One man's rubbish is another man's treasure had some seriously good finds in skips best find 1920s art deco smiths clock which after an hour of tinkering got it working perfectly sold on ebay for £150 also get most of my wood for hobby and fire out of skips
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15 years ago our neighbours were having new bi-fold doors fitted in the rear of their house and the fitters were placing an expensive Everest door in the skip just as I walked past. It is now our rear door and saved us a huge amount of money as we'd recently moved into our house and our rear door was rotten and single glazed.
Like others our council don't allow you to remove stuff from recycling skips but there are one or two attendants who will let you take items. I salvaged a sheet of OSB3 recently. On one recent trip to the recycling centre I spotted a brand new set of drain rods in the metal skip (brass fittings) tied in a bundle and shouted over to an attendant if I could fish them out but he just ignored me and walked off so I thought 'that'll be a no then..' I wish I'd chanced my arm and just taken them.
We have quite an active freecycle group that I often use to recycle stuff we don't need anymore. But I do like skips....
Like others our council don't allow you to remove stuff from recycling skips but there are one or two attendants who will let you take items. I salvaged a sheet of OSB3 recently. On one recent trip to the recycling centre I spotted a brand new set of drain rods in the metal skip (brass fittings) tied in a bundle and shouted over to an attendant if I could fish them out but he just ignored me and walked off so I thought 'that'll be a no then..' I wish I'd chanced my arm and just taken them.
We have quite an active freecycle group that I often use to recycle stuff we don't need anymore. But I do like skips....
bourbon
Established Member
More like the contracted company making more profit by recycling it themselves.
Jameshow
Established Member
I often intercept things before they get to the skips.
Couple of small uPVC windows comes to mind.
A few years ago a friend of mine put a skip outside his house and made more selling items donated in the night than the skip cost to hire. Back in thedays when people were ripping out night grates and other items now called original features.
Kittyhawk
Established Member
Well I'm greatly heartened to read the above responses.
Mind you, I did expect that people who know which end of a tool to hold would also appreciate the potential value in discarded scrap material.
So I will ignore my wife's aspersions as to the flaws in my character and take comfort in the fact that if seeing value in other people's junk makes me a bit bonkers, then you lot are equally so.
Mind you, I did expect that people who know which end of a tool to hold would also appreciate the potential value in discarded scrap material.
So I will ignore my wife's aspersions as to the flaws in my character and take comfort in the fact that if seeing value in other people's junk makes me a bit bonkers, then you lot are equally so.
A few years ago, before council re-cycling got serious, there were open skips for people to dump rubbish. My wife hated when I went to the dump. I always came back with more than I took. I can see uses for any metal or wood. I even stop when cycling on the road to pick up bolts and pins that fall off lorries. I also spot things I can't carry on the bike, like dumped gas cylinders, old double glazed windows. I go back later with the car. I really hate to see good stuff wasted. Going to the dump now is torture. There is no way the staff will let you take stuff out. Health and Safety blah! blah! blah!. Much of it still goes to landfill.
THE very worst experience was where a company I worked for wrote off millions of dollars of old inventory, for accounting reasons. It was given to a recycling company for free. There was so much usable stuff. I got some stuff, but not as much as I would have liked.
Well done for repurposing the dumped metal.
We are all just Wombles, doing a very valuable service for the planet.
Got no problem with people taking things out of skips; do it myself. It’s the people who put things in skips uninvited that really p\ss me off. Why should me or the customer be expected to pay for disposing of all their old [email protected]
Cooper
Established Member
This is brilliant so many kindred spirits.
First a thread about what have we made from recycled materials and now skip finds.
I renovated our house with a lot of stuff from skips. Victorian doors, floorboards, door furniture, bathroom fittings etc and now the materials to make toys for my grandchildren.
Someone once told me that technically taking from a skip is theft. Before the stuff goes in you have to ask the person who hired the skip and once its in the skip, the skip company. I've never worried about that but is it true?
First a thread about what have we made from recycled materials and now skip finds.
I renovated our house with a lot of stuff from skips. Victorian doors, floorboards, door furniture, bathroom fittings etc and now the materials to make toys for my grandchildren.
Someone once told me that technically taking from a skip is theft. Before the stuff goes in you have to ask the person who hired the skip and once its in the skip, the skip company. I've never worried about that but is it true?
I’ve been picking up bits of metal since I could walk and climbing in skips since I could climb. I’m only 39 but that’s a good 29 years of skip diving.
There is no purchase I have ever made that gave me more joy than finding a really nice ‘thing’ in a skip or left out with a piece of paper with the word ‘FREE’ written on it.
And that’s without even mentioning ‘Freecycle’ or the small family scrapyard I walk past every day to drop the kids off at school.
