Gotta love freebees

[zrock]

Just picked up a sthil fs45 weed eater for nothing. Owner said the line kept coming off. Got it home and noticed a small gap in the spool. Took it apart cleaned it noticing that tap feature did not seem to work properly causing everything to be loose. Fiddled with it for a min and realized that it was not locked properly. Put it back togeather and went and done the back yard... no issues... unit looks almost new..
Perfect timing as my cordless sthil quit charging and will probably be a month before I see it back from warranty

Sent from my SM-G950W using Tapatalk

 

[peakbagger]

Very few people repair stuff these days, if you have basic repair skills and tools its surprising what can be had for free. The biggest challenge is intercepting it before it goes to the landfill. My town has a policy in place that there is no "dump picking" from the local transfer station. I see a lot of good stuff that could be repaired or reused that I am not allowed to pick. (the town employees seem to be exempt from this policy.)

 

[SeanBB]

Very few people repair stuff these days, if you have basic repair skills and tools its surprising what can be had for free. The biggest challenge is intercepting it before it goes to the landfill. My town has a policy in place that there is no "dump picking" from the local transfer station. I see a lot of good stuff that could be repaired or reused that I am not allowed to pick. (the town employees seem to be exempt from this policy.)

Do you have a local 'Freecycle' group?
We have them here where if you have something you want to get rid of you post a description and sometimes pictures on the group's website and anyone who is interested can email you. Saves a trip to the landfill and everybody wins.

https://www.freecycle.org/browse/US/New Hampshire

 

[semipro]

My town has a policy in place that there is no "dump picking" from the local transfer station

This drives me crazy. They do the same here. I don't understand the motivation other than maybe liability avoidance. and that seems pretty lame to me when compared to the potential benefits of less consumption and landfill use.

 

[Ashful]

Do you have a local 'Freecycle' group?
We have them here where if you have something you want to get rid of you post a description and sometimes pictures on the group's website and anyone who is interested can email you. Saves a trip to the landfill and everybody wins.

https://www.freecycle.org/browse/US/New Hampshire

I like the idea, but question your justification. Where do you live, that there are no trash haulers, and you have to haul refuse to the landfill on your own? I have never experienced that, I don’t even know where our local landfill is.

These days, I just keep a pile of anything worth more than a few dollars, and donate it to a local church when they do their fundraiser yard sales. Less in the landfill, good for the church who in-turn uses that money for charity work, convenient for me.

 

[zrock]

ya our town just switched over to a transfer station type dump. i always used to spend hours at the dump picking through the scrap piles and even the general pile if things were accessible. i used to pull lots of tools and electronics out fix and sell. Built a greenhouse out of the wood i pulled out. The dump attendant used to pull out all the good stuff and sell it, pulled all the recyclables and copper wire and such. He showed me the chqs from this and he made a good living of the extra stuff and he never touched his pay chq. The dump in the next town still does this and always have good items up for sale..

I dont think the owner ever read the manual that came with it.. i think he was even using motor oil for the mix as iv never seen mix oil the same color of motor oil and it smoked bad until my mix started making it through the carb. Since all my stuff is sthil i just go out and buy the 6pk of sthil mix and know its always right and a 6pk is cheap anyway.

 

[peakbagger]

No local freecycle and even if there was, its far easier to make a pick at the transfer station. Its a political issue in my town, every employee and department has "turf" and if they get involved with things like managing the recycling of goods, when budget cutting time rolls around inevitably these nice things do become things that can be cut. The strange thing is its small town but the voters insist on weekly trash pickup that costs far more than staffing a transfer station.

One of the town selectmen is a fan of fixing stuff and even he got on the bandwagon that the town could not allow picking as it was potential liability. Of course at some point he showed me the HS Tarm boiler that the town crew dropped off that had been left at the transfer station. The problem is what starts out as letting good items get diverted for repair is it can turn into scrapping where folks are breaking equipment apart with sledgehammers to get the copper out. They make mess and when they get hurt the town ends up having to defend itself. The other issue is this a free "fix" for hoarders that leave the transfer station with far more than they bring until the point where they run out of room and eventually becomes an issue for the town when the hoarder has to move out and property is valueless. Ultimately the town needs to clean out the mess and its potentially costly but becomes a public nuisance. The town north of us has a family of hoarders that move around town buying cheap lots that they fill up with junk until the town takes them to court and eventually under the risk of fines they move off one lot and move to another. Its cost that town 10s if not hundreds of thousands to deal with the ongoing issue.

