The radiator spanner I bought didn’t fit. I went back to Homebase and bought two adjustable wrenches. Surely one of these would fit. One of them did fit.
I watched a video of some men removing a radiator:
Obviously, I was an expert on removing radiators after watching that. And I was absolutely certain is wasn’t a two-person job, apart form Colin had to loosen one of the nuts because it was too stiff for me. The other one was ok, though.
I tightened up the valves to stop the water dribbling out from the pipes. I put some old towels around the pipe and loosened one of the nuts enough to allow some water to flow out. I caught the water in an ice-cream tub. When the tub got quite full, I tightened the nut and tipped the water into the bucket I bought recently. I put the tub under the pipe again, and loosened the nut. I tightened the nut when the tub filled up and tipped the water into the bucket. This was tedious and dull. The advice to open the bleeding valve to speed the process up would have been great if I had realised that the bleeding valve was disguised. As it was, I couldn’t find it, so the draining process took forever.
Eventually, I grew bored, and decided the radiator was drained. I loosened both nuts, and lifted up the radiator off its wall hook things. Some water may or may not have come out. I had to put the radiator back on the wall and allow some more water to drain out. Eventually, most of the water was drained, leaving only a little bit to be tipped straight into the bucket. It was really hard to manoeuvre the radiator about because it was incredibly heavy, but I did it in the end.
I removed the skirting board from the wall using the same technique as before. I sawed it up and put it in tubs with the rest of the woodwork I’d removed. I cleaned myself up a bit, then took it all away to the tip.
Instead of putting the radiator back on the wall afterwards, I admired the delightful wallpaper that had been hidden by the radiator. The man on the video said it would be ok to leave the radiator off the wall because the valves were closed.
Or were they?
