Easy Stripping with the Speedheater Infrared System

OK, let’s be real, stripping layer upon layer of paint from old woodwork is never easy, or is it? Let’s just say, some methods are easier than others. If you have read my Endorsements and Considerations page (please know I wouldn’t expect that you would have read it), you would know that I am not big on pushing products…. Unless I truly believe in them. This is a post about the Speedheater Infrared paint stripper, a product which I love and believe in very much, and while I won’t get anything if you go and buy it, I am convinced you will love it too if you have anything more than a few pieces of molding or a door to strip.

When stripping woodwork, there are basically three ways to get paint off of your woodwork.

1. Grinding, Scraping, and Sanding

2. Chemical Strippers

3. Heat

I am going to focus on using heat, but before I get there (and tell you about a truly remarkable product), I want to briefly go over the first two methods (you can however jump right to the point of this post). But even before I get to the methods, I must discuss lead based paint and stress the importance of safety practices around lead based paint, which is virtually all paints manufactured before lead was banned for use in paint in 1978. This means that nearly every old house in America has lead paint (although you will often not see it listed in a disclosure by a home seller. Hmmm).

Please remember there is no absolutely safe way to handle lead paint, so do your research before attempting anything on your own. Lead is poison no matter how you look at it. Children and pets are the most susceptible to its dangers, adults can be poisoned too so take precautions. I am mentioning lead safety, but I am no expert and can only guide you to official documentation. The E.P.A. provides some great guidelines for working with lead paint.

 

Grinding, Scraping, and Sanding:
I call this the friction method. Grinding with a grinder, scraping by hand, or sanding either by hand or with a sander can be effective in some situations, but generally the bad outweighs the good. The good is that it can be very effective and fast if you use power tools. But… There are some very serious drawbacks to using either a grinder, a sander, even hand sanding and scraping. The biggest one is from lead dust. When you grind, scrape, or sand, there is lead dust and it is unavoidable. It is an absolute must that you wear a respirator with an N95 or better filter. That is why it really should only be done by professionals who have the right training and skill-set to handle the clean-up and proper preparation for the disposal of lead waste.

It’s generally best to avoid this method for indoors because of the elevated lead risks, but this can be a very effective method for stripping exterior clapboards and trim. I would leave this to the professionals. They can properly prepare a site to capture as much lead waste as possible, they will keep the areas wet to minimize lead dust, and they can encapsulate the paint chips for disposal.

 

Chemical Strippers:
This method essentially involves dissolving the paint into a nasty slimy mess. You slap the chemical stripper on, wait a while, sometimes a long while, and then come back and carefully scrape away the paint with the stripper. The stripper dissolves the top-most layers working its way down to the wood. Often times, it requires multiple application to get to the last of the paint.

The upside is that lead is contained by the stripper so you don’t have to worry about it floating through the air. And recent advancements in chemistry means that there are many less toxic options available to consumers. Many of these claim to be powerful yet low odor, non-hazardous, non-flammable, biodegradable, and even Eco-friendly. Another benefit is when working with non-toxic low odor strippers, it is generally not necessary to wear a respirator or mask because there is no lead dust (it is all contained within the stripper).

The downside? Chemical stripping can be quite efficient, but it can also be slow going and tedious. Often two or more applications are required to get down to the wood. And even then, there are nearly always small bits of paint stuck in the cracks and crevices requiring more applications. All of this amounts to a lot of time. Between applying the stripper, waiting for it to react, scraping the paint and cleaning up the mess, it can take a very long time to strip your paint, days even. Then there is the mess. For many people, the mess is overwhelming. Endless amounts of slimy gooey sludge, which must be handled while wearing gloves, has to be disposed of carefully. You also tend to use copious amounts of paper towels (because that is the most efficient way to clean things up).

It can also be expensive. If you want to strip all the doors and woodwork in a room, you may need several gallons of stripper. Gallons of stripper start at $40-$50 and go up from there.

 

Heat, Heat, Baby:
The third method is of course, heat. You essentially soften the paint with high heat and scrape it away. The benefits being that while there is lead dust risk, there is much less of it. It is relatively easy to contain while working indoors because the softened paint tends to clump together keeping most of the lead within the clumps. That said, you should still wear a respirator or dust mask rated at N95 or better.

The most common tool for this is the ubiquitous heat gun available for as little as $25 at your big-box hardware store. As affordable as a they can be, I do not believe a heat gun is wise to use for one very big reason. Heat guns typically operate at 1,100 degrees or higher. They are very effective at softening the paint to allow it to be scraped. BUT…. Heat guns can be very dangerous because lead in paint can vaporize at as low as 900 degrees and if that vapor is inhaled, you are basically mainlining lead into your bloodstream.

Enter Infrared Heat:
This brings me to the point of this post (finally, right?) and my favorite method for stripping paint… Infrared heat. Specifically with the Speedheater™ system which uses gentle infrared heat to remove paint, varnish, and putty. This is easily done at much lower temperatures than a heat gun. So you can say goodbye to scorched wood and cracked glass. This makes it much safer with lead paint too.

 

There are two models, the original Speedheater Standard 100 model and it’s newer sibling, the Speedheater Cobra. Both are infrared paint strippers which melt the paint to make it easy to remove. Properly used, Speedheater works at temperatures of 400-500 degrees (F), well below those which convert lead into vapor. That means that the risks are much lower than using a traditional heat gun.

