Removing radiator covers

ChilliBob

Hey guys, 

Thrilling Sunday evening, I've been watching blokes take radiator covers off on YouTube. Rock and roll. Alas, I can't find one that's like mine! 

My double rsds have a sort of spring clip at the bottom, which you undo to take the side off, then there's some odd clip on the middle, white plastic, looks like a broken curtain hook sort of thing!

Does anyone have ones like this? I want go paint them, so I figure taking them apart to clean and paint in bits is the way.

They're Purmo rsds, standard gloss white double horizontal rsds. The single ones don't seem to have the clip on the bottom, of the odd white plastic clippy thing in the middle!

Cheers! 

ic

A picture tells a thousand words.

mlz1413

A picture would help.
But otherwise I'd suggest taking the covers off a radiator that you don't mind breaking and not putting the covers back on.
Hopefully there is 1 radiator that will be hidden by furniture or in a spare room, which you can use to learn on.

ChilliBob

Yeah, I have tried that on some I know will be hidden of already are, unfortunately the main ones I want to paint are a bit different!

None of the guides I have read suggest you need to remove the covers to paint but I'm convinced I'll get a better result if I can. I did consider to paint one I won't see, covers on, to see if it looks alright. 

It's mainly the top grill I'm thinking,would be easy to get run marks 

Bigphil1474

As above, picture would help. Is there a reason you have rad covers? We had them on the rads when we moved into our house last year - they were all ripped out and binned. Some of ours had clips on but I just snapped them off as I wasn't planning to put back on.

ChilliBob

For clarity, I mean the covers on the *actual* radiator, not some wooden thing. Essentially it's like this:



Now you can slide the side bit up, and in other radiators in the house (some, not all), the side comes off and then so would the top - with front and back being the same depth.

On these ones the side and top wrap down far more. At the top on the back, it's a good couple of inches of this top bit, and same at the sides. Makes me think it can't be removed without the rad off. 

But I'm convinced painting the top grill in situ will be tricky, look crap, and likely drip on the actual rad below, and hence look awful! 

FreeBear

Got radiators here with very similar top grill & sides. The sides just slide up, and then the top grill pops off. Lift slightly at the front, and then push back by a few millimetres (it clips in to the plastic at the rear). The plastic clip should remain in place.

Reassemble in reverse, ensuring the side panels sit in the slots on the top & bottom bosses.

ChilliBob

On these ones, once a side is up, you can only seem to prize it away from the rad at the top front, using a lot of pressure, the rest stays firmly in place!

FreeBear

ChilliBob said:

On these ones, once a side is up, you can only seem to prize it away from the rad at the top front, using a lot of pressure, the rest stays firmly in place!

Lets see a picture of the bottom.

moneysaver1978

We have a similar radiator style - you would slide the sides upwards. We were able to do that but we couldn't remove the grille top but we found a couple of screws inside! No idea how they did it.

Away for cat sitting so not able to post a pic to show what I mean.

ChilliBob

I don't really think that helps! In the first photo you may just about me able to see a sort of wide edge (think plastic beading you used to see with kitchen worktops with squares in it), very strange.

We have our annual boiler service in a few weeks, I might must ask the boiler blokes what I'm doing wrong!

Tempted to paint as is, but I'm convinced it'll look pants.