OT: Lead theft

[Jethro]

Speaking with a customer in the Midlands, this morning ... said they had someone steal the lead flashing from the front office windows ...

lot of it about apparently

[John Whitworth]

Nice.

I'm chairman of a redundant church 'Friends' group. We had about £300-worth of lead nicking. Repairs will cost nearer £15,000 to put right.

[Dave Liquorice]

Not very much lead then. B-)

Recently bought a 3m x 30cm roll of code 4 lead, cost just under =A350 (with a 19% discount) from a builders merchant. Wickes want =A399 for the same amount...

[Peter Andrews]

If they don't already it's about time they sentenced on the basis of repair costs and damage not cost of item stolen!!

peter

[Arfa Daily]

Along the edge of the drive at my old mum's bungalow, the builders had set paving slabs in, vertically, and against the side of the house. About one foot tall, I would guess. Lead flashing had been mortared into the brick row that ran along at the level of the slab tops, and had then been nicely beaten down over the top edge of the slab row. It looked very neat. A year or so back, she had been out in the front garden all afternoon tidying and weeding, and eventually went in for a few minutes rest and a cup of tea - she was 86 at the time. When she went back out to clear up just 15 minutes later, some little toe rag had nicked all the lead by tearing it out from the mortar line. This was broad daylight in a small cul-de-sac. The front of the property is open plan to the road, and the drive is wide and completely open, as it is shared with next door. She had heard nothing, despite the fact that it must have taken some wrenching out, and of course, no one saw anything. It proper shook her up. Imagine if she had gone back out there and caught them at it ...

Arfa

[John Whitworth]

No - it was just covering the gulley between the chancel and S chapel.

JW

[Phil L]

Not just lead neither - bronze statues and even copper memorial plaques have been swiped for scrap metal

[John]

I blame the press for reporting the (replacement) value of the theft and not the trivial value of the scrap.

[Dave Liquorice]

Market prices (as opposed to scrappy prices) have lead over =A32/kg(*). Copper is around =A37.80/kg.

Remember lead is heavy, that 3m x 30cm roll of code 4 weighed 19kg. If you forget it's lead and try to pick it up its glued to the floor...

[chris French]

A manhole covers from roads,

Our local church apparently uses Smartwater to mark the lead in an attempt to deter thieves.

[John]

500volts would be better!

[geraldthehamster]

Reminds me of why I insured against Chancel Tax...

Cheers Richard

[chrisj.doran]

Not to mention a brass water tap while they were at the cemetery.

Is there any evidence that it really deters the thieves and hence prevents the damage? Unless they're caught DNA-handed, all it can do is to help convict the fences; but no doubt the lead is quickly melted down and/or on its way to China.

Chris

[tony sayer]

Copper is the one they go for, so much so that a lot of communications sites have the copper removed and sign saying "No Copper on this site" Ally having taken its place.

And ever rung up Furse to get a quote for Copper -v- Ally and when you hear the price difference, well copper might look nice but!...

[tony sayer]

In article , [e-mail] scribeth thus

And umm .. who does that?. Scrappies perhaps?...

[Dave Liquorice]

Oh gawd I hope BT don't start doing what they did a few decades ago and use ally for local ends. Blooming awful stuff, you only have to look at a junction box and several wires snap inside the jelly beans.

[John Whitworth]

No - I think that's the point as to why lead is so desirable - you can melt it on your stove at home. Surely once that's done, an trace of smart water would be gone?

[Andy Champ]

... and even if you don't look at it it corrodes, and since it doesn't conduct as well as copper anyway the losses are higher and it won't carry ADSL nearly as well...

You can guess how I know all that!

Andy

[Dave Liquorice]

Our ally lines does reasonably well for ADSL speed, currently have a sync rate of 6208 with 43dB of attenuation on about 2.5 miles. It's pretty stable until BT Openreach start prodding about any one of the junction boxes, then it'll be a week before it settles down again. A random fault occurs, they start fiddling but in the process put on more faults which they have to come back and fix putting on more faults...

[tony sayer]

Join the club. We've some remote sites that are ally connected;(...