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Old 28th Oct 2020, 1:26 am   #81
ben
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Default Re: Skip Useful Finds

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Originally Posted by retailer View Post
- 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" .
Now there's a new variant on the topic!
-Tired of traipsing all over town to find skips?
-Had enough of trying to evade the eagle-eyed jobsworths at the local tip as you try to haul out electronics ?
Well, just leave one of your own out front and watch as the goodies pile in!
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Old 28th Oct 2020, 7:33 am   #82
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Default Re: Skip Useful Finds

Quote:
Originally Posted by ben View Post
Quote:
Originally Posted by retailer View Post
- 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" .
Now there's a new variant on the topic!
-Tired of traipsing all over town to find skips?
-Had enough of trying to evade the eagle-eyed jobsworths at the local tip as you try to haul out electronics ?
Well, just leave one of your own out front and watch as the goodies pile in!
Mostly seems to attract old mattresses in my experience.


Peter
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Old 28th Oct 2020, 7:40 am   #83
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Default Re: Skip Useful Finds

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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 .
We have owned 2 Dyson cleaners, both bought brand new, both returned to the shop when they failed after a week. The retailer tried to tell me that they could not take them back and I should contact Dyson. I had to quote the law to them to get a refund.

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Old 28th Oct 2020, 8:48 am   #84
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Default Re: Skip Useful Finds

Not so much skip finds round my way (not enough space due to cars being parked!) more along the lines of putting stuff outside, either on the pavement or on a wall. Found all sorts of things & not always electronics. Found a pair of Italian glass lampshades one time, beautiful objects. An uplighter in antiqued brass finish, all it needed was a new bulb!?! Unopened tins of paint, solar garden lights & a few VCR's but never ever any valved kit, I don't think it's the right area for that kind of thing. Going to the local tip on a motorcycle does get you some odd looks but if there's no other way of getting shot of it then off I go! Amazing what you can get on a bike. Our local tip is jealously guarded by the workers, I think they'd probably lose their jobs if they let anything go. They did used to have a section of stuff you could purchase for a nominal fee but even that's gone now, all the proceeds went to local charities so even they've dipped out now.
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Old 28th Oct 2020, 10:48 am   #85
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Default Re: Skip Useful Finds

In my entire life I have only had one lucky "skip" or bin find.

I have a nice G-plan dining table and matching chairs, which came with the house we bought.

I had scoured ebay to find additional matching chairs, and never quite found any the same as the ones we had.

One morning on the drive to work, as I approached the office I saw a chair with a broken leg sitting out by some bins. Hmm, looks familiar!

I parked my car at the office and walked straight back, and sure enough, identical chair and in excellent condition - except the broken leg. Which luckily, was sitting right next to it.

When I got it home, it was clear somebody had attempted to glue the leg back on, and the repair had failed - because they had used latex glue like copydex!!

A few splinters were missing so after picking away all the latex I glued it back with epoxy resin to help fill the gaps and tidied it up with filler and a bit of teak varnish
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Old 28th Oct 2020, 3:29 pm   #86
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Default Re: Skip Useful Finds

Electronics wise I've salvaged an Ekco radio and a Rotel turntable and amplifier. Last year I saw some stuff being skipped when a box of books caught my eye. Amongst them was a collection of old 1" OS Maps. I find old maps fascinating. Chap was only too happy for me to take them away. I was very taken with a nice drop-leaf table that was in a skip up the road a few years ago but I had already got one (a table – not the skip). I've been amazed at some of the furniture I've seen dumped at the council tip – complete sets of dining chairs, etc. Seemingly dumped because they are no longer fashionable.

We have a local charity that helps people who find themselves with nothing with basic living items. A lot of my old furniture has gone there. They will take electrical goods and even used pots and pans – anything serviceable that will help someone set up home.

I hate throwing things away that still have a life and have given away a lot of stuff, like surplus DIY items, on Freecycle. I found Freecycle less good for substantial stuff. There are obviously a lot of car-booters and traders doing the rounds and they can be picky which can waste a lot of time.

Almost everything that can be recycled/reused here is. I save excess plastic tubs of different sizes from spread to mushroom tubs for a pal of mine who is in car restoration. He uses them to pack small stripped assemblies for storage.

Last year I replaced a length of fencing. The old lap panels were falling apart. I have broken them up and chipped them for use as a mulch.

