Posted on 12/05/2007 8:43:44 AM PST by sulu
LOL!
Doesn't the grounding rod protect against electrical shocks, like through GFIs? Sounds like murder in the making.
Internal house wiring is copper in virtually all cases. Cable TV coax cables, which don’t have to carry any current to speak of, have been aluminum for a while. Perhaps the center conductor is copper, thinner than a pencil lead.
Practice Alchemy: fight copper theft with lead.
Maybe it could be worse if you turn them off? Dunno. I don’t like cities and I don’t know why they still exist, given that we no long need population concentrations for industry, remote working, and what not.
Me, I live in the middle of nowhere. No street lights. Gets really dark at night. Sometimes you can see the milky way.
-—IMHO, most of the “moly” stocks are ripoffs sold on the Canadian penny stock market—here’s another link to the real thing—
—http://www.mineweb.com/mineweb/view/mineweb/en/page36?oid=41337&sn=Detail
Happens all the time in North Minneapolis, too.
With all the vacant houses, thieves from the neighborhood come in and rip out copper piping and stuff.
Several houses have blown up due to morons doing this. There’s now even a black market for catalytic converters.(for the platinum). Pity the fool who has to work that hard to score a crack rock.
“Get rid of the street lights.”
But blackouts are a time of increased crime, no?
Maybe the crime would be even higher without the lights.
Maybe you were being sarcastic, if so, sorry.
You mean like the Compton Copper Clipper Caper?....
Bienvenido a tu nuevo país.
First need to establish that the statement above is true. Is there even a correlation, not to mention a causation?
I remember a few years back that South Africa had a series of public service advertisements to educate the public on how disruptive such copper theft is.
You got it right: this is a 3rd world crime.
Next thing you know folks will be tapping pipelines to carry off gasoline in buckets like they do in Nigeria.
The typical response, of course, is to blame illegals. Thing is, most illegals aren't going to steal stuff because they have a lot to lose if the are caught and deported. They pay the coyotes thousands of dollars to drop them off in the middle of the desert.
The biggest thieves in America are.... (drum roll) That's right! Tweakers! The people that you don't want to have drugs, so you make them illegal, but they manage to get them anyway! Illegal drugs are expensive. So, tweakers finance their expensive habits by stealing copper wire. This is no big surprise. What is surprising is that people can't figure this out right away, so they blame immigrants for the problems caused by their neighbors' kids, who were born here.
http://www.google.com/products?scoring=p&q=8'+copper+steel+grounding+rodThe good ones are copper alloy, and can cost $100+ [don't know how that translates into wholesale copper costs, though - maybe $40 or $50 resale value?]:
http://www.google.com/products?scoring=p&q=8'+copper+alloy+grounding+rodAnyway, if a thief could consistently steal 8 or 10 of the good ones each day, then he would be "livin' large".
And unless you caught him in the act, you'd never know it, because a visual inspection would indicate that you still had a grounding rod at the base of your electrical box.
Thanks for the advice, and the link!
Exactly.
At a minimum, don't be surprised if the electronic components in your house keep getting fried every time a thunderstorm passes through the neighborhood.
No. California has had several blackouts, brownouts whatever, recently and no, there was no increase in crime. Unless you can show me a recent link showing otherwise. In fact, California's crime has dropped rather dramatically.
Again, I'd bet the cost of street lighting in residential neighborhoods in this country has cost 25 plus billion in tax dollars. Yet all the cars have headlights, and 99 percent of people have porch lights or yard lights. Your being swindled by the government.
Ya see, I don't rely on government to protect me or provide my light. I've installed motion detector lights at my property. They don't burn 365 nights a year like government street lights. They only come on when motion is detected, and they work real good.
I browsed a few news stories that seem to back your claim.
I was thinking NY-1977 i.e. Night of Terror.
The 2003 blackout was mild in comparison it has been reported.
The stories from the UK seem to be pretty bad though-arson and robbery, ect.
To be clear, street lights along highways and downtown commercial areas are mostly legitimate IMO.
My beef is with the tens of millions of street lights in residential neighborhoods, burning 365 nights a year. I just think it's ridiculous, a waste of energy, and tax paid dollars. Everyone on in my area has porch lights or motion detectors anyway. I just don't see the need to light up the streets of residential areas.
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