Look,we here at Amcep Metals are all about the free open spirit to go out and find your own honey hole for scrapping metal. We have also been around long enough to know that if it is too good to be true, then someone might be in trouble. So we thought we would mention a few places NOT to find scrap metal…as a cautionary tale and of course to keep all of us out of harms, and the laws way.
New Home Construction
First of all, new homes are pretty much wood , brick and mortar..or stucco in Tucson’s case. The truth is, home build sites keep their own roll off dumpsters on site and have become pretty resourceful at filling those dumpsters with their own scrap materials over time. The pieces most scrappers might be interested in would be most the copper tubing and or piping and of course the copper wiring going through the house. The average new home built today has about 439 pounds of copper in it..I know you are calculating it, so here it is, that is worth about $1,100.00 today. Here is the breakdown:
195 pounds – building wire
151 pounds – plumbing tube, fittings, valves
24 pounds – plumbers’ brass goods
47 pounds – built-in appliances
12 pounds – builders hardware
10 pounds – other wire and tube
Guess who else knows it…the builder. In any new economy ever ounce is accounted for and closely held. There was a time when home builders couldn’t find anyone to come clean up sites as they built them and get rid of most of the excess materials, so they do it themselves. Now many builders have contracts with large corporate recycling companies or raw material vendors to purchase or haul off these excesses. So we’re not saying a home builders lot or area will be void of scrap metal to sell, we’re saying it is not yours to take from the site, even though it does look discarded and trashed. Your best possible move is to contact the builder themselves and to see what their current situation has to offer. If they balk and say their good…move on.