skip ratting!!

daisymini

daisymini

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Dont you just love skip ratting..!! On my way back from the butchers this morning i passed the bookies who are having a refurb, and in the skip was some lovely brand new hard wearing carpet ideal for my van conversion. So went in and asked and i now have all the carpeting i need for my van for free..!!!:wacko:
A lot of the van conversion has been done with skip ratted stuff and builders down the street donating board and wood from their refurbs...!!

Just wish i could have specified the colour as green doesnt really go with my colour scheme....:raofl:

Beggars cant be choosers...!!!
 
Excellent recycling, daisy! :D
Did you find any of my losing betting slips ground into the pile? They would have broken up the monotone a bit.

Well done, anyway.

sean rua.
 
sean rua said:
Excellent recycling, daisy! :D
Did you find any of my losing betting slips ground into the pile? They would have broken up the monotone a bit.

Well done, anyway.

sean rua.
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sadly not sean..:lol-053: but there some nice bar stools and other re cycling bits and bobs..!!
 
I just love getting stuff from skips. Got a lovely old wood mantelpiece that was in my house for years. Haven't done it lately but no qualms about it at all, We'll done Sue!
 
I was once having a rummage when a well dressed solicitor type of guy started going through the other side of the skip,when I said he didn't look like a typical skipper,he told me when he was astudent he found £300 in a pair of trousers thrown in a skip,and he can't pass one now without a quick poke about.

I once found a lovely wedding dress and some bridesmaids dresses in a skip. an interesting story there I bet ! kids loved them for dressing up
 
Just last week I found a metal framed ikea 'rock n roll' type sofa bed in a skip, the exact one I'd decided I couldn't justify spending £320 on! ..... Just need to find its mattress now though no doubt ikea will sell me one!

And no, the skip wasnt at ikea! There's a thought though!
 
Marcs said:
Just last week I found a metal framed ikea 'rock n roll' type sofa bed in a skip, the exact one I'd decided I couldn't justify spending £320 on! ..... Just need to find its mattress now though no doubt ikea will sell me one!

And no, the skip wasnt at ikea! There's a thought though!
Click to expand...

Ikea tend to put their stuff that should be in a skip into the Bargain Corner :lol-053:
 
well have seen piles of wood outside ikea broken furniture side nothing wrong with it just the odd panel with a chip missing in corner but big enough for what ineeded at time was at ikea buying dining tableas we needed a bigger one at the time so igot the shelves for nothing saved us few pounds at time dont bother now as i here and dont need any more furniture at the moment as ihave enough for one person
 
I skip-fished a complete, unmarked WC cistern & flush siphon that matched our faulty but out of production one. According to bar room solicitors it's illegal without permission, but whose permission ? - the skip owner/operator or the throw-awayer ?.
 
well thats where the legs came from for my bed in camper no repeat here lol
 
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I'm never sure of the legality of any of this, but, if I can see anybody nearby, I always ask for permission, and, if they say it's nothing to do with them ( usual reply) I tell them where I'll be if anybody wants the item back.

Maybe the main worry for most companies is, yet again, the health and safety aspect. None of them want a claim for injuries received "on their premises" from some skip rat. Perfectly understandable, but I always say I'll mooch about "at my own risk".

When the supermarket war was on, or, maybe just as a result of the recession, teams got sent in to gut places following closure, or, before the new folk could move in.
These guys didn't seem to care a damn, and it's amazing what folk chucked away. Ridiculous, really.

Not always great pickings, however.

I saw a gang move into a Co-op that had been closed. One bloke looked like the boss, so I approached him re a specific item ( old rubbishy plastic pipe, as it happens).
He didn't want to stop working or to speak. Didn't like the look of me, obviously.

Anyway, he went brushing past the first time with head down and a determined look on his face. On his way back, I managed to get my question in. Turned out he was one of those North Walians that can hardly manage the English language.
He still didn't stop, but blurted out in broken English :" Naw, naw, let it be! Keep away! Camera there, look." as he pointed up to an old security camera on the roof.

So I did what I was told.

Two days later, I was back. This day, not only had all the pipes gone off the walls, but somebody had knicked the old camera too! :)
And to top it all, the old boy's skip was still there and overflowing like an ice-cream cornet! There was as much rubbish around it as in it, and, through it all, I could still see the small piece of pipe that he got so alarmed about.

In conclusion, I suppose I can say:

folk are wasteful and throw thousands of pounds worth of valuable stuff away
and
folk can be very petty about material things, whenever they get the chance to go on a power-crazed ego-trip.

sean rua.
 
