Nice find down the tip.

[Sean Kelly]

I was getting rid of some rubbish down my local tip yesterday. I spotted a mini step down transformer. I did a quick look around and popped it into my boot. Not expecting it to work I got home and plugged it in. I attached a 110v wet cutter to it and hey presto, it worked! £58 at Screwfix.

Anyone else find useful tools down the tip?

 

[Gazzer]

Oh no, wait until Hugo (Cornish Crofter) sees this thread :lol:


Warning Warning Skip Rat Alert !!!!!

 

[mikethetile]

nice one mate

 

[Leatherface]

Oh no, wait until Hugo (Cornish Crofter) sees this thread :lol:


Warning Warning Skip Rat Alert !!!!!

Next trip, Sat night, back of Saisburys or Waitrose, see what food you can find in the bins for Sunday lunch !!! :lol:

 

[Sean Kelly]

Next trip, Sat night, back of Saisburys or Waitrose, see what food you can find in the bins for Sunday lunch !!! :lol:

I'd rather go to Tesco, buy the 'yellow label' items and get clubcard points too!!

 

[cornish_crofter]

OI! I resemble that comment!

What have I found down the tip lately?

Spanners, A few misc tools.

Best buy was a cast iron fire surround a couple of years ago. Bought for £10 from them and sold on e bay for £25.

Just got given via Freecycle, a rubble shute. Anyone who's ever had to chuck rubble out of a 1st floor window into a skip will know how useful they can be. It's long enough to reach from our 1st floor windows to a skip or trailer outside.

 

[Leatherface]

Skip rats everywhere, when I moved into my house six years ago we had a few skips whilst renovating ! One particular week I noticed a plumber working six doors down, when I came home from work one day later a mysterious blue sink & toilet had appeared in my skip !
24 hours later it had vanished ???? Must have been big rats

 

[Prem Tiler]

omg!:yikes:

 

[Gazzer]

Skip rats everywhere, when I moved into my house six years ago we had a few skips whilst renovating ! One particular week I noticed a plumber working six doors down, when I came home from work one day later a mysterious blue sink & toilet had appeared in my skip !
24 hours later it had vanished ???? Must have been big rats

They took the skip ??? :yikes::yikes::yikes:

 

[cornish_crofter]

I am ashamed to say that I did take a few bits out of the rubbish whilst on a job before Christmas.

The builder had spoiled a couple of wall braces and chucked them. I salvaged them and then actually used one of them on the job myself to retain some ducting behind a stud wall.

I also took:

Taps, to fit for customers on a tight budget. I give them the taps but they pay to have them fitted.
Brass reducers to enable me to connect up some tails for some taps I've got
A few other bits that go in the 'might find useful' pile

 

[White Room]

New a guy when working in london with skips outside propertys he would be like a ferret, he now has a dentist chair in his front room, WHY:yikes:

 

[cornish_crofter]

Oddly enough I had the same reputation at my place of work as I do on the forum. Can't think why :lol:

There was a time when my workplace were very wasteful. They would dispose of all sorts of stuff, from Dexion shelving to storage bins. I actually managed to sort a lot of people out near me with stuff. I've still got a workbench and a trolley plus a few other bits. They used to chuck out the most fantastic well made shipping boxes that converted very nicely into toy boxes or blanket boxes with a stain and some stencilling. A few of those got distributed to our friends etc.

Once they had cleared out an old test set that was being disposed of that was build on a platform. The platform was made of 20mm ply that originally had some floor covering of sorts on it, judging by the epoxy adhesive residue left on one side. I had just got a new shed with no floor for a knockdown price from a local DIY store. So I built the floor out of these two pieces of ply with the adhesive facing down and treated the top surface. I bet it's still there now.

A friend of mine managed to source some 9x2 timbers that were being chucked out at his place of work. I used it to support some inadequate 3x2 rafters holding up some clay tiles.

 

[Sean Kelly]

That's the good thing about working on site. There is so much stuff that gets thrown away. I've got loads of wood and screws, and even a 20kg bag of rapid flex. However, getting it back from Westfield on the train was a nightmare....never again. Being a skip rat is very rewarding. I don't think I'll ever become a 'freegan' like what Leatherface suggested.........unless of course I don't get a tiling job within the next couple of months.

 

[cornish_crofter]

There is a shocking statistic that some 13% of materials delivered to the average site gets chucked straight into the skip!

I have salvaged brand new welsh slate out of a skip before now along with other stuff. The public toilets in the village were being refurbished and it seems that at the end of the job they just chucked the surplus away. It seems its cheaper than carting it back to the depot

 

[devonmark]

there a plenty of people that make a good living from rumaging through skips,,,,, once saw a bloke take a 3 seater settee out of a skip, he put it on his pushbike and walked away with it, saw him about 45 mins later about 2.5 miles from where he had takin it from....

 

[Colour Republic]

There is a shocking statistic that some 13% of materials delivered to the average site gets chucked straight into the skip!

I have salvaged brand new welsh slate out of a skip before now along with other stuff. The public toilets in the village were being refurbished and it seems that at the end of the job they just chucked the surplus away. It seems its cheaper than carting it back to the depot

I can relate to this, years ago I was on a site in Three Bridges where they had just built 30 new town houses. It was the end of the job and I was doing the general snagging. At the end of the snagging they asked me to clear 4 full size containers into skips! 1 was full of guttering, sofit and facia, 1 of them was full of brand new kitchens, 1 was full of bathrooms and the other 1 of doors, flooring, paint etc. etc. I asked if I could maybe make the skips a bit lighter but the site manager said If I wanted anything i'd have to take it under the cover of darkness and he would turn a blind eye as it was policy not to let tradesmen take materials off site even after a job, although he agreed it was madness it was still cheaper to bin it then to move it to a different site and most new sites would have a different spec anyway. I'd hate to think the value of what I chucked away that day:yikes:

 

[cornish_crofter]

Forgot about this one....

Recently found 2 boxes of KAI white tiles at the tip. Paid £1.50 for the lot. Not the best of tiles I grant you but they do sell them in B&Q, and they are straight and consistent.

Sorting my rubbish out this evening and found that I had acquired another 1/2 box of these, from the same place FOC so I've put them all together. These will probably do a cheap kitchen splashback for someone......

 

[Leatherface]

Agree too much waste in today's society. Just got a silly picture in my head of Cornish getting rid of the van and pushing one of these around instead, looking for "Treasure"

 

[faithhealer]

Forgot about this one....

Recently found 2 boxes of KAI white tiles at the tip. Paid £1.50 for the lot. Not the best of tiles I grant you but they do sell them in B&Q, and they are straight and consistent.

Sorting my rubbish out this evening and found that I had acquired another 1/2 box of these, from the same place FOC so I've put them all together. These will probably do a cheap kitchen splashback for someone......

I bet you can't get in your garage CC lol

 

[cornish_crofter]

That's part of my problem. I'm trying to clear out a part of my house that we are going to be converting.