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Chris

Chris

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I spent about 4 hours today in the garage stripping wire from the house I remodeled to take to the recycling place. I can barely move my hands now and I sliced a 4" long gash in my 30 dollar jeans for about 18 pounds of copper that goes for right about 2 bucks a pound clean. Was it worth it? If I would not have stripped it I would get 10 cents a pound. That and I have a couple bags of plastic bottles and a hundred or so pounds of steel that pays about 5 cents a pound.


Copper = 36 bucks
Bottles = 10 bucks
Steel = 5 bucks
Jeans = -30 bucks
gas to get there = -10 bucks
Total = 11 bucks profit for about 6 hours work.
 
In the city I use to work for, every Friday night the day laborers working construction would lay out a backyard fire, and throw their wire in it to burn the insulation away from it. Took about 1/2 hour, and they got paid top dollar for their scrap.
 
havasu said:
In the city I use to work for, every Friday night the day laborers working construction would lay out a backyard fire, and throw their wire in it to burn the insulation away from it. Took about 1/2 hour, and they got paid top dollar for their scrap.
Click to expand...




They won't take copper as "clean" when someone burns the jackets off, they claim it as #2 mixed in my area.


I'm actually cashing out water heaters these days, just because I'm going to a place that does both mild steel and precious metals. Works out nice if you can get it all on one trip.

Last visit I made around $700.00 which was more than worth it.
 
SlowDrip said:
You uh, saved the environment? Yeah...thats it.


A couple of friends and I split on a Wire Zipper a while back...paid for itself in about 6 months (none of us do much wire work).

The Wire Zipper, wire stripper, separate insulation, recycle
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I would probably be saving the environment more if I just didn't buy the bottled water in the first place.

I don't think I would ever have enough wire to pay back for a wire stripper but they are cool.

havasu said:
In the city I use to work for, every Friday night the day laborers working construction would lay out a backyard fire, and throw their wire in it to burn the insulation away from it. Took about 1/2 hour, and they got paid top dollar for their scrap.
Click to expand...

Trust me I thought of that but didn't want to ruin my back yard fire pit or smell the burning plastic. Or have the fire dept called because it smells like my house is burning down but a great idea non the less.

DUNBAR PLUMBING said:
They won't take copper as "clean" when someone burns the jackets off, they claim it as #2 mixed in my area.


I'm actually cashing out water heaters these days, just because I'm going to a place that does both mild steel and precious metals. Works out nice if you can get it all on one trip.

Last visit I made around $700.00 which was more than worth it.
Click to expand...

I had no clue water heaters were recyclable I just trashed two of them.
 
Most everything is recyclable. My Dad does metal art, I used to sell his steal, always got a good price. Stuff like this for the record. He wouldn't take it, it would just sit.

coco.jpg
 
I need one of those for my back yard.

Well I am about to run to the scrap yard, I'll let you know how it goes in a couple hours.
 
Well I got 82 bucks. 2.50 a pound on clean copper all the way down to 8 cents a LB for car batteries and 9 cents for steel. All in all a good run.
 
slightly. only abut 30 of that was from the copper and it would have been 20 if i didnt strip it at all. so about an extra 10 bucks.
 
Could you have made more elsewhere?
 
^ has never seen a thread jack lead into a forum game.
 
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