Gas pipes been stolen

[marty359]

Unbelievable I have a rental property and the night before a new tenant moves in some low life nicked 25m of 28mm copper pipe running down the side of the house

£125 of copper pipe and £50 mates rates labour to get it up and running again all for the sake of about a tenners worth of scrap

I've now painted it yellow to reduce the scrap value even more, apparantly a police officer is assigned just to these thefts as it's so common. So if you have an external gas pipe consider painting it.

 

[markjay]

Sorry to hear this.

A neighbour had his gas meter stolen by metal theives. Luckily they were professional and capped-off the pipes. Also luckily for my neighbour the meter is the property of the gas company who replaced it free of charge. But he was without heating for a couple of days.

 

[MancMike]

Scum! Grr...

Sorry, I don't understand how painting it yellow reduces the value of the copper?

 

[tanuie]

I built a house for this guy who lived on site in a caravan and once the plumbers had fitted all of the copper pipes, he nicked the whole lot and blamed it on thieves. Talk about some front!

 

[marty359]

No damage to the meter as they isolated it with the shut off valve, still takes some balls though as there must of been quite a volume of gas left in the pipe over that amount of length and they didn't use pipe cutters either just yanked it off.

I painted it as bright copper is worth much more than painted.

 

[balge]

Scum! Grr...

Sorry, I don't understand how painting it yellow reduces the value of the copper?

They have to burn it off I believe

 

[noogieman]

wow, so they steal copper plates in UK too?
i thought this was only a lowlife isolated business in Sweden.

 

[shadrack]

i had exactly the same on my rental, ive got some guards i made over all the low level pipework, and if they bring ladders there more than welcome to it

 

[v8dve]

Scum! Grr...

Sorry, I don't understand how painting it yellow reduces the value of the copper?

I don't think painting it makes any difference to scrap value. Painting it yellow makes it look like the plastic gas pipe they use underground which might make it less opportunistic to steal.

 

[geraldrobins]

If it happens again, and I hope it doesn't, replace it with steel pipe. Steel pipe is generally used for apartment gas risers.

 

[Druk]

Subbies came to renew our gas pipe recently and were intent on running a length of copper up the outside garage wall. I refused them permission unless it was done in steel. That went as far as head office but they eventually relented when I said I would rather go all electric than have external copper.

 

[Piff]

Happened on properties near my fathers a few years ago. He painted his black to look like iron piping.