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Old 25th Oct 2020, 9:06 pm   #61
cmjones01
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Default Re: Skip Useful Finds

One factor in the lack of good skip diving may be the price of scrap metal. It seems very high, especially for precious metals, at the moment. I have recently been hunting for some particular items from the USSR, as was, and found that most of the websites mentioning them actually just list the amounts of precious metals present in them and offer to buy them. For even fairly unexceptional equipment, its scrap value can be hundreds of pounds. Thus not a lot of it survives.

I don't think this applies to Western gear, which was altogether more parsimonious in its use of precious metals, but it may still be a factor.

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Old 25th Oct 2020, 9:17 pm   #62
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The WEEE policy at where I work is "take what you like, it costs us to get it removed" and it is part of the "green" agenda, I wonder which one came first?

I'm in charge of the WEEE stuff in our Dept. I'm only too happy if someone has a use for something and hoicks it out. I have a few regular "customers". All our old Weller soldering and desoldering stations were rescued that way when we upgraded to new Metcal and Pace.
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Old 25th Oct 2020, 9:31 pm   #63
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Default Re: Skip Useful Finds

Many years ago it was possible to rescue lots of useful items from the skip, but nowadays it is predominantly plastic, junk and Made-in-China that you may find there.
In the 90's I managed to fetch a Kawasaki 3hp generator with a FA210D engine, only the outlets were mechanically damaged. What a find, still a reliable friend that always will start at the first trial.

Then I found an "oscillioscope" called "Storascope BLS 218" from Wandel & Goltermann, a very rare unit. It has a special crt where the trace stays legible for more than a day. It was lacking the separate psu. Well, I put it in the attic and thought "Wait and see". Years later I spotted the maching psu at a flea market, the seller unaware of what he had got. So I got it for 10 euros! A wonderful machine!
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Old 25th Oct 2020, 10:23 pm   #64
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Default Re: Skip Useful Finds

Scrap metal (and even just mild steel) is surprisingly high, not up to the heights of (2008-was it?) but pretty good.
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Old 25th Oct 2020, 11:48 pm   #65
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Default Re: Skip Useful Finds

I remember there were a few scrap men doing the rounds near me in 2009 when I moved into my flat.

At the time a lot of people were getting rid of their analogue TVs & most of the scrap men had painted on the side of their vans that they would pick them up for free.

One of my best tip finds was a box of records, which me & my Dad sorted through & picked out what we wanted without any hassle apart from some rain making it tricky.

Most were well worn DJ 12" singles mostly with white card sleeves with the odd album mixed it, I still have the ones I picked out.
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Old 26th Oct 2020, 12:25 am   #66
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Default Re: Skip Useful Finds

They don't have skips around where I live, all they do is dig a big hole up in one of the paddocks and chuck everything in.

I know where some very collectible stuff is, but it would be fair to say their condition would be very poor now.
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Old 27th Oct 2020, 12:43 am   #67
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Back when we owned a 7 day supermarket I would make a trip to the bank to deposit the previous days takings and would stop at a domestic waste transfer yard (fancy name for rubbish dump), they had a line of skip sized metal baskets where the discarded electronics were dumped prior to being recycled, if I found anything useful it was mine for $5. Over the 18 years I visited the transfer yard some of the stuff I managed to pickup was a TEK453 scope, around a dozen 70's manufactured japanese stereo amps from basic like stuff like Rotel to higher end stuff like Techincs/Sansui/NAD, numerous speaker boxes including a pair of Yamaha NS1000's and a pair of AR2AX's (my son has them now) , numerous vintage signal generators, a broadcast compressor made locally by AWA, a 60's manufactured Australian made Moody guitar amp, a Simpson 260 multimeter, half a dozen timber cased radios dating from 30's and 40's in various states of neglect but all salvageable plus a myriad of stuff I can't think of now . It amazed me what was thrown out, the TEK was easily repaired and I used for many years a wonderful easy to use scope, after selling our business to a keen Chinese couple, my new business venture saw me working at the other end of town and I hardly ever got back to the transfer yard.
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Old 27th Oct 2020, 3:25 pm   #68
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"Skip-diving" and picking-up-old-appliances-from-the-roadside a decade or so back became a significant black-market industry: anything with a decent-sized motor in it [washing-machine/fridge/freezer/tumble-drier] was game: a couple of guys would turn up in a white van and drag the appliance into the back. They would then take it down a quiet lane, take a couple of axes to it to remove the motor/evaporator/condenser, and fly-tip the remaining carcase over the nearest gate.

Not only did this mean that the landowner [i.e. me] whose gate the carcases were tipped-over then had to pay a properly-licensed waste-contractor to do the cleanup, but in hacking-apart fridges/freezers to get the motors and copper evaporator/condenser these gangs were releasing the refrigerant [those nasty ozone-layer-murdering CFCs] into the atmosphere rather than collecting/recycling them as was required by law.

