Raped curbside sets

[Reece]

I read that in New York they rip the living and breathing copper right out of the walls and heating pipes in tenements. In new construction, the contractors paint the copper pipe black in the hopes that nobody will steal it "thinking" it's iron. They weld bars across the entrance doors so they can't steal the appliances on new construction. Law of the jungle.

[AUdubon5425]

I almost forgot - thieves stripped the copper wiring from a newly completed 2-mile road a few years ago - they ripped out all the wiring for the freestanding streetlights. While the circuits were hot.

Of course, the road was a shortcut through the woods to the back end of a VERY large subdivision that has turned into a ghetto, so I guess I wasn't totally surprised.

[peverett]

I was in Oklahoma recently and saw a item on the news that homebuilders there do not install the air conditioners in new houses untill someone is ready to move in. Theives make off with them otherwise.

[Carmine]

Yes... Welcome to the new third-world America where we scrounge through the debris of prior generations of prosperity so that we can sell the raw materials to more technologically advanced nations. If we're lucky, the finished goods will return to the hands of the ever-shrinking middle class, and the cycle shall continue until all wealth is exhausted.

[zenithfan1]

Sad but true.

[zenith2134]

Yep, redistribution and all that. it is sad indeed.

[holmesuser01]

Someone snatched my central air conditioner condenser last summer and left the case sitting there. The unit was in a fairly hidden place. It happened when I was out of town, and the neighbor, who lives 10 feet from where it sat didnt hear a thing.

When I replaced it, I moved it to the back of the house. It's more out in the open, now.

I hate how brazen people are becoming! It's like "I want to take what you have, and you cant do anything about it!!"

[ctc17]

I thought maybe they were after the metals in the crt guns. They are now encouraging recycling light bulbs and they even have bins in front of Home Depot.

After the few ounces of copper in the yoke....thats desperate!

[Jeffhs]

Originally Posted by AUdubon5425

I almost forgot - thieves stripped the copper wiring from a newly completed 2-mile road a few years ago - they ripped out all the wiring for the freestanding streetlights. While the circuits were hot.

How did they do it without being electrocuted?

[Jeffhs]

I guess we're fairly lucky here in my small town of 3215 population as I haven't seen any ruined TVs (or any televisions, period) here, on the curbs or otherwise, in years. The last time I saw a junked TV in this neighborhood was about eight years ago. It was a 1978-vintage RCA Colortrak 25" console, all in one piece. Haven't seen anything like it here since, although now that TV is 100-percent digital I had expected to see CRT sets being trashed left and right since June 12 last year--but it hasn't happened yet.

Another thing I haven't seen much of--yet, anyway--is trashed flat-panel sets, although there may not be that many such sets in this town yet, almost nine months after the DTV transition. Perhaps a lot of folks around here are using converter boxes with their old reliable analog sets and have no intention of getting a FP set anytime soon; however, I am surprised I haven't seen more FPs in the trash here (if the truth be known, I haven't seen any such sets on the curbs yet) with broken screens since the end of football season, or sets that have been smashed accidentally when they fell off of or were knocked off their stands. My RCA XL-100 analog table set, which weighs something on the order of 50 pounds, has fallen off its stand once since I've had it (ten years), the only damage being a bent shadow mask in the CRT. I was able to repair it in five minutes with a couple of sweeps across the screen with an old speaker magnet; the set has worked flawlessly, with an excellent picture, ever since. Had this been a flat-panel set, however, it would likely have been ruined the second it hit the floor, despite the fact that the floors in my apartment are carpeted.

The foregoing is only one of several reasons I am in no hurry to replace my TVs with flat panels--which I refuse to do as long as the old sets work as well as they do. The older analog sets were more durable and will take much more abuse than today's flimsily-built flat panels. Strike the screen of any recent-vintage or older analog set and you'll get away with it most of the time; try the same thing with an FP and the set will be made into an instant pile of junk. The fact that flat-panel TVs, in particular the Chinese and Korean off-brands (Vizio, Haier, et al.) no one ever heard of until very recently, do not last nearly as long as the older analog CRT sets did bothers me as well, but that's material for another thread.

Breaking the necks off CRTs and throwing rocks at the screens of otherwise restorable televisions is nothing new. By the '90s this was fairly common in the Cleveland suburb where I used to live, but since I moved here I've only seen two TVs in the trash, the 25" Colortrak I described above and one 1980s-vintage RCA 12" portable. I did see two large stereo consoles in front of a house just down the street from my apartment about three years ago (one was a Morse Electrophonic, the other a GE, IIRC). The stereos seemed to be in excellent shape from the looks of the cabinets (no scratches, doodles or other destruction that I could see), so I guess if there are any copper thieves in this town they are steering clear of these. Stereo consoles, even solid-state ones, have transformers with copper wire in the windings, but they probably aren't as desirable as TV yokes; the latter, after all, have much more (larger gauge) wire in them so they will fetch more money than the small-gauge wire in transformers.

[ha1156w]

Here in north TX, they've been stealing the wiring between live streetlights by hooking a truck to the cable and pulling it all out, a half mile at a time. They've even hit the lights along freeways. Lots of dark neigborhoods.

The neighbor across the alley from me was renovating post flood (attic mounted water heater leaked, molding up all the walls) and someone stole his copper sink from his kitchen!

We've even had an instance of a substation that got its inch-thick live wiring stolen. The guys know what they're doing to avoid electrocution and have professional tools to do it.

[Reece]

These ruffians should be taken out and summarily shot. Just my humble opinion, thank you. If you don't want to live by the rules of decency and society, then get out of it.

[vinljnkie]

This discussion keeps reminding me of this video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pWBJiW0Xpo

[PioneerGuy75]

Originally Posted by vinljnkie

This discussion keeps reminding me of this video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pWBJiW0Xpo

[andy]

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