We are very much a minority here but perhaps one day, perhaps not too far away, we'll go from weirdos to heros.
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Old 28th Oct 2020, 4:29 pm   #87
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Default Re: Skip Useful Finds

A minority maybe, Nick, but you're not alone. It seems odd that with all the fuss about Recycling there's so little about Repair, Re-use and Re-purpose to say nothing of Reduce.

I had a walk out earlier and passed two skips. Both were full of building waste but one had some pallets on which can be useful depending on the quality. Besides those there was a small CalorGas bottle and a metal concertina-type clothes-horse out for scrap which looked in very good condition for anybody with a use for them; though I'd want the gas bottle checking before I used it for it's original purpose.
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Old 28th Oct 2020, 4:48 pm   #88
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Default Re: Skip Useful Finds

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Originally Posted by Junk Box Nick View Post
I found Freecycle less good for substantial stuff. There are obviously a lot of car-booters and traders doing the rounds and they can be picky which can waste a lot of time.
As Freecycle is specifically free and even asks people who got something on Freecycle to pass it on subsequently in the same way, these chancers do get me aerated. I try to weed them out from their messages!

Quote:
Originally Posted by ThePillenwerfer View Post
A minority maybe, Nick, but you're not alone. It seems odd that with all the fuss about Recycling there's so little about Repair, Re-use and Re-purpose to say nothing of Reduce.
Not many people realise that the famous phrase is in importance order - 'recycling' is behind both reduce and re-use! Some companies proudly mark 'made with recycled plastic' on something unnecessary like a beer can retaining clip, when the object cannot be recycled into anything except a lower quality filler material, and in that specific case can only be burned or landfilled after it's been taken off the cans! Nero springs to mind.
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Old 28th Oct 2020, 5:22 pm   #89
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Default Re: Skip Useful Finds

I guess folks here know I find quite a lot in the work skip - quite a lot of people here have bought it off me in what seem my interminable sell-ups for charity

Since it's getting seasonal, here's something I recently made out of skip finds for the local primary school. It's a bit 'vernacular' - it's for an RC primary school, and I told them I was afraid they were stuck with my prod aesthetic, as I wasn't up to baroque-with-gold-bits!
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Old 29th Oct 2020, 12:12 am   #90
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Default Re: Skip Useful Finds

Very impressive Mark [by comparison with perhaps a few sheets of cardboard!] A great construction that should really boost things for the children at Xmas. Have you got a real Donkey to go in there? I admire your cultural sensitivity but I doubt the children would have wanted the Cistene Chapel .
At Bury, in the 50's, we had a "Rocking Vicar" who put on a contemporary Natvity. I was a six year old rounding up the babies on Herod's orders [in Wellington Boots]. The Vicar became a much admired Bishop in the Church of Scotland.

"God moves in mysterious ways, his wonders to behold!"

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Old 29th Oct 2020, 12:19 am   #91
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Default Re: Skip Useful Finds

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There are obviously a lot of car-booters and traders doing the rounds and they can be picky which can waste a lot of time.
As Freecycle is specifically free and even asks people who got something on Freecycle to pass it on subsequently in the same way, these chancers do get me aerated. I try to weed them out from their messages!

I completely agree Uncle B - people who do that are just social parasites. If I've got something I don't want, then I'm happy to pass it on for free to someone who needs it. But exploiting those altruisms for no other reason than to make money is just antisocial.
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Old 29th Oct 2020, 11:10 am   #92
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Default Re: Skip Useful Finds

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"God moves in mysterious ways, his wonders to behold!"

Dave W

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"Perform" not "behold".
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Old 29th Oct 2020, 2:32 pm   #93
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Default Re: Skip Useful Finds

Most of the test equipment in my workshop and audio gear in the lounge was 'intercepted!' In the case of the workshop, the list should include, furniture, desk lamps, desk fans etc.

Working in the audio/visual industry & being surrounded by test/measurement, when an item became zero value on the asset register and was faulty, just before Christmas it was stacked up in the corner of the warehouse with a word from the person in charge 'before all this lot goes in the skip, feel free to have a rummage'

Not worth anything to the business, but to the home hobbyist, it was treasure!

Nakamichi, B&W, Rotel, and higer-end Technics were the best bargains for domestic audio. Sony, Panasonic & JVC for TV/Video. Citronic, Cloud, Behringer, McGregor & Martin Audio for pro-audio.

Test equipment wise, the usual Tektronix, AVO, Marconi, HP, Fluke and Klark Teknik.

