Wednesday's when the local dump shop opens each week, I almost drove past the turn off today while working but went in anyway. By midday it's mostly picked clean after a morning opening event similar to the Running of the Bulls through the streets of Pamploma Italy. This time I spot some interesting stuff in some crates: it turns out to be a pile of larger bore plumbing fittings of what looks to be mostly red brass/leaded gunmetal. I took it home and weighed it: 70 kilos including containers or about 150lbs. By the time it's melted down I should have a decent stack of artisanal ingots piled up. I rang Pete, he said he pays $14 AUD per kilo delivered, I paid $0.50 per kilo, probably 60 cents once cleaned up. Edit: contents of the first crate after disassembly, a lot is tarnished but otherwise unused hardware.
Good score. I see some backflow prevention devices in there. Looks like Wilkins/Zurn double checks. Made for potable water, should be good quality.
They did have double spring loaded plastic diaphragms in them. As far as I can tell it's all red brass: pinker than a freshly filed piece of brass. The big ball valve has green corrosion on the chrome plated ball from dust, moisture and sitting with that side up for a long time.
Once upon a time, I was a Certified Backflow Prevention Tester. Whenever we had a device that was just a wee bit shy of passing (<2.5 p.s.i.g.) we would stretch the #1 spring a little & retest. Not an approved method, but worked most of the time. Not sure what else they could be used for, but always felt like they could be reused somewhere, somehow. Recycling & reuse is a bad habit for me.
Nice haul! I had one of those backflow thingys hooked up to my sprinkler system. After that SOB froze and broke twice on me, I ripped it's ass out. Was that a bad thing?
Everything looks to be in good condition, just dusty from sitting a while. After melting this stuff two things will happen: Someone will tell me "I would have given you X hundred dollars for those!" and the other is that I'll realize I could have used some item in the pile after all. Ahh well, I have this furnace to debug, so I may even convert them to ingot form for later use. Apart from the turntable casting and maybe a ball bearing spindle, I don't have anything I need to cast in bronze at the moment.
Its only an issue if your local water czar discovers the device is missing. They're supposed to be tested annually, but if the water dept never sends you a notice about testing, they probably don't even know it existed. Landscape contractors put them in because they are supposed to, but they probably never file the paperwork. Never underestimate the laziness of a human being. I would love to get my hands on a few of them. Quality metal. I should visit my nearby scrap yards.
Be sure to check for silicon bronze valve seats. Some valves have them. Silicon and lead are bad actors when they get together in a melt. Richard
Is there any quick way to tell the difference?, I suppose it there's a separate seat insert, it has to be segregated. Two of the valves have a grey plastic seat, looks like a fibreglass composite, breaks like it too. Actually I'm having doubts that LG2 would be used for potable water hardware, it's the alloy of choice for valve castings but 5% lead content would be an issue. This hardware has got to be 20 years old if it's a day judging by corrosion and tarnish. I'll have to research it some more.....pity there's no local XRF gun to be sure. Edit: looks like leaded bronzes were used up until recent times with bismuth substituting for lead in replacement alloys: https://www.copper.org/environment/lifecycle/trends/plumbing_alloys.html
The seats in the backflow presenters I used to service & test were a polymer like the diaphragm part that you removed (pushed by the stainless springs.) Those were a bitch to replace. They were threaded in, not super deep, and the notches for the tool (proprietary tool) would break. Good times trying to convince the client that repair was no longer an option, & full replacement of the device was in order (at 5x the original repair estimate.) I don't miss that .