Having helped collect video-evidence that saw one such gang end up behind-bars-and-then-deported-when-they-had-finished-their-sentence, must admit I have a bit of a 'thing' about anyone seen rummaging through skips.
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Old 27th Oct 2020, 3:47 pm   #69
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Surely there could be some initiative, especially in the larger firms, where WEEE is offered to the populace? I had to take a van load of real rubbish from my grandfather's house the other day, and having to dump a quantity of broken ugly plates, horrid prints and the like was depressing enough. Seeing the 'electricals' filled with a lot of objects that probably worked was enough to start me railing against consumerism.

Freecycle and eBay have been good in this regard, but the effort required for packing online sales, taking the photos etc. is often far more than the item is worth monetarily. As the firms have to pay contractors to take away their stuff, unless the contractors repurpose it I imagine most goes to sit in the ground for a few thousand years. It'd be great if it could make its way out in a formal setting that would do better for halting fly-tipping.

The other day I came across a lovely old cast-iron Spong worktop mincer - the hand-cranked type. It was just sitting by a bin, so now it's clamped to the tabletop and ready for making Manchester eggs.
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Old 27th Oct 2020, 5:02 pm   #70
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Default Re: Skip Useful Finds

So called "landfill" is very expensive these days, skip companies do sort them, and anything reusable or recyclable is. An acquaintance of mine used to work for one, even the wood is repurposed to heat the offices.
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Old 27th Oct 2020, 5:07 pm   #71
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Some years ago a friend of mine was visiting his local 'tip' where he noticed a man with a very posh car pulling a Dyson vacuum cleaner out of his boot. As he owned the very same model my friend asked if he could have it.

Looking somewhat sheepish the man reluctantly agreed and hurriedly got into his car and drove off.

On arriving home my friend proudly showed his wife his new possession. She commented that 'it looks almost new, shall we see if it works' ? They were both delighted that it appeared to work perfectly and conducted a quick test run on the living room carpet. After a few minutes they noticed that a terrible stench was filling the room and that it was emanating from the cleaner.

My friend quickly switched it off and took it to his workshop for 'investigation'. Here he discovered that the cleaner internals were covered in a very smelly substance and concluded that the previous owner had used it to 'hoover up' dog pooh !

Undeterred he took it to pieces, washed it with soap and water and used it as his workshop vacuum cleaner for a good few years.

P.S. It seems that whenever I go to the tip there is always someone chucking away a Dyson cleaner but I am never tempted as ask why .
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Old 27th Oct 2020, 5:07 pm   #72
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Default Re: Skip Useful Finds

My bench isolation transformer came out of a server tower that I found in a skip. I had to wait till dark to climb in and unscrew it.
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Old 27th Oct 2020, 5:45 pm   #73
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Freecycle and eBay have been good in this regard, but the effort required for packing online sales, taking the photos etc. is often far more than the item is worth monetarily. .
That was exactly the issue when we were clearing my late mother's house: having to take time-off-from-paid-work and pay to stay in a nearby hotel while we did the clearance, it was costing me something like £800/day just to be there. OK - I _could_ have hired a 3.5-ton box-trailer and used it to bring 'stuff' back to my place then spend yet more time putting said stuff on Ebay etc, then more time packing/posting/dealing-with-'its-not-what-you'said-it-was'/it-got-broken-in-transit nuisances.

All to get me - what - a lot of heartache/hassle and a 'profit' of a few thousand quid at most - and HMRC would have demanded 40% of _that_ in Inheritance-Tax!

So we hired a couple of "Walk-in" skips and got the house cleared in a day-and-a-half. We were able to offset the skip-hire against IHT as "Executors' Expenses".

One person's "Valuables" "Treasured Collection" or "Family Memorabilia" are another person's burden/cost/garbage. Don't get precious about junk.
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Old 27th Oct 2020, 7:02 pm   #74
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Default Re: Skip Useful Finds

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Originally Posted by G6Tanuki View Post
"Skip-diving" and picking-up-old-appliances-from-the-roadside a decade or so back became a significant black-market industry: anything with a decent-sized motor in it [washing-machine/fridge/freezer/tumble-drier] was game: a couple of guys would turn up in a white van and drag the appliance into the back. They would then take it down a quiet lane, take a couple of axes to it to remove the motor/evaporator/condenser, and fly-tip the remaining carcase over the nearest gate.... must admit I have a bit of a 'thing' about anyone seen rummaging through skips.
Let's not get carried away. There's a world of difference between those of us who pick items up from skips and make use of the parts, or even repair and pass them on, and illegal flytippers. Then there are people who have no alternative but to live off what they can pick up from skips to put food on the table, a sad reflection on the society we live in. Whatever the case, it's in everyone's long-term interests that things get kept out of landfill.

In the case of the fridges and the like, I thought retailers had a responsibility to take in such appliances upon sale of a new one. That should keep quite a number out of the way of the hack-and-dump brigade.

Incidentally, there's a great documentary by the late Agnes Varda, les glaneurs et la glaneuse (The Gleaners and I), which is a fascinating glimpse into the world of skip digging/harvesting/making use of what others discard.
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Old 27th Oct 2020, 8:05 pm   #75
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. Why would anyone remove stuff from a skip and flytip it five minutes later?
Ah. Fair enough. That never occurred to me.
I am very naive sometimes.