Amazing what was due to be skipped. Excess items were fixed, and passed to friends or family, much of the gear still going, some 20-plus years later!

All my vintage radio/TV stuff came from either eBay, donations or The NVCF.

As for skip diving, epic fail here.

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Old 29th Oct 2020, 2:55 pm   #94
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Default Re: Skip Useful Finds

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Quote:
Originally Posted by Junk Box Nick View Post
There are obviously a lot of car-booters and traders doing the rounds and they can be picky which can waste a lot of time.
As Freecycle is specifically free and even asks people who got something on Freecycle to pass it on subsequently in the same way, these chancers do get me aerated. I try to weed them out from their messages!

I completely agree Uncle B - people who do that are just social parasites. If I've got something I don't want, then I'm happy to pass it on for free to someone who needs it. But exploiting those altruisms for no other reason than to make money is just antisocial.

It does grate, but it also does keep stuff out of landfill and in re-use which is the main point of Freecycle/Freegle etc.
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Old 29th Oct 2020, 3:14 pm   #95
dave walsh
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Yes you are right Barretter [post 92*]. An honest /agnostic mistake perhaps.

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Old 29th Oct 2020, 5:01 pm   #96
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Default Re: Skip Useful Finds

A friend fuels the woodstove that heats part of his house during winter by way of the couple-of-hundred pallets he acquires each year from one of the skips at his workplace [these are small single-use pallets used to feed paper into big printers: six easily go into the back of a Range-Rover].

The last 'useful' thing I extracted from a skip was a collection of 6mm diameter aluminium rods and fittings that once formed the lighting-and-display panels in the front window of a local Estate Agent. One day these may reappear, having been transformed into a 2M "NBS" Yagi.
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Old 29th Oct 2020, 7:58 pm   #97
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Default Re: Skip Useful Finds

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It does grate, but it also does keep stuff out of landfill and in re-use which is the main point of Freecycle/Freegle etc.
If it stays out of landfill I've no objection. I leave metals out for the tatters - I know that will be weighed in for money.

My main beef is that they claim it and then turn their nose up at it when they decide its not good enough to sell. Had too many instances. One was an office desk. No joke when you've humped it downstairs into the hall ready for collection. I was furious with the bloke and challenged him on the spot that he was a trader. Eventually, someone else had it after I had been climbing over it for a week.

And this is assuming they show. A lot of these people are trigger happy constant monitors. Something better/more profitable turns up and they collect that instead.

The point is they can waste an awful lot of your time.

I started to offer only things that were useable but not saleable, like half used pots of paint, left over tiles, half a roll of roofing felt, etc., and deliberately down-played the quality of such as: Shelving unit: scruffy and rusty, suitable for shed or workshop.

After problems with furniture I found the charity I mentioned upthread with the satisfaction that it was doing someone who really needed it some good.
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Old 31st Oct 2020, 6:49 pm   #98
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Furniture - stuff from work I can't house (home already looks like a 60s university lab from the right angle) goes to the British Heart Foundation, whose shops sell anything in OK condition. It's a small hassle, but I enjoy futile exercises such as holding back entropy
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Old 31st Oct 2020, 8:11 pm   #99
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Furniture - stuff from work I can't house (home already looks like a 60s university lab from the right angle) goes to the British Heart Foundation, whose shops sell anything in OK condition. It's a small hassle, but I enjoy futile exercises such as holding back entropy
Round here the charity-shops/operations run-away-screaming if you suggest they 'come-over and maybe collect' 70s/80s/90s G-Plan |Waring&Gillow or Ercol woodies. There's no market for it except as fuel-for-stoves. To be honest, I'm happy to see this stuff go to the chipper and furnace.

In the coming decade I guess IKEA-pseudopine-furniture will be similarly shunned-and-consigned-to-the-furnaces.
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Old 31st Oct 2020, 8:46 pm   #100
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I'd hold my breath if I were burning IKEA 'wood'

Gplan etc has a value - quite a high value for things as awkward (to my mind) as sideboards - around here as 'mid-century' decor seems to be quite the thing. Alas (may I say that, or has, errr, someone just used them all up on BBC 1?) our mid-century electronics lab chic (with Greek graffiti and blobs of chewing gum beneath) is not quite so chic!

I tow stuff to the BHF with a small trailer. Sometimes when I'm unsure, I check they want it first...I'm considerate like that!
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