch scraper with a roller is provided although I found this hard to use and instead opted for a standard scraper which I found much quicker to use.

Assembly

Assembly is easy, four corner protectors clip onto the metal rime and the four wheels need to be pushed into the base unit and required minimal force. The hose crews into both the base unit and the stripping plate and are easy to attach.

Usage

The unit holds a maximum of 4.5 litres, the literature claims that this will provide 70 minutes of steam however I found this to be on the conservative side and on one occasion enjoyed 90 minutes of steam from just over 4 litres. One tip is to use hot water as this reduces the time that it takes to heat up the water.

After assembly simply add the water to the unit attach the hose and stripping plate and switch on at the plug. I found that with cold water steam was produced within about ten minutes of switching the unit on plenty of time to get the dustsheets in place. The steam provided is continuous and I found would stop within about 30 seconds of the unit being un-plugged.

Safety

Importantly the unit has an automatic safety cut out should all the water be used up, this prevents damage to the element. Safety gloves are required to protect hands from the steam and some drops do gather in the base of the stripping plate so care should be taken when working on ceilings.

Other Uses

The makers claim that the product can also be used to remove artex, floor tiles, sterilise soil and kill weeds and the box comes with a list of attachments that can be purchased to carry out these additional functions.

Conclusions

This is a good product that does the job it is designed for, easy to operate good value for money and effective at removing wallpaper even when it has been painted over. It does not remove the need for a scrapper b
ut it does make life just that little bit easier, now if it could only hang paper as well.

Summary: