A few years back, one of our journeymen, Curtis, was on a basement renovation, replacing an old three-inch copper vent stack that ran out through the sidewall of the house with new ABS pipe. Straightforward work. He finished the job, and it looked good. What happened next taught me something about copper theft in London Ontario I hadn’t thought about before, and it started with an accusation, not a crime.
A couple of weeks later, the contractor called me. The homeowner was upset, they thought we’d stolen the copper stack we cut out. I understood exactly why they thought that. So I offered a simple trade, I’d credit them the scrap value of the copper against the additional ABS work Curtis had done that wasn’t part of the original quote. When we did the math, they owed us far more for that extra work than the two feet of three inch copper was ever worth in scrap. Fair on both sides, and it resolved cleanly.
Why We Don’t Sort Scrap for Homeowners Who Want It Themselves
That story is also the reason we leave material behind for a homeowner if they want to keep it and scrap it themselves. But if we’re the ones hauling it away, we’re not going to sort and cut it up nicely so someone else can just load it into their car. If we take it, we take it, and we recycle it properly ourselves.
What “Properly” Actually Means at Triton
When copper and brass come out of a job, they get separated into two different bins back at our shop, and our guys break them down by hand before we deliver them for recycling. Honestly, it’s close to a break-even after we pay for that labour, we’re not making real money on it. What extra comes out of it goes toward small things for the team, drinks, Gatorade, breakfast, the little stuff that makes a shop feel like a decent place to work.
Cast iron and old water heaters get scrapped too, sometimes we drop them at the yard ourselves if we’re driving past, other times our scrap contact picks them up and we don’t see a cent from that. Old furnaces sometimes get broken down further so we can pull out and recycle the individual components properly. Even cardboard gets handled thoughtfully, we share a garbage bin with other tenants at our building, so we try not to overload it, cardboard gets flattened and kept out of that bin wherever we can.
Not everything on a job site has a clean recycling path yet. Plastic pipe, ABS and PEX off cuts, mostly still end up in the garbage, because the infrastructure to recycle them properly doesn’t really exist yet where we are. If that changes, we’ll be the first ones looking at how to do it better. But we’re not going to pretend otherwise just to sound good.
Copper Theft in London Ontario Isn’t Victimless
Copper has real value, and that’s exactly why it gets stolen. Scrap pricing sites like Scrap Price Today track clean copper regularly trading at several dollars a pound in Canada, though the exact number swings by the day, the buyer, and the grade, check more than one source and you’ll get more than one answer. Even at the lower end of that range, it’s obvious why copper draws thieves.
We’ve been called out to repipe homes in London that sat vacant and got hit by vandals who broke in, smashed open walls, and cut copper pipe and wire straight out of the structure. It’s a genuine disaster to repair, and it makes no sense on paper. A house doesn’t hold that much copper by weight, so the actual payout for all that risk, breaking and entering, tearing open finished walls, hauling it out, is small money for a lot of exposure. And frankly, it makes me angry, because it’s not the thief who pays for it in the end. It’s the homeowner and their insurance company who eat the cost of repiping an entire house, and incidents like this are part of why insurance premiums climb for everybody. Someone’s chasing a few hundred dollars of scrap and leaving behind a five figure repair bill and higher premiums for people who had nothing to do with it.
That’s part of why we treat our own scrap handling the way we do, deliberately, properly, and without cutting corners. Materials have value, and how you handle that value says something about how you run a business.
If your home has copper pipe and you’re not sure how exposed or accessible it is, especially in a vacant property, it’s worth a walk through. Triton offers a full range of plumbing services across London, and you can book online in a couple of minutes.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why does copper theft happen in London Ontario. Copper has real resale value at scrap yards, which makes exposed or unprotected copper pipe and wiring a target, especially in vacant or unoccupied homes where nobody will notice someone breaking in.
What does Triton do with the copper and brass removed from a job. We separate copper and brass into two bins at our shop, break them down by hand, and deliver them for recycling ourselves rather than leaving that material lying around.
Can homeowners keep and scrap their own copper pipe. Yes. If you want to keep the material we remove, we’ll leave it for you. We just won’t sort and cut it up for you, that part’s on you if you want the scrap value yourself.
Does copper theft actually raise insurance costs for homeowners. It contributes to it. Repiping a vandalized home is expensive, and costs like that get spread across policyholders over time, which is part of why premiums climb even for homeowners who were never targeted themselves.
Is plastic pipe like ABS or PEX recycled the same way as copper. Not currently. Unlike metal, there’s no real recycling infrastructure for ABS or PEX off cuts in our area right now, so that material typically ends up in the regular waste stream.
Aron Oretan is the owner of Triton Home Service, a Licensed Red Seal Plumber and Steamfitter with 26 years in the trade, serving London, St. Thomas, and Oxford County.
