Frickin' frackin' thief!

[Joan.of.the.Arch]

I was just noticing that there seems to be next to nobody scrapping for metals in the alleys of this older part of our city this summer. During some of the Great Recession there were guys dressed in pressed khakis and pastel polo shirts, looking like they were hoping for their Best Buy or car sales jobs to call them back to work just any minute. They were daily patrolling the alleys in their nice trucks looking for enough scrap to help get by on. I guess jobs really have picked up, as I don't see these scrappers anymore.

But! Arrgh! Someone stole an aluminum downspout off my garage which sits at the alley's edge. Really. Just one of them; there were two, one on each side. I had been procrastinating reversing the direction of drainage so that I could fill rain barrels on the side of the garage that faces the house. If I'd already done that, I doubt I would have lost the downspout.

I have to look into some big rain barrels or connected systems, as in a half inch rain, my garage would drain 170 gallons of water. I'd be able to set them on a semi-shaded, existing concrete pad right by the garden. Any over flow can just go onto the garden, of course. Water service here is not expensive at all (unmetered, flat rate), but rainwater is a little better for the plants anyway.

Anyone here use rain barrels?

[MooseBucks]

Was the downspout connected and they stole it or it was laying next to the garage? Unmetered flat rate water for a house? Never heard of that...how much do you pay?

[Joan.of.the.Arch]

Yes, the downspout was attached to the garage. It was new about six years ago when we also had new siding put on the garage. The downspout was functioning, attached to the gutter. At the top there was just a friction hold, but along the course of the downspout there were two bands screwed into the wall.

Our water and trash pick-up are city services, billed together for $115/quarter. That covers yard waste and recycling pick up as well. I can leave the shower running all day long and do six rinses on my laundry if I want to, water the lawn every day, wash the car and fill a kiddie pool weekly --and the water would not cost any more. (Thank you, Old Man River.)

[rennigade]

Ugh...thats a bummer. Throw some screws in the top next time...would prevent this. Some people are animals.

[~bs]

change to plastic.

the sad part of this kind of **** is that they're making pennies selling it as scrap when it costs you 100x more to replace and fix. Like chronics that break your car window to steal a handful of change out of your ashtray.

[riverwed070707]

Unmetered water sounds amazing! I pay double just for having a corner lot because rainwater drains down 2 streets on my house instead of 1 it’s based on the amount of rain we get each month

[msomnipotent]

We have several scrappers drive through our neighborhood every night before trash pick up. They are getting bolder and bolder. We caught them trying to take our grill last month. If it was close to the curb or looked junky, I could understand. But we had it under the eave of our garage, at least 3 car lengths from the curb, it looks almost new, and we were grilling steaks on it at the moment. There seems to be more posts on our social site asking if anyone has seen their kids bikes after trash day, too.

Rain barrels bring in money, too. I would try to lock them up or at least put them behind a privacy screen. We use rain barrels at our cottage, but they are not allowed in our subdivision. Of course, I found this out after I spent good money on one.

[james.hendrickson]

Can you set up a camera? That way you'll have evidence if you need to report it to the police.

[Joan.of.the.Arch]

and we were grilling steaks on it at the moment. OMG.

Can you set up a camera? That way you'll have evidence if you need to report it to the police. Some people on my block have cameras on their garages already. But no one near me who might have caught this incident. I don't know if I'm ready to set up cameras. (Though I had garage vandalism before--window broken.)

change to plastic That's what I was thinking. I wonder if they hold up to sun very well.

Throw some screws in the top next time Yep. That should help.... Well, it rained last night, and I don't have even a temporary downspout up. I need to go out and see if there is gutter crud sticking to the wall of the garage now. Then I'm going to the hardware store!

Rain barrels bring in money, too. I would try to lock them up or at least put them behind a privacy screen. I had not thought of rain barrel theft. I do see lots of plastic barrels for sale on Craigslist, but they seem to be from commercial and agricultural sources. Where I would put them is under a big arbor built onto the house-facing side of the garage. Grapes grow up from one side, but I could plant something on the more visible side to hide the rain barrels. The third side is protected from view by my neighbor's fence.

Does anyone know if insurance companies consider rain barrels a hazard?

[bjl584]

My boss had some aluminum scaffolding stolen about 10 years ago during the Recession. Scrap metal was fetching a premium back then

[disneysteve]

Our office was broken into a few years ago and they stole all of the copper pipes in the basement. Thankfully, they had the courtesy to turn off the water so the building didn't flood, but we had to shut down for a few days until it was all repaired.

[Gailete]

We have several scrappers drive through our neighborhood every night before trash pick up. They are getting bolder and bolder. We caught them trying to take our grill last month. If it was close to the curb or looked junky, I could understand. But we had it under the eave of our garage, at least 3 car lengths from the curb, it looks almost new, and we were grilling steaks on it at the moment. There seems to be more posts on our social site asking if anyone has seen their kids bikes after trash day, too.

Rain barrels bring in money, too. I would try to lock them up or at least put them behind a privacy screen. We use rain barrels at our cottage, but they are not allowed in our subdivision. Of course, I found this out after I spent good money on one.

Perhaps the steaks were more appealing that the grill.

[Gailete]

Year ago my idiot ex, decided that he was going to make some money on scrap metal, so he unscrewed the metal from some kitchen chairs that were stored in the garage. I don't know how much those hollow tubes would have brought him, but I know we could have made more selling the whole chairs at a yard sale! He had done it before I knew what he was doing and could stop him.