copper

The ReStore had a salvage contract for a house in Elkhart that was going to be torn down today. The three story riverfront house had been built 70 or more years ago and it was built quite well. All the doors were solid mahogany, the roof was slate, and the guttering and flashing was copper.

For most of our salvage operations we usually take the doors, cabinets, and what we think we can sell from the bathrooms and leave the rest to be disposed of by the contractor. Personally I'd like to see a lot less of these houses sent to the landfill but we don't have the capacity to properly process more basic materials at the moment. After we got what we thought was worthwhile I asked the ReStore manager if I could act as a subcontractor and salvage what we could of the copper on the roof if I paid him 25% of what I got. He agreed. Scrap sheet copper is worth $1.30 a pound. My dad and I got 420 pounds of it off the roof in about 6 hours spread over Saturday and Sunday afternoon.

We now try to get as much copper as we can out of houses.