(no subject)

[which_chick]

Sometimes the internets are wonderful. If I need information on how to take video off of a DVD and beat it up so that I can freeze the picture at any instant and get non-blurry still images (in other words, the quick and dirty tutorial on DVD ripping plus everything I need to know about interlacing and frame rates and so forth... as well as all the tools I might need to actually *do* that stuff), the internet provides abundantly. I do a little reading, I have the answers and the tools I need to do the job.

Other times, the internets are not so much with the helpful.



Recently we replaced a failing hot water heater of the sort that circulates hot furnace water through the hot water heater to make the cold water hot. There is not any mixing of icky-furnace-water and happy-clean-for-drinking-water because the furnace water stays in its own pipe, which is copper. Copper is currently above two bucks a pound, which makes it just about worth my time to rip out the pipe arrangement for the furnace water that is inside the hot water heater and drag it off to the scrap metal people on Mile Level where they will weigh it and pay me actual money in exchange for copper parts that we would otherwise throw away. However, I have never disassembled a hot water heater of this sort in my life and I'm kind of stuck for ideas. (Just in case you're wondering, normal electric hot water heaters do not contain sizeable amounts of copper. The hot water heater in question is not the everyday kind.)

The internets are not telling me how best to get the copper pipe stuffs out of the fucking hot water heater. This is news I could use and I'm turning up jack shit. Apparently all the people who would like to have the copper out of hot water heaters like this already know how to get it out and are too busy spending their scrap metal money on meth to build web pages about how they got the scrap copper in the first place.

You are now saying to yourself, "What the hell kind of economy does this woman operate on, that she is running around chasing after scrap metal?" You are approaching it from the wrong angle. I am not chasing after scrap metal. Scrap metal comes my way without me doing a whole lot to get it. We'd still have a dead hot water heater even if I didn't want the copper out of it. Its deadness is not particularly related to my wanting its copper and I sure as hell didn't wish it dead because the damn thing's corpse weighed about a gazillion pounds AFTER we emptied the water out of it. I didn't kill the electric baseboard heater that died a nonfixable death and gave up four eight-foot strands of solid, heavy gauge copper wire. I don't kill the brass faucet stems and seats that have given up the ghost, but as I have to take them out ANYWAY to fix the damn faucets, I might as well throw 'em in a bucket for recycling. (Brass ain't cheap when you buy the pieces for to plumb with. It's probably worth some money when you go to sell it back.)

If I were driving my Cadillac Escalade (Is that a truck? An SUV? A vehicle for saying I do not work for a living because I am better than you? I saw one at the hardware store the other day and I was all like WTF with it.) to my local Recycling Center with my baggie of aluminum cans, you'd be all about my recycling. Yay! Recycling! It's good for the environment. Huzzah! However, as soon as I drive my crappy pickup truck to the scrap metal place so that they can GIVE ME MONEY for metals I would otherwise be consigning to the landfill, I'm not recycling, I am participating in the white trash economy of meth addicts. (Full disclosure: I am not a meth addict.) It's like me getting money out of the deal makes it less worthy than "real" recycling or something. Bugger that. I don't think that the mountains of Chile or wherever (Wikipedia says that as of 2005, a fair amount of copper is mined in Chile, the United States, Canada, Zambia, Kazakhstan, Mauritania and Poland.) give two shits if they are spared from the ravages of mining via selfless acts of conservation by the rich or via high scrap prices that motivate the white trash economy.

Anyway. In order to get my money (about six bucks, I should point out) from the scrap metal people, I have to figure out how to get the fucking pipe out of the fucking hot water heater. The internets are not helping. Perhaps I just need a bigger hammer and a larger prybar.

Comments

[wootsauce.livejournal.com]

I always forget that not everywhere has the magical 5-cent can redemption value or whatever it is. Hmm.

[which-chick.livejournal.com]

Only communist states have government-mandated money-for-cans schemes in place. :) The rest of us let the free market decide what to pay for aluminum.

Where I live, people recycle for-free if they want and for-money if they want. There is not (as near as I can tell) borough-organized recycling pickup in either of the towns where we have apartment buildings. I know that there are recycling drop-off sites where you can take your recyclables but there isn't any kind of infrastructure that comes around and GETS your recyclables. As it happens, there isn't citywide refuse hauling, either -- each homeowner has to contract with a garbage company to have his or her trash hauled away.

Since recycling takes some effort for me -- it's not picked up free of charge with my other trash -- I'd rather get money for it than not. To recycle, I have to collect it up. I have to sort it. I have to make time to haul it to the recycle place. For all of that, I want me some money. If all they did was take my stuff and not give me money, I wouldn't bother.