 

There is another reason why I love Speedheater products. The technology behind it simply works. Unlike a heat gun which blows super heated air on the surface of the paint, the Speedheater’s infrared wavelengths penetrates the paint activating the molecules within the paint causing it to soften and bubble up, pulling away from the wood. It is not without a bit of smoke and fumes, but they don’t contain deadly vaporized lead (it’s a good idea to create a negative airspace by putting a fan in an open window pulling the air out of the space).

Although I have not had the opportunity to use it around glass, I understand that used correctly, the Speedheater makes quick work with putty, and keeps your glass intact because the heat is generated by radiation, not convection. Very different from heat guns which are known to crack glass without much effort.

 

There are some downsides to the Speedheater infrared technology.

• The infrared technology works best on wood, and also on some metal work. It does not work well on brick, stonework, or cement. The infrared waves tend to just dissipate within the material and not heat the paint.

• Very intricate woodwork may still require final touch-up using chemical stripper (and a dental pick). Infrared works to get the vast majority of paint off, but deeply embedded paint is never easy to remove and chemical strippers have the advantage of being able to penetrate into those areas.

• The tool can be a bit fragile. The infrared bulbs are glass and dropping it can damage the bulb. Fortunately, the bulbs are replaceable.

 

And then there is the cost. Quality and performance does not come cheap. This amazing tool is an investment at $499 to $599. I know, this does seem like a lot, but if you have any amount of paint stripping to do, I believe it is a good value. How is that? Let me list a few of my reasons.

1. The Speedheater is fast (see my brief video below), saving you time and we all know that time is money. The big drawback with chemical strippers is that they can take hours or even days to remove all of the paint.

2. The infrared bulbs have a long 5,000 hour lifespan. That’s more than two years of full time paint stripping, which I doubt most of us are doing. The bulbs are replaceable and you should get many years of use before needed to replace them.

3. Lower risk of fire. Heat guns generate more than 1,000 degrees of heat and if not used carefully, they have been known to ignite unseen flammable materials behind the wood you are stripping (there have been far too many old house fires caused by heat guns) or even start a fire within the wood itself.

4. Ease of use. Infrared strippers are perfect for the DIY homeowner who doesn’t have years of experience. The learning curve is quite manageable.

5. Chemical strippers are expensive too! As noted previously, chemical strippers typically start at $50 per gallon, or $150 per five gallon bucket (the least expensive way to buy it). If you have ever used them, you will know that a gallon doesn’t go nearly as far as you would think it should. If you are stripping the woodwork in just one room of your old house, you can easily spend hundreds of dollars on chemical strippers which still needs to be disposed of.

So this is why I feel strongly why the Speedheater is a great product. I am confident that once you try it out, you’ll never pick up a hot-air gun again. When you factor in time savings, lower lead risks, ease of use, and the other benefits, I truly believe it is worth the investment. I also must do a shout-out about the very high quality scrapers they sell. Hands down, the best scrapers I have ever used.

How well does it work? Check out this short video I put together for my Instagram Stories which show how quickly the tool works. (Please don’t judge me for vertical video, it was for IG stories, not because I am an idiot. 🤪😜)

 

As for which model I prefer… I first bought the original Speedheater Standard 100 model back in 2017, just a few months before the introduction of the Speedheater Cobra, a smaller more nimble version. After hearing the raving reviews of the Cobra, I bit the bullet and invested in one earlier this year. While the original 1100 model works great on larger flatter areas such as a door or clapboards, I am definitely partial to the Cobra. Lightweight (at just over a pound), fast to set up and easy to angle, the Speedheater Cobra makes light work of removing paint from both wide-open expanses of paint and tricky nooks & crannies. With only a few seconds of exposure, the Cobra softens multiple layers of paint allowing you to scrape right down to wood, usually with just one scrape.

Who makes the Speedheater? Funny you should ask (you did ask, right?). The Speedheater products are high quality and made in Sweden where they were invented. They are available exclusively online in the US via Eco-Strip. [NOTE: There is an inferior knockoff of the Speedheater called the “Silent Paint Remover” which is less expensive, but has poor build quality and horrific reviews.]

 

This conveniently segues to our most recent episode of True Tales From Old Houses (The Podcast). In Episode #13 – Catherine Brooks: Speedheater Superhero (Like how I did that?) My co-host Stacy Grinsfelder from Blake Hill House and I interview Catherine Brooks from Eco-Strip, the sole distributor of the Speedheater™ system in the US. We talk about the history of Speedheater, lead-safety education, and other related topics. I do hope you will click over to our True Tales From Old Houses podcast website and listen. If you find you want to get your own Speedheater Tool, there is a coupon code on the episode page for $30 off either the original Speedheater Standard 1100 model or the Speedheater Cobra, valid until October 31, 2019.

If you like the podcast, be sure to check out other episodes, and if you know other old house folks who you think would like it too, please share it with them. And of course,  feel free to post to social media, and help us spread the joy of old houses around.

Final note: In my last post The Age and Style Our House (Part I, How Old Is It?), I said I was going to have “Part II, What Style Is It?” posted later that week. That was two weeks ago and I am still working on that post, so stay tuned, it is coming.