We buy surplus electrical cable in East Austin

Between East 6th and the airport there is a band of small-bay warehouses and older industrial sheds that were built for the trades and are now becoming offices, kitchens and studios. The electrical systems in them were added to, patched and extended for forty years.

When a demolition crew opens a wall, all of that arrives at once: old TW and RHW building wire next to newer THHN, MC and tray. A lot like that is not reviewed as one material. It is reviewed after somebody separates it, and that separation can happen in your yard or on our deck.

Forty years of wiring in one demolition pile

TW and RHW insulation is the tell for the oldest work in these buildings. It is stiff, it cracks when it is bent cold, and it usually comes out with the conduit still attached. None of that disqualifies it, but it changes how the copper is recovered.

Newer THHN, MC and tray cable sit in the same pile and should be pulled out of it. A length of MC with a clean jacket and a readable print is reviewed as cable. The same aluminum armor flattened by a demo hammer is not.

Separating copper from aluminum first

Mixed metal is the single reason a lot gets a slow answer. Aluminum building wire and aluminum tray cable look close to copper under forty years of dust, and a magnet tells you nothing about either. Sort by conductor before you photograph.

Copper and aluminum are reviewed on different terms because the recovery paths differ. Once they are in separate piles, each one can be described in a line or two, and the whole lot moves through review in one pass instead of three.

Small lots, trailer courts and cut lengths

A single pallet behind a food trailer court is worth a look. We have taken lots that fit in the back of a pickup and lots that needed a flatbed, and the size of the pile is not what decides whether a buyer reviews it.

Cut lengths from conduit pulls are reviewed as recovery, not as new cable. A pull that came out of a half-inch conduit in eight-foot pieces has no tag and no reel, so it is measured, weighed and treated as conductor rather than as a reel of THHN.

The corridor runs from the older street grid around East 5th and East 6th out to Airport Boulevard and the airfield, with Springdale cutting across it. The buildings are low, the lots are deep, and most of them have a roll-up door facing an alley or a shared drive.

That layout is why these lots are easy to load and hard to sort. There is room for a truck but no room for a laydown, so material tends to be stacked where it fell. Photographs taken before anything is moved are more useful than a tidy pile photographed later.