There is no purchase I have ever made that gave me more joy than finding a really nice ‘thing’ in a skip or left out with a piece of paper with the word ‘FREE’ written on it.
And that’s without even mentioning ‘Freecycle’ or the small family scrapyard I walk past every day to drop the kids off at school.
I have this disease in its early stages. Now, before stuff gets thrown away in our house I have to check it out first. I don't see broken rubbish - I see free raw materials for my (fairly new) tinkering hobby. Currently, a dining fork with misaligned tines has been banished from the kitchen by my other half. I haven't yet thrown it in the bin because it might be a useful piece of steel! As this disease progresses I could see myself turning into a "skip raider".
okeydokey
Established Member
My house and that next door are the same, next door had replaced their old wooden French windows/doors with UPVC some years ago. They moved out and the new folk changed them I still had the original and failing rapidly French doors so £50 to the fitter to fit to my house after I removed the existing timber and frame- so thats recycle no 1.
So fast forward 10 years and I could afford to take out the side walls to the French doors to make a bigger full height opening and have new opening French doors with none opening glass panels each side. So recycle no 2 was when I got the fitter to carefully take out those doors/windows from recycle no 1 and at the back of my garage (garden side) is where I had a large door bodged together out of old plywood and suchlike.
Then a bit - not too much hassle I was able to recycle the originals (from next door) to my garage and I now have a pair of good opening doors to my garage with loads of light - super job.
So fast forward 10 years and I could afford to take out the side walls to the French doors to make a bigger full height opening and have new opening French doors with none opening glass panels each side. So recycle no 2 was when I got the fitter to carefully take out those doors/windows from recycle no 1 and at the back of my garage (garden side) is where I had a large door bodged together out of old plywood and suchlike.
Then a bit - not too much hassle I was able to recycle the originals (from next door) to my garage and I now have a pair of good opening doors to my garage with loads of light - super job.
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Tris
What am I doing here?
Ah, now that fork, with the middle prongs removed and the other two bent out at 90 Deg halfway down, is just the thing for raised pointing on certain types of stone walling.
I have a repointing job coming up. Thanks for the tip.
Now, can anyone think of a recycle for the old mortar scrapings?
HamsterJam
Established Member
I recall an event at work when a very large and heavy item was manhandled over the car park and hoyed into a skip, narrowly missing a guy skip diving.
Stay safe folks
Stay safe folks
trsleigh
Established Member
We are moving house and downsizing. All my accumulated "things that might be useful" and that we can't fit into the new place I've put on the garden wall. We live on a fairly quiet street and I estimate that 99% of it goes. A great service.
I too hate going to the local recycling centre, it find it really disappointing that you cannot take stuff away. After all, I thought the mantra was "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle". Local councils seem to completely ignore the reuse bit.
I too hate going to the local recycling centre, it find it really disappointing that you cannot take stuff away. After all, I thought the mantra was "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle". Local councils seem to completely ignore the reuse bit.
Ah yes but the poor retailers dont like people with vision who can turn somthing disguarded into something useful for free, so dont let people take from the tip not every one removes things so not a major problem . I bet some of the inventors of today started off thier prototypes from disguarded materials
AES
Established Member
+1 for skip diving in all it's various forms.
Like Kittyhawk with his wife, my wife tends to walk away from me with a "He's NOT with me" look on her face when I used to do that stuff.
I say "used to" because now, with all the public dumps for scraps of all types that we have here (not just skips), it is "streng verboten" to hook any stuff of any sort out of them. And many of them in supermarkets, etc, here are now built so that you'd need to be an Olympic high jumper to get inside! (I'm NOT BTW)!
While I can understand the economics of this approach, especially with scrap metals the price they are these days (not to mention sheet wooden goods) I do firmly feel that we're taking away the possibilities for youngsters to learn to repair rather than just dump stuff, AND overall, I wonder if we're doing any long-term favours for the environment? "We" cannot just go on and on making new stuff for ever surely?
Like Kittyhawk with his wife, my wife tends to walk away from me with a "He's NOT with me" look on her face when I used to do that stuff.
I say "used to" because now, with all the public dumps for scraps of all types that we have here (not just skips), it is "streng verboten" to hook any stuff of any sort out of them. And many of them in supermarkets, etc, here are now built so that you'd need to be an Olympic high jumper to get inside! (I'm NOT BTW)!
While I can understand the economics of this approach, especially with scrap metals the price they are these days (not to mention sheet wooden goods) I do firmly feel that we're taking away the possibilities for youngsters to learn to repair rather than just dump stuff, AND overall, I wonder if we're doing any long-term favours for the environment? "We" cannot just go on and on making new stuff for ever surely?
