21 responses for this post

1. ali on Wednesday, August 13, 2008 at 9:13 am

   so weird. that’s happening here (in texas) too. our neighbor recently thanked us for having an uber barky dog (he’s a bassett…he can’t help it!!) b/c some of his copper was getting yanked and they ran halfway through b/c the dog wouldn’t shut up! and i thought he was on crack b/c who steals copper piping? apparently, people do.

2. freakgirl on Wednesday, August 13, 2008 at 9:22 am

   Well, copper is pretty valuable.
   http://www.kvbc.com/Global/story.asp?S=5109520

   My sister said she thinks the asswipes stopped partway through because their dog woke up and started barking.

3. chuck on Wednesday, August 13, 2008 at 9:30 am

   People also steal catalytic converters from under your car because of the precious metals inside. A-holes.

4. Dave on Wednesday, August 13, 2008 at 9:34 am

   Prices of metals went way up, and meth became the low-class drug of choice. Put the two together and you wind up with a lot of missing air conditioners and the like.

5. Joanne on Wednesday, August 13, 2008 at 11:06 am

   I wish that there were a way that you could only buy copper piping from a certified dealer or something. Last year, a local food pantry was robbed of all its copper piping and thousands of dollars of food was ruined. It’s crazy.

6. GeekBoy on Wednesday, August 13, 2008 at 11:40 am

   To my knowledge, it’s scrap dealers who are buying the copper — nobody’s buying it as piping, per se. And the thing is, there are plenty of legitimate copper pipe sales going on out there. Anybody who puts new plumbing in their home and swaps out copper with plastic has every right to get money for their scrap. It’s just a shame that the meth-addled had to latch onto this and make it something bad.

   I heard a similar story on the news not that long ago that people are also stealing manhole covers to sell as scrap. Which is not only annoying but dangerous.

   What’s next — is somebody going to mug me, and steal the fillings in my teeth?

7. Ellen on Wednesday, August 13, 2008 at 11:59 am

   Someone stole the copper gutters off a neighborhood church a couple of months ago. Bad karma.

8. chuck on Wednesday, August 13, 2008 at 12:02 pm

   GB - brusha, brusha, brusha!

9. Maggie on Wednesday, August 13, 2008 at 1:54 pm

   Question about the piping…is there exposed copper piping in your sister’s yard? I’m curious about how people are stealing this. All our piping is in the crawlspace under our house. You’d have to actually break into our house to steal it. With our winters, you can’t have any exposed piping. Is it common to have exposed piping in warm states?

10. freakgirl on Wednesday, August 13, 2008 at 2:13 pm

    I guess it is, Maggie — when I looked online, I noticed a lot of thefts in the warmer states. But we’ll have to wait for my sister to log on; I can’t remember exactly where the piping is. They didn’t break in, I know that.

11. maddie on Wednesday, August 13, 2008 at 2:31 pm

    With all of the half-finished and unsold brand new houses around here in SW Florida, they are seeing a lot of air conditioning units being stolen from the sides of houses. Just ripped right off. They are actually selling air conditioner locked protective cages because it happens so often. It’s unbelievable what people will steal.

    As far as the copper piping goes, in this part of Florida at least, we don’t have crawl spaces or basements usually. My pipes (which I just had to replace and put in plastic) start at the outside of the side of the house and go through my laundry room and up into the ceiling, coming down through the walls to go to each connection in the house. So, part of the pipe may be visible from the outside.

12. ali on Wednesday, August 13, 2008 at 2:55 pm

    ours isn’t covered, but it’s in a fenced in back yard. the fence is essentially a brick wall and the alley leading to it is so overgrown, AT&T wouldn’t rewire our phones until the city cut it back. and he’s in the middle of the street, so half way down the alley. my question is - why him? i mean, good, i’d rather it be him than me b/c i’m selfish like that, but you just wouldn’t see it unless you were climbing every fence….i dunno…weirdness.

13. El Gato on Wednesday, August 13, 2008 at 4:36 pm

    I’d heard there was a lot of metal theft here in urban Philly of late because prices had skyrocketed, but I’m surprised to hear this happened in the wilds of suburban New Jersey. I guess times are bad all over.

14. freakgirl on Wednesday, August 13, 2008 at 4:38 pm

    El Gato — my sister lives in Florida, actually.

15. cin on Wednesday, August 13, 2008 at 5:21 pm

    Our water system is on the side on the house in an outdoor ‘closet’ with no door. Protected from the elements but apparently not much else It’s apparently a common theft around here. Out of all the ‘what ifs’ I have come up with in my head over the years this one certainly did not cross my mind! We replaced the stolen ones with plastic piping. Hopefully they don’t come back for the one they missed!

16. El Gato on Wednesday, August 13, 2008 at 6:53 pm

    El Gato — my sister lives in Florida, actually.

    Ooops. Sorry. The same principle still applies though. The economy sucks all over. People are getting desperate.

17. Maggie on Wednesday, August 13, 2008 at 9:01 pm

    It’s so alien to me, the concept of pipes being on the outside!

18. GeekBoy on Thursday, August 14, 2008 at 8:32 am

    So the moral of the story is … If you have copper piping on the outside of your house, rip it out yourself now, sell it down at the scrap yard, and use the money to buy new plastic piping!

19. Rona on Thursday, August 14, 2008 at 10:45 am

    A few years ago, after Bush did something with some tarriff that made it very worthwile to theives to steal metal and export it, there was a news story that guardrails were being stolen, right off of major highways! If you drive on Rt 78 near Newark, you’ll see a bunch of sections still missing.

20. freakgirl on Thursday, August 14, 2008 at 10:50 am

    And they probably did it in broad daylight, while everyone drove by and ignored them.

21. Kerry on Friday, August 15, 2008 at 7:28 pm

    Yeah, foreclosures + meth + high cost of metals= guard those pipes, baby. When I put the house up for sale in Cleveland I let the insurance people know I’m not there anymore so if anyone steals my pipes I’ll be covered.

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