I am in sticker shock, it is so expensive (wire rant)

[Hedges]

Copper price history (grey bars are recessions):
View attachment 175910

Dollar purchasing power

I’ve purchased a large selection of butt connectors. I hate them like the scourge and there’s places where you shouldn’t use them but as the cost of living increases people are going to start to piece things together.

I keep old extension cords and cut off old appliance cords and have used them many times for small system wiring. Not pretty but they work.

PG&E likes to do that with short sections of 30" high pressure gas pipe.
Just ask the residents of San Bruno.

I literally just got off the phone with my internet provider who call to explain why my service was out. He said the the wiring from the pole just past my house had been stripped for the copper. He informed me that this has been on the rise in the last few weeks.

Carzy.

There has been a lot of similar cases in the UK over the last 5 years - often gangs pulling out underground cable with a truck

Fortunately we're fully fibre to the premises - just hope the average thief can tell the difference between glass and copper before they pull it!

I was about to say the same about my Gbit fiber.

 

[Alkaline]

I literally just got off the phone with my internet provider who call to explain why my service was out. He said the the wiring from the pole just past my house had been stripped for the copper. He informed me that this has been on the rise in the last few weeks.

Carzy.

They stole my mom's gutters, she had these nice 1900's style copper gutters and they robbed her during the day while she was at work. When we tried to find out what happened and the neighbors said "ohh we thought you were getting work done some people came and took them off and then hauled them off in a pickup truck."

Luckily state farm paid the claim, replacing them with new copper ones would have been insanely expensive so now some generic aluminum ones sit in their place.

 

[millsan1]

Copper is crazy right now. My buddy is building a house. 3/4 copper pipe was $10 per foot.

 

[Supervstech]

Copper is crazy right now. My buddy is building a house. 3/4 copper pipe was $10 per foot.

In the 80's i installed a lot of boilers and used copper exclusively, i kept all thw pipe stock, and have probably 200' of 1" and 3/4" L and K copper tubing under my house...
I hate to think what it costs new...

 

[tmprof]

I used facebook marketplace and found 75 ft of 3/0 for $200.
Also found 2 500ft spools of 10g for $75 each. I thought it'd be useful in the future when I add more panels.

 

[hugemoth]

Silver is a better conductor. The way it's going it may soon be cheaper than copper.

 

[Quattrohead]

I used facebook marketplace and found 75 ft of 3/0 for $200.
Also found 2 500ft spools of 10g for $75 each. I thought it'd be useful in the future when I add more panels.

So you just bought someone else's nicked copper then LOL

 

[Skypower]

We used to keep metal turning in a “chip shed” outside. One day I found the barrels gone and cyclone fence ripped open, probably by a chain and truck. I made temporary repair of the fence with mechanic’s wire and baited the trap. We filled a bunch of 55gallon drums with beautiful aluminum chips……but they were only topped. Most of the drum’s volume were actually filled with trash. The outside bottom of all the barrels were mark “Stolen from Orla’s machine shop”
and the phone number. Bait taken! I got a phone from the scrap yard saying that the thief had seen the writing just as their own employee had when it was being emptied. He jumped in his truck, didn’t even close the tailgate strewing the rest of the barrels out the truck bed. Problem for the thief, they already had his license plate. Turned out to be another shop owner’s son. I knew his dad. Yeah didn’t end well for the punk when daddy found out.

 

[Jet]

Check out Cable Cabana on eBay. They have pretty good prices. While there are some bulk wire websites that are cheaper, the ones with the cheapest wire often require large order minimums. In my case Hawaii is usually excluded from the free shipping.

 

[JRH]

We've had a terrible problem with copper grounding gear being stolen from radio towers for the past several years.

Nothing an 0’6 wouldn’t solve … they should offer bountys on those theiven critters.. like back in the old days.