I also don't recycle anything but aluminum, copper, and brass. Glass, paper, and ferrous metals are worth so damn little that it's not worth my time to recycle them. Appliances (like washing machines) are worth five dollars. If you have ever tried to lift a washing machine onto the back of a pickup truck, you know full well that five bucks is precious little for the effort involved.

[wootsauce.livejournal.com]

I'm enough of a hippie that I'm all about recycling, but there's no recycling pickup in my city anymore, which makes it a pain.

[electroweak.livejournal.com]

Every construction person in the entire world makes money off of scavenging metals from demolished building spaces. Recovering metals for small-scale profit is considered an important part of the recycling process by every economist, although the way metals reclamation is done in Asia (open fires and caustic chemicals in the open, to get the metals out of computer boards and the like) is generally considered Bad For The Environment.

The normal way construction personnel get at metals inside an object that isn't hazardous is to take it into a safe place and smack it with a sledgehammer until it breaks. The metals recovery places don't care if the metal is bent, since they're ultimately going to melt it anyway.

[fooliv.livejournal.com]

The one week I worked construction, the guy I worked with, brooming krap out of half-completed apartment buildings, ran around with a little bag into which he carefully placed every bit of cut-short copper wire we came across. It struck me as a harmless but rather silly hobby, as he probably didn't glean much more than a half-pound, and possibly less than a quarter-pound, a day of this stuff. Not to mention all the time he'd have to spend stripping the plastic coating off of each leetle bit of wire.

Aluminum's value in recycling has more to do with the cost in power represented by its manufacture rather than the source ore, which is dirt cheap. I'm not exactly clear on just how much extra energy is required to recycle used aluminum into new-use aluminum goods. (Random googling suggests it's about 95% cheaper to use recycled aluminum, FWIW.) I have to admit I'm dubious about the environmental utility of just about every sort of recycling. Economic utility, on the other hand, I'm all over. Iron and copper aren't so common that industrial recycling doesn't make basic sense, although the way they're going crazy with the the alloys and the ceramics and the plastics that I have to wonder just what exactly they're going to do in the future when they need to crack open the old fancy-alloyed-and-ceramick'd putt-putts for the materials. Nanomachine-driven recycling? Hello, grey goo!

How to get copper piping out of water heater

[ardvaark99999.livejournal.com]

Anyway. In order to get my money (about six bucks, I should point out) from the scrap metal people, I have to figure out how to get the fucking pipe out of the fucking hot water heater. The internets are not helping. Perhaps I just need a bigger hammer and a larger prybar.

The internet will help you. You discussed your problem in this forum, and I shall help.

1. Acquire a crack cocaine habit.
2. Sell all your other stuff for crack.
3. Keep the water heater safely located somewhere where you can find it while doing 1 & 2.
4. Tear apart water heater with bare hands while craving crack.
5. Walk to recycling center (you sold your car in #2, above).
6. Profit!

FWIW, I was just at a preliminary hearing this week representing someone charged with burglary for breaking into a house (sans tools) to remove copper piping in order to sell it for enough money to support a crack cocaine problem. In my estimation, he was highly motivated to accomplish the mission. In this case, the utilities to the home were off and he allegedly broke some piping in the basement where soldered together then bent it back and forth repeatedly to remove it, allegedly stacking it nicely on the first floor when, allegedly, the police arrived, allegedly finding him hiding on the second floor of the home.

My all-time favorite crack case involving a "where can I get money for crack" issue was the guy who backed his truck up to a convenience store, cut the chains connecting the Coke (Coca-Cola) vending machine to the wall, hoisted the machine onto his truck, drove away, dumped the machine in a cornfield, and smashed it open to get the coin box and remove...$5.00 in change. For that kind of effort, he could have made plenty more. At least he got a few cokes for his trouble.

See? Crack users are efficient workers capable of accomplishing the labors of Hercules, when properly motivated. In my opinion, they are underemployed for these sorts of tasks. They tend not to do well with supervision, however, and organizing and directing their activities is difficult at times.

Re: How to get copper piping out of water heater

[which-chick.livejournal.com]

Nah, no crack required. Turns out I needed the hammer of gentle persuasion and the rachet set.

For those who might ever need to know, on a hot water heater that uses furnace hot water to make the for-drinking water hot, the copper pipe radiator affair (which is the part that you can sell easily for money) is located at the bottom of the radiator and can be removed from the rest of the thing once you take out eight nasty-ass screws and whack everything a few times with the hammer of gentle persuasion.

[not-your-real.livejournal.com]

This is so reminding me of a scene from Primer.