At risk of getting back on topic.....

My AVO VCM mk3 which was about to be thrown out at work.
Not sure if that counts, as it wasn’t technically in a skip, or free. I purchased it for a fiver.
I literally tripped over an old green Megger and an ELCB tester( which works perfectly) at the tip once.
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Old 27th Oct 2020, 9:06 pm   #76
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Surely there could be some initiative, especially in the larger firms, where WEEE is offered to the populace?
Where I work things have changed in recent years and the company does now offer surplus stuff to staff. However, it is rarely WEEE stuff unless you include PCs and laptops. Several times a year the company offers surplus PCs and monitors to staff on first come first served. I'm using an ex company PC to type this post! I had to fit a HDD to it but it was otherwise complete. The media PC downstairs is ex company and the laptop + FP monitor in the spare room is ex company. But this stuff isn't fished from a skip it is collected from a spare office area by the lucky winners. They also offer surplus furniture when offices get a refit to match the latest trends. I'm sat on an ex company Herman and Miller chair (very posh!) and several of my desks, desk drawers and a bench are ex company giveaways. This is how it should be done rather than the company incur costs for removal by a contractor.

I doubt any of it would be offered to the general public though. There would be too many things to do with health and safety to worry the admin staff!
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Old 27th Oct 2020, 9:10 pm   #77
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Quote:
. Why would anyone remove stuff from a skip and flytip it five minutes later?
Ah. Fair enough. That never occurred to me.
They'll do it because they can hack a quid's worth of copper from their skip-scavenged stuff and then lob the leftovers onto my land and drive away - meaning I incur rather more than a fiver's-worth of cleanup-costs!

Please - let's not do anything to encourage/legitimize/promote illegal/untraceable theft of stuff from skips.
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Old 27th Oct 2020, 9:27 pm   #78
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Let's not get carried away. There's a world of difference between those of us who pick items up from skips and make use of the parts, or even repair and pass them on, and illegal flytippers. Then there are people who have no alternative but to live off what they can pick up from skips to put food on the table, a sad reflection on the society we live in. Whatever the case, it's in everyone's long-term interests that things get kept out of landfill.
Definitely. When I Freecycle things I usually give it to the person who writes the most polite message because I feel they'll probably not be at risk of dumping it! The resentment I feel from putting stuff in skips is from how far removed it is from a cradle-to-cradle idea of production and consumption. There is just so much waste and I'd rather not be responsible for it. One has to be careful not to let it descend into hoarding...

The over-production and over-consumption by large companies is especially egregious, as whole industries depend on them replacing good equipment in only a few years, when it all still works. The technological imperative of Georg Henrik von Wright - the new tech exists so we must use it regardless of the consequences.

The informal network of people like the members here who are willing and able to fix equipment that has been discarded can only go so far, and it does seem very silly that so much is prevented from being reclaimed because of the tiny minority of flytippers, or the (probably imagined) risk of litigation.

Quote:
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Incidentally, there's a great documentary by the late Agnes Varda, les glaneurs et la glaneuse (The Gleaners and I), which is a fascinating glimpse into the world of skip digging/harvesting/making use of what others discard.
That's brilliant - we were shown it in my second year of architecture school as part of a project on bricolage. It always stuck with me but I never knew what its real title was so hadn't found it online since. JR and Agnes Varda did a good documentary together shortly before she died called "Faces Places" which I saw during lockdown. Worth seeking out.

I think we'd all rather people were like my namesake - 'making good use of the things that we find; things that the everyday folk leave behind'.
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Old 27th Oct 2020, 11:00 pm   #79
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After a few minutes they noticed that a terrible stench was filling the room and that it was emanating from the cleaner.

It seems that whenever I go to the tip there is always someone chucking away a Dyson cleaner but I am never tempted as ask why.
Yes, I acquired one recently, one of those Dyson Balls. Unfortunately all the attachments had been lost by the persons son. It works perfectly, but like you said, I've noticed a strange smell when powered up. It's not electrical and it's not 'poo', but could be just a general 'animal' type smell, so it's going to have to be completely stripped down and thoroughly cleaned internally - apparently smells when in use is a 'known' problem with these when they've had some use. This cleaner was heading for the bin rather than the skip, but I happened to be in the right place at the right time. The person told me that if her son happens to find the attachments that he'd managed to lose, then she'll let me know, but I don't hold out a lot of hope. It's a shame that all the important 'tools' are missing, as these seem to be a very good and powerful cleaner - better than the 'old' Dyson that's being used around the house at the moment and would have been quite expensive when new.
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Old 28th Oct 2020, 12:23 am   #80
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We built a new home around 5 yrs ago - builders had a large skip parked in the front for normal builders rubbish and also for anyone that thought it was fair game for their unwanted "stuff" - a couple of tele's, an evap air con - the biggest thing we saw has a complete fiberglass canopy from a ute big enough to cover 3/4 of the skip - looked in pretty good order.
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