I knocked on the door of the house the skip was at but there was no answer despite several cars on the drive.

The sofa bed frame had been carefully taken apart into 3 more manageable sections and the nuts and bolts were left loosely done up where they fitted so I figured they appreciated what a waste it was to bin it.

Wouldn't have been in a skip if they wanted it though would it?

If it was yours then thanks :) i'm recycling it to fit in my camper.
 
I don't care if it's legal or not,if it's in a skip it's mine.saying that I was threatened once by a guy as I was pulling out some offcuts,even though ipointed out there'd be more room for his stuff,he wouldn't wear it.i hate waste
 
What about food skips at the back of supermarkets? Only ever seen it on tele but I think I'd go for it tho I know many wouldn't. But then again people get shock horrored at my attitude to sell by dates!
 
Loved your post Sean.

There is an incredible amount of waste and I'm the first one to dive in there :)

You'd be amazed at what people take to the local tip too!

I think it's criminal NOT to recycle stuff ;)

As for bar room solicitors with "I wouldn't do that if I were you"...... try stopping me, and here's 2-finger salute in appreciation of your wise words ;) :lol-053:
 
i'm sure I've mentioned this before,when we kept pigs I went round the supermarkets every Monday in a merc 207 that I would fill TWICE with perfectly good food.i used to grab the stuff for us and the pigs and lay the rest out in the barn and the locals would come round and get food for free,that as careful farmers,they'd never buythere was tons of it,4 packs of beer with one can dented,a tray of 24 HP sauce with one broken,100's of nearly out of date choc bars,slightly dented frying pans etc, but always masses of dairy products and bakery stuff.quite funny seeing the locals trying blue cheese for the first time and walking round chewing on a wheel of it ! or eating a 'con croysant'as they called them .I had over a hundred legs of lamb once where the freezer had failed,and a freezer full of magnums and cornettos etc that were still rock hard.the farmers loved them,and so did the pigs !
but as for legal-I've had confrontations with managers,i never asked of course,who threatened to call the police,and backed off when I threatened to call the newspapers !and I warned one guy about pouring bleach on stuff that if anyone got sick from eating food deliberately contaminated,he'd be liable,which may have been true !
 
Agreed. It is terrible to waste this stuff when people can really appreciate it.
 
When i moved into my house there was loads to throw out so i had a skip I filled it through the day and folks emptied it at night saved me fair bit in skips. Good luck to them,i just asked them not to make a mess as some of the dim wits did.

Now if i have anything of value iput it outside the house with a note free to a good home or of course free cycle.
 
I'm just passing time on here to try take my mind off my horseracing bets: I've one up, and it's doubled with another that runs later. The tension is a bggr, even after all these decades! Oh well, hit or bust, I suppose.

Regarding the pettiness of a lot of "skip managers": I guess that in many cases company policy is to protect their business at all costs. The last thing they want is some "competitor" snapping up all the perfectly good things they whang and then "undercutting" them.

I saw this one time I had a biggish contract to pin up a Do -it- All store.
Being there for several weeks, we got to see what went on. It seemed that, when Head Office gave them the wire, they'd have to sling certain items to make room for replacement stock.
After a while, lads used to snaffle items out of the skips - though we should have known something was on when we saw they had locked lids. One dude was helpful, he'd give us a chance to help ourselves before he locked up.
Then one day a kid was sent out with a huge f k off hammer. His role was to smash up everything in the skip till it was an unuseable mess! Company policy and orders from above, he said.
Still a terrible waste, by any measure, imo.

Now, why is it that some folk are so unconcerned about chucking away valuable items? I think one common excuse - and I see this a lot - is somebody, maybe a relative, has died ,and they just want the house cleared so that they can cash in on the bonanza of the house sale ( or, just so they can move in themselves).
Obviously, in the bigger scheme of things, all the crap and junk is just an impediment and hindrance, so they get blokes in to clear the lot willynilly.
A poor excuse for waste, but perhaps time is the most precious commodity, and what's a couple of hundred pounds compared to hundreds of thousands?

On the other hand, folk can come in the yard with some cherished old item and get quite upset when told to chuck it in the heavy metal or, even worse for them, in the general domestic.
Thing is, when you're dealing with crap, day in day out, you can't be bothered being sentimental. After a while, you get to know what something will make, and, based on this estimate, 'tis easy to see when something just isn't worth the hassle.

Anyway, I'll have to go now.
All the best and good hunting!

sean rua.
 
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