romex to strip or not

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zcanyonboltz

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Any thoughts on stripping out scrap romex.... the price difference between thhn and romex is .35 cents a pound right now around here. If i strip it i lose the sheathing weight but also get the bare bright out. Just want to discuss a little thanks.
 
zcanyonboltz said:
Any thoughts on stripping out scrap romex.... the price difference between thhn and romex is .35 cents a pound right now around here. If i strip it i lose the sheathing weight but also get the bare bright out. Just want to discuss a little thanks.
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Money is money. Most every scrap yard will pay more if get that insulation/sheathing off that wire and if you are going to take that extra step, make sure that you do strip the insulation-burning it off brings to mind a meth head and those scrap dealers will pay even more for a clean product.
 
Yea I'm weighing the time involved vs the payoff leaning towards not stripping it. If I did burn it I wonder if the price would be less since the wire would no longer be bare "bright", I'm thinking the scrap yard burns it anyway though? Talk about meth heads lol I knew a guy that stripped the romex and then the thhn down to bare. I do sort the thhn and bare into their own barrels. Called today and they said the price of copper is dropping fast.
 
zcanyonboltz said:
Yea I'm weighing the time involved vs the payoff leaning towards not stripping it. If I did burn it I wonder if the price would be less since the wire would no longer be bare "bright", I'm thinking the scrap yard burns it anyway though? Talk about meth heads lol I knew a guy that stripped the romex and then the thhn down to bare. I do sort the thhn and bare into their own barrels. Called today and they said the price of copper is dropping fast.
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Scrap yards do not burn the insulation off of the wire unless they are in India, Pakistan, Mexico, China, etc. They have machines that shred it to small bits then separate the plastic from the copper using screens, vibrators, fans, etc.
 
If you had a machine that strips nm -- they do make them it may be worth it but you would have to go thru at least 2 stages and then deal with all the jacket material. I never strip it....not worth my time.
 
Dennis Alwon said:
If you had a machine that strips nm -- they do make them it may be worth it but you would have to go thru at least 2 stages and then deal with all the jacket material. I never strip it....not worth my time.
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One needs to consider how much cable needs to be stripped before such a machine pays for itself also.

There is a reason they pay less for insulated copper - they have to absorb the cost for them to strip it, but the scrap yard handles enough it is more worth the investment for stripping machines or I believe in many cases they shred it into fine pieces and then just blowing air through what is left removes the insulation pieces from the copper pieces.
 
zcanyonboltz said:


2.55 per pound for THHN?, or Bare Bright? Bare Bright is 2.11 here right now. If THHN is 2.55 where you are thats pretty good bare must be worth a lot! The scrap yard said to bring it in quick if I want it gone because the price is dropping daily.
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Usually insulated single conductor/THHN is a grade above romex, so just stripping off the outer jacket, and getting the bonus bare ground may be worth it depending on what you figure your time is worth. I really cant imagine stripping off the individual conductors though.

"They are selling like hot cakes, better get em now before they're gone!" (Most used sales line ever)
 
zcanyonboltz said:
Thats pretty cool even a machine for just getting the wire out of the romex sheathing would be nice. No joke I know a guy that stripped hundreds of pounds of solid #14 up to #8 THHN by hand with a pair of Klein strippers.
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Until I retired I worked on heavy power equipment, stripping out transformer tails put a few pennies in our pockets.

It came down to the size of the cable as to do we strip it. There’s a bad habit in the UK of setting fire to cable to burn the insulation off. It’s illegal due to our pollution laws, it doesn’t stop it happening.

Bright copper obviously fetches the best price
Burnt copper about 25% of bright
Un-stripped small stuff you can’t give away


Cable theft is now a major problem. I lost supply to one of our plants in the middle of the night. I checked the 3.3KV breaker feeding the OH line, it was out on both O/L and E/F. I sent my mate to the plants substation and closed the breaker. It held, but when I radioed my mate “nothing here”
Whoever it was had chucked a chain over the lines and ½ a mile was missing.
How the hell they did it I don’t know, they were damned quick off the mark.
 
I strip the wire in traffic jams or when I'm waiting for the inspector. Sometimes just hanging out in the back yard enjoying a beverage, waiting for the steak to cook.

I concentrate on getting the jacket off all the romex first. Then separate the ground (if there is one, a lot of the older stuff I remove from houses have no ground). Then I strip the conductors biggest to smallest. If I don't get to it all and I want to bring it in, I've maximized as much as possible.

For awhile it was roughly $3 for bare copper, $2 for insulated conductors, and $1 for NM still in the sheath cable. Considering the price of romex at the big box stores I'm sure it's gone down a bit since January.
 
jaylectricity said:
I strip the wire in traffic jams or when I'm waiting for the inspector. Sometimes just hanging out in the back yard enjoying a beverage, waiting for the steak to cook.

I concentrate on getting the jacket off all the romex first. Then separate the ground (if there is one, a lot of the older stuff I remove from houses have no ground). Then I strip the conductors biggest to smallest. If I don't get to it all and I want to bring it in, I've maximized as much as possible.

For awhile it was roughly $3 for bare copper, $2 for insulated conductors, and $1 for NM still in the sheath cable. Considering the price of romex at the big box stores I'm sure it's gone down a bit since January.
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Yeah, if you've gt the time and the patience, I say go for it. One thing about newer nm is that the jacket tears fairly easily and provided the cable is fairly straight, you can grip that bare egc and pull against the sheathing, splitting it open. A lot of the older stuff (colonial, durasheath, hatflex etc.) is a bear-your better slicing that jacket off.

You can then cut the black and white (or red) into 8 inch or so sections and box it. And you can strip those short pieces by gripping the end of one of them with your kleins while stripping the insulation off with your strippers in your other hand. It sounds like (and it is) work, but once you get the hang of it, it isn't that bad.
 
Have you actually calculated the weight of NM or UF compared to the weight of copper in it. Without that figure you do not really know how much extra money you might be getting for stripping it.
 
Sometimes, depending on the length, you can just grab the wires with a pair of needle nose and pull them out of the sheath. If you do strip it, don't let it sit around to long, it doesn't take long for it to tarnish and here they don't consider that clean. Ticked me off when I took in a hundred pounds or so of stripped and got beat down on the price.
 
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