For years now everytime I've decorated, I drain the radiator and remove it from the wall. Then after painting or papering the wall I've replaced the radiator, refilled the system, then bled the system.

Someone at work gave me a great tip, so easy I can't believe I haven't heard of it before or even thought of it.
All you need to do is slack off the valve nuts half a turn, ease the radiator off the brackets and gently turn it towards the floor, lay it on some blocks of some sort (I used some old books). Tighten the nuts back up.

Decorate the area then reverse the procedure. All I lost is a couple of droplets of water. Must of saved me a couple of hours.

People decorate behind radiators

Good tip, but being lazy - I used one of these!

I'm with Tricky on this one

I'm with the Elk. It's a real pain, but draining the radiator off every now & then helps to clear out all the cr*p that collects in the system. It's a lot of trouble, but it does help keep the system clean.

(And Mrs S does it, so it's not really any hard work for me )

Not if you have a combi

I'm with Jester

People decorate?

people have radiators?

we get our heat from candles, 4 of us huddled up round one candle per room.


and if it gets really cold ..... we light it.

We used to get our dad to eat an extra strong mint (although we could rarely afford them so we pretended) and gather round when he breathed out.

luxury!

we had to pretend to eat the hole from polo mints

Because we had extra strong mints we were seen as posh folk

I'm with BFM.

If you can't reach it with a roller on a stick then you can't see it so it doesn't matter!

Elk - it's easy, which is why cowboys do it

I've had leaks from 3 radiators at least due to muppet joiners taking the short cut option when we got work done after moving house.

There is currently no decoration behind our radiators...and unlikely to change. And if you were really smart you'd get some special "behind radiator reflective panelling" to decrease heat wastage. So there