My company blows through 8' copper grounding rods and 10' rebar like it's oxygen. Like we literally spend 15.00 on the rods and a little less on the rebar and if they get even a slight bend in them which can take as little as an hour (but sometimes as long as a month) we just throw em out or bury em in the ground. granted sometimes they're a little more than slightly bent but once they bend the first time it's gonna bend again for sure if you fix it.

Just wondering if anyone in Raleigh would want them either as they come or for scraps? It wouldn't be like a ton of 'em at a time unless we stockpiled for a month or two but I don't know...just seems stupid to waste em is all...

5/20/2009 2:11:02 AM

pm sent

[Edited on May 20, 2009 at 2:26 AM. Reason : .]

5/20/2009 2:18:31 AM

Copper sells for a decent price. And burying them is a bad idea.

5/20/2009 12:16:28 PM

we just did this with several ground rods and a shit ton of larger feeder wire scrap ends. Got quite a lot back.

5/20/2009 12:25:35 PM

I can't believe that any company that deals with a significant quantity of the materials you described doesn't scrap them in order to recoup some if their loss.

5/20/2009 4:45:51 PM

^yeah, my company always takes the value of the copper, brass, and aluminum scrap from the job off the budget

5/20/2009 4:50:02 PM

How big is your company ? Why would they do that ? Just keep the copper rods, you can resell them for a great price regardless of bending

5/20/2009 5:24:49 PM

When you have people going onto construct sites, renovation projects, and abandoned buildings to salvage copper to sell, yeah...

5/20/2009 5:32:12 PM

Yeah, people steal wiring from uninhabited houses all the time just to sell it for scrap. Solid rods with no insulation to strip would be worth your time. You should grab every one you can as long as it's kosher with the management.

The rebar on the other hand is meh. Steel isn't really worth the drive to a recycling facility most of the time.

[Edited on May 20, 2009 at 5:59 PM. Reason : l]

5/20/2009 5:59:12 PM

the last time i went, i believe steel was like 7 cents/lb and copper was like $2

[Edited on May 20, 2009 at 6:03 PM. Reason : w]

5/20/2009 6:02:47 PM

i brought it up in a meeting about 3 months ago and the vice president of the company said "dont worry about that"

im shocked too especially since theyve made alot more expense restrictions on us just in the last 5 months (mostly with good reason though to curb repeat offenders)

i'm gonna write a letter and CC some people in charge, ill leave out the "i told you so" overtones but if they dont want to implement it ill just ask them to save scraps for me and ill take it my damn self and pocket the money

oh and someone asked about the size, its small-medium, 50-75 people in 2 regional offices

5/20/2009 9:28:46 PM

pm about to be sent

5/20/2009 9:29:55 PM

don't crackheads do this?

5/25/2009 6:39:33 PM

http://www.coppertheft.info/

people break into our substations all the time to steal copper grounding cables. they also steal other conductors. good thieves know which ones are energized.

something they're starting to do is spraypainting the copper wires silver so they look like cheap aluminum cables. believe it or not, this fools the stupid thieves.

5/25/2009 6:50:34 PM

are your ground rods copper-clad? If so, they're practically worthless for scrap.

^I worked for a co-op in rural Ohio that had a problem with thieves cutting down the neutral wire on old distribution lines with hard drawn copper. They'd also dig up the substation grounding grid for the copper wire. They've had more than one thief electrocuted after cutting down a section of the neutral, not realizing that it can have a significant amount of current running through it.

[Edited on May 25, 2009 at 8:04 PM. Reason : ^have ya'll looked into using copperweld at your substations?]

5/25/2009 8:01:16 PM

all of our copper and steel scrap goes to the office party fund and we just have fun with it

5/25/2009 10:37:27 PM

Quote :

"^have ya'll looked into using copperweld at your substations?"

I'm not really sure. That's a whole different division.

Quote :

"They've had more than one thief electrocuted after cutting down a section of the neutral, not realizing that it can have a significant amount of current running through it."

those triplen harmonics will get ya especially if there's a n-g potential

5/25/2009 10:53:06 PM

yeah, third harmonics or cutting down neutrals on long single phase lines can be disastrous.

Then again, I remember them saying that one guy was dumb enough to cut the neutral down and then got shocked when he went back for the phase conductors. He was probably a little bit crispier than the rest of them were.

I don't miss working for that co-op any. Between the marijuana fields you'd find under the lines out in the middle of nowhere and the remnants of anhydrous ammonia meth labs you'd find scattered along the dirt roads out in the middle of nowhere, I always felt like I was going to get killed working on their system. Driving a vehicle with REA listed on the side, which might look like DEA from a distance, didn't help matters any.

5/25/2009 11:05:17 PM

Quote :

"yeah, third harmonics or cutting down neutrals on long single phase lines can be disastrous."

just be glad we don't have to work on european systems

Quote :

"Then again, I remember them saying that one guy was dumb enough to cut the neutral down and then got shocked when he went back for the phase conductors. He was probably a little bit crispier than the rest of them were."

that's almost worthy of a darwin award nomination right there...

5/25/2009 11:09:53 PM

There's a lot of people that should be Darwin award candidates but haven't made it yet when it comes to working around power lines. I think my favorite comment came from a guy that was running an excavator near one of our highway relocation projects, digging in new water line. I told him that he was getting really close to the overhead distribution line and that he should try to keep his bucket lower or relocate. His response was "Oh, it's fine. I hit these things all the time! You just got to sit there and let the line drop back in on you a couple times, and then you're good. Sometimes it welds the hydraulics together, but that's the worst that happens."

I wonder if the groundsman he had climbing up and down that excavator to relay digging instructions to him is still alive today.

5/25/2009 11:31:18 PM

if the copper grounding rods aren't copper clad but entirely copper I could use 'em, but don't live in Raleigh, might could make a trip up for several of them depending on the gauge -- do you know what gauge it is?

I know someone in Raleigh that could probably use 'em without bothering with a trip, as well

I wouldn't be interested in the scrap value so much as the ampacity

I could only really justify the need for maybe 10-20 of them, then you can send the rest to not dnl for scrap

5/26/2009 5:20:06 AM

what kind of ampacity are you looking for?

5/26/2009 10:24:26 PM

I've been meaning to wind a saturable reactor for 100A 240V, which calls for an unusually large number of turns of 0awg or so around a fairly large core to achieve the requisite inductance for good current limiting without control voltage applied.

I also have plans to wind a step-down transformer for a solid state induction heating project, which calls for a few turns at 600A or more on the secondary side... grounding rod wouldn't be the best choice for this particular project due to skin effect, but it'd be better than anything I have handy now. Copper foil would be better for this, and a lot easier to work, but short of older welding or distribution transformers it's pretty hard to find at scrap prices.

I'm assuming grounding rod would need to be anealed at the bends to work it into a tight coil, but that's nothing I can't handle with a torch and the wealth of time I have on my hands at the moment, lol

5/27/2009 8:09:02 AM

What the hell are you doing with all these projects besides toying with the next Darwin award submission?

5/27/2009 8:14:34 AM

Learnin' myself some shit, dawg.

I've never even been shocked by 120V, so I wouldn't get too excited about the possibility of a Darwin award

5/27/2009 9:11:57 AM

Quote :

"Copper sells for a decent price. And burying them is a bad idea."

5/27/2009 12:28:17 PM

$15 grounding rods would be copper clad at best.

5/27/2009 3:27:29 PM