Hi from New Jersey

Hello everyone, im from new jersey and have scrapped metal many times. Growing up as a kid in my father owned a green house and we used to recycle everything there for cash. Times are hard right now, i recently lost my job and im doing everything i can to make ends meet. In our town, there is a huge abandoned factory that is scheduled for demolition. I wrote our township a letter and obtained permission to salvage anything i can find from it. I looked inside the building today, there seems to be alot of illegal salvaging already. However, there is a fair amount of wires hanging lose, and since wires contain copper i thought this would be a good option to start with. There is also a water heater. Does that contain any valuable metal? and also, besides the obvious steel, there are big metal duct system things pulled down from the ceiling, that seem to have motors in them . The motors look to be maybe 8 inch diameter. Can anyone tell me the best way to make optimal usage of all of this? as ive never attempted something of this scale before. Thank you all so much in advvance!

Alex, welcome. if its metal and you have permission to take it, take everything that you can get your hands on. there are plenty of posts on here about maximising your profits, read them at night and during the day go to the site and pull out as much as you can, never know when someone will change their mind (this is jersey ) and want to give it to a company with union laborers and charge the township.
if its just plain light metal take it directly to the yard, if its got a motor on it or contains any copper brass or aluminum, hold it back till you have time to tear it down.
Brandon

Good advice^^^

Welcome to the Forum, Alex. Are there any light fixtures like this: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Micks-...22913031140583 ? The base and ballasts are loaded with copper and the case is cast aluminum.

Yea, i do have permission. And as for metal yard/recycling centers i called mine and they said they pay 15 cents a pound for steel. Is that reasonable? And is 58 cents a pound for aluminum good? And what about the wire? is that worth cutting and scrapping? And does the water heater have any valuable metal init? Thank youu

And no unfortunately the lights are large lightbulbs. The ceilings are tiles though, do you think there is any worthwhile things up in the ceiling? like wires?

Prices sound good and, yes, strip the wire if it's solid core wire. Might have a copper core in the water heater.

ie: behind the tiles - likely.

ok sounds good everyone! im really excited for tomorrow now! one last question if someone could answer! how many pounds of wire do you think i could find? thank you!

alex, where are you at in jersey?
if you are close enough to me i will show ya what to take

well unfortunately no one really knows my town but do you know where princeton is? thats about a 25 minute drive from where im at. i could also post pictures of the place if anyone is interested

im not that far from princeton, what town are you in, i dont know where all the towns in this state are but i do know how to find google on my computer

Flagtown New Jersey. Maybe i could post pics of the stuff in the building tomorrow and someone such as yourself could tell me whether the wire is worth the time? Tommorrow i was just gonna haul out the heavier iron and steel, the only thing i really am unsure if i want to undertake is the wiring and water heater

I could actually post a pic now of some of the metal from the wires if you wanted? i just remembered i brought back a little bit to look it up and see if it was valuable

ok, yeah that is a little out of the way for me, but do take pics of lighting, wiring, water heater and anything else that you have questions about. just remember read read read the posts on here, wish i would have found this site when i started doing this.

post em

ok, give me just w minute and ill post them. thank you! i really appreciate it!

how exactly can i post the file? i downloaded it from my phone to my computer but it doesnt seem to let me attach it unless it is a picture from the internet?

that one i cant help you with, i do think someone posted how to do it thou

You have to use photobucket. There is a really good thread on here about it.

thank you, i figured it out! heres the pic. I put my hand in for reference to size, some of the copper wires are thick, some are skinny like the other one you can see, but have many skinny pieceshttp://img804.imageshack.us/img804/4...0105223706.jpg