One of the local towns does not do pickup so everyone has to go to the transfer station. Its a rural bedroom town that doesnt even have gas station or store so the only meeting place is the transfer station. Its open one night per week for the antisocial folks and all day Saturday. They call it "dump and donuts" as there a interior space with coffee pot and donuts where folks hang out for hours. Its well known that the unofficial deliberative session for the annual town meeting is dump and donuts. Plenty of folks go there for the social aspects and many are voluntary assistants that keep an eye out on folks to make sure that only the right recycling goes in the right bin. They set aside good stuff and try to find it a home.

 

[semipro]

Do you have a local 'Freecycle' group?
We have them here where if you have something you want to get rid of you post a description and sometimes pictures on the group's website and anyone who is interested can email you. Saves a trip to the landfill and everybody wins.

https://www.freecycle.org/browse/US/New Hampshire

Craigslist has a "Free" area and "curb alerts" there are common for this sort of thing.

 

[peakbagger]

I do place some value on my time and gas burned. I have a "small hoard" of stuff but try not to get it out of control although some may argue I am past that point. I must admit I am a woodaholic and my inventory of rough cut hardwood boards and exceptional pine boards and timbers is on tthe edge of a hoard. I rarely go to garage or estate sales as its way to easy to buy something "just in case". Sure I may have "missed out" on lots of things that I might need in the future, but as my friends aunt used to comment when her elderly husband brought home "valuable stuff", "bob that sure will look good at the estate auction". Ended up he passed and then she passed soon after and the daughters called an estate auction firm that had a badly attended auction and most went out the door for pennies on a dollar. Anyone who has even watched American Pickers will realize they walk past and pick through tons of worthless junk to find the few items that may be of value to a very limited collectors market. The only reason they are on the road is the income from the TV show.

I also just went through cleaning up my parents long term house for sale a few years ago and despite them being pretty diligent at getting rid of stuff I still made more than a few "dump runs" to my home town which is 90 miles away as their town had no such thing as a transfer station. If it didn't fit in the special curbside bin I had to hire a private contractor to haul and dispose of it. I also realize society is changing, my rural area is cleaning out and the stuff I have which is of value to me is probably not going to be worth much to a millennial 20 years from now.

I consider free listings as generally not worth my time, if its any good someone has gotten to it before hand or its not as described. Sure folks talk about their "great scores" they get but just like lottery tickets and horseraces they rarely talk about how many bad scores and wasted runs they made before they made the great score. If on the other hand I see something good at transfer station that I am stopping by anyhow there isn't a lot of wasted time or effort.

 

[begreen]

Got a Honda powered, Troy-Bilt walk behind mower that way last year. It was advertised on one of the local freecycle networks. The lady said it wouldn't shut off, so she just closed the fuel petcock and let it run until out of gas. The mower was in fresh tune, clean oil and even the blade was sharpened. I got it home, took off the front cowl and found the stop wire off the terminal. Plugged it back on the terminal and it has been great since.

 

[begreen]

I like the idea, but question your justification. Where do you live, that there are no trash haulers, and you have to haul refuse to the landfill on your own? I have never experienced that, I don’t even know where our local landfill is.

We have a local freecycle community too. They are nationwide and common in rural areas. Locally less than 50% use the refuse hauling service. Most folks take their stuff to the transfer station. (Our landfill was capped about 20 yrs ago.) We do this too as our garbage needs are tiny, less than a can a month, so a collection service doesn't make sense for us. People also drop off stuff at a locally run thrift store that donates its profits to help local causes that are health related.

Up on Lopez Island they have to pay for everything related to waste so they have become super organized and have a fantastic Take it or leave it shop that processes about 3500 lbs of items every week. All run by volunteers. I was really impressed with how well organized the system is and there were some great items available for anyone that needed them. No charge. Their recycling operation was amazing too. All run by volunteers.


PS: lf you search in your area you will find a freecycle network like this:
https://groups.freecycle.org/group/HilltownTownshipPA/posts/all