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The Basement and Scrap Metal

October 2nd, 2013 at 03:15 pm

As most all of you know, we renovated and moved into my family's farm house four years ago. We completely renovated the main living area, and cleaned up a lot of brush and overgrowth outside before we moved in. And, we have been working at renovating the outside of the house since.

We've done nearly nothing in the basement. When my grandparents lived there, they called it the cellar. It's dark and damp and musty and dusty. Really, the only thing we've added new down there is a water pump and water softener. We've removed some of the major clutter, but have really done nothing of great significance to clean it up.

We had the insulation guy come last week to apply spray foam to the basement walls. The cost was $800 for an inch and a half of foam. The presumed insulation factor is R11, and we hope to save about 20% on heating costs, or about $44 per month, based on last year's heating costs.

When the spray foam guy was done, he suggested that we paint the walls, to help preserve the newly applied foam. We did that this weekend. We also cleaned trash and clutter.

Some of the trash was scrap metal. So, I took yet another trip to the scrap yard. I estimate I had 80-100 pounds of scrap in the load. I say "estimate" because the scale at the scrap yard was not working.

I drove my pickup up to the gate, as usual. I drove my pickup on to the scale, as usual. After the guy at the scale gave me the thumbs up, I drove to the scrap pile, threw off my scrap, and drove back around to the scale, as usual.

After he had weighed me empty, the guy at the scale gave me my slip, so I could take it up to the office to get paid. I always look at the weigh slip before I drive off, because I'm always curious about how much the scrap weighed. The "full" weight was exactly the same as the "empty" weight. I studied the numbers again to make sure my eyes weren't deceiving me, and sure enough - they were exactly the same.

I got out of my pickup, and showed the guy the slip, and told him the weights were the same. He studied it, asked me to drive off so he could re-tare the scale, and asked me to drive back on. Something was clearly wrong with the scale.

The guy said he would mark me down for 300 pounds of scrap. I said - It wasn't that much. He said - How about 200 pounds? I said - Sounds good.

The 200 pounds was worth $16. I could have gotten $24, if I had agreed to the 300 pounds, but in reality I had $6 or $8 worth of scrap. But, it was their scale that was broken.

3 Responses to “The Basement and Scrap Metal”

  1. TashaC. Says:
    1380736805

    ummm you moved 100-200 POUNDS of metal for $16? I know every bit helps but you need to be really strong to be able to move that much into your truck and again out of your truck.

  2. Bob B. Says:
    1380737626

    1 - small, bite sized pieces
    2 - the scrap yard is about five minutes away
    3 - It's trash that we otherwise would have to pay to have removed from our property

    Really, it's a habit I've gotten in to. There's quite a bit of scrap metal around our place that keeps turning up. My best estimate is that over the past five years, since we began renovating, I've delivered 8 tons of scrap metal - with the bulk at the beginning of our renovation project - 5 tons between September and October 2008.

    We live at an old farm yard, and bits and pieces of old machinery turn up from time to time - grass has overgrown an old harrow, or a grain drill that has rotted out, and has become buried - things like that. And I'm cleaning out the old blacksmith shop - slowly.

    The six dollars here and 30 dollars there is no biggie - again the main reason is to rid the place of trash, and not have to pay for it.

  3. TashaC. Says:
    1380741080

    Still its impressive to hear that your lugging around hundreds of pounds of metal. I get worn out lugging my vacuum cleaner up to the second story!

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