miles of old copper wire

[Harry K]

Subject: burning the insulation off. I have a full barrel of cleaned (i.e., no insulation) that I stripped out of my house when rewireing. I did it by burning it off in my burn barrel when burning trash. I wouldn't do it today as back then burn barrels were legal, they aren't now and the insulation burns with dense, stinky, very black smoke. It is a big fine to be caught just using a burn barrel and even bigger trouble for burning hazardous waste

- insulation is classified as hazardous when burned.

Harry K

[William.Deans]

Greetings,

I have a very small incinerator in one of my garages. Whenever I go I load it up with old boots / shingles / etc. and light it up. I have never had any problem with the law or told that I cannot use it. I imagine I could transport the wire to the garage and burn the insulation off a little at a time each trip. It is just rapidly becoming a lot more trouble than it is worth. I also already have more to burn in my little incenerator than I make trips to the garage. It's a five unit and I am normally there once or twice per month to collect rent. I maintain one of the units for my own use and store the trash there along with low cost construction supplies (like old single pane windows saved for the glass plates, removed doors that could be reused, a couple thousand salvaged bricks, etc).

William

[Duane Bozarth]

I'm sure it has a lot to do w/ the size of the area and proximity to other major population centers where there are facilities to process it. Out here, it's so far to anywhere and a (relatively) sparsely populated area, transportation costs and small volumes just make it non-cost-effective, hence no real market.

[jtnospam]

Why don't you have a garage sale there?-Jitney

[William.Deans]

Greetings,

New bricks are normally not cheaper than 3/$1.00. I will go through my

2000 bricks quickly as it takes 100-200 bricks to brick up a single window. I doubt someone is going to come by my garage sale and give me $650.00 for them. The same goes for most of the other things that I store. I am losing rent on the storage area but I would need some storage space no matter what. The incremental value of the additional space doesn't cost me much.

Hope this helps, William

[William.Deans]

Greetings,

New bricks are normally not cheaper than 3/$1.00. I will go through my

2000 bricks quickly as it takes 100-200 bricks to brick up a single window. I doubt someone is going to come by my garage sale and give me $650.00 for them. The same goes for most of the other things that I store. I am losing rent on the storage area but I would need some storage space no matter what. The incremental value of the additional space doesn't cost me much.

Hope this helps, William

[Harry K]

Sounds like my shed :). I did the same until I wised up and made a trip to the dump with all the old wood single pane sash windows that I had saved from 2 demo houses. I do still have some of the panes saving them (and using them) for shaving handles in my splitting malls and other uses. Hadn't used one pane of glass in 20 years. Won't mention the other ?valuable? stuff I still have in there.

Harry K

[J Kelly]

The scrap yard I go to WILL take wire with insulation. The price may be lower but they will take it. Many yards now have ways to remove the insulation. Prices in early june for copper wire (no insulation) were around 95 cents per pound.

[Duane Bozarth]

They'll take it here but I meant "anything" in the sense of "anything approaching enough to make it worth hauling in"....I'd be surprised if the prices for small Romex/cloth insulated would be more than 1/4-th of that.

[Duane Bozarth]

Solid copper will probably bring 5x that of small romex/insulated wire at the scrap dealers plus it's a whole lot simpler to haul in that scrap in a barrel or two as opposed to the whole truckload of old wire...

[Bob G.]

======================== Lol... My sons are HVAC installers... Installing copper line sets setting units etc.... They save their scraps and left overs and sell that scrap to a local "scrap" dealer every year for Christmas money...

They pocket close to $1000.00 bucks a year... is it worth the effort? thats up to you...

Bob G.

[Mshackleford]