How can I reuse or recycle bits of plumbing pipes?

copper-pipeAs I mentioned the other week, we currently doing some work on our new house before moving in – the stuff that is far, far easier to do when the house is empty.

One of the biggest jobs has been taking down a 1970s style cemented-up crazy-paving stone wall in the dining room – it made the room look like a tiny dark cave. We’ve kept the better condition stones for using in the paved bit of the garden and the rest will form the foundation under where our chickens will live.

For some reason though, someone, at some point, thought it would be a great idea to put loads of pipes behind and embedded in the cement and actually across the open hole of the fireplace so we’ve had to have them moved around into more sensible places. The old pipes have now been removed and are lying in small sections in the garden.

They look like copper pipes so they *might* clean up and there *might* be enough of them to make something like this wonderful copper pipe pan rack. I also could keep the pipes and try using them to protect my veggies next year – there seems to be some disagreement about whether or not copper at the border keeps slugs out of raised beds but if it’s there and not doing anything else, it might be worth a try.

What else could I do with the bits though? I realise there is a high value to scrap copper and the like at the moment but I would rather reuse it around the home/garden instead of selling it for scrap, have it shipped off halfway around the world then brought back to again, so we can buy it again in another shape.

So any suggestions?

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6 Responses to “How can I reuse or recycle bits of plumbing pipes?”


  1. Bobbie says:

    Be sure to keep a variety of fittings for plumbing repair work.

  2. Instead of moving the pipes here and there while we change our house, its better to buy a new one for ever which is strong enough. Some technicians can do it right away.

  3. Alice says:

    Clean them up a bit and give them to a plumber.

    They’ll be keen ‘cos copper fittings are expensive now due to the high price of copper, they’ll use them as they are rather than send them around the world or buy new ones which have gone around the world, and they’ll be perfect for jobs in houses where you can see the pipes as part of the decor, i.e. where you wouldn’t want to use plastic ones instead.

    Don’t leave them lying around outside if they’re remotely likely to be stolen – all the taps on my allotment were vandalised by someone stealing the copper fittings for scrap!

  4. Dave Decker says:

    R U kiddin’??? Copper! pipes!…Fittings! I’ll take em and utilize the H*** out of them! Gonna have ta buy a bunch for the biodiesel/methanol project anyways…I can probably use some of them some where…Anything i can’t can be melted down in my kiln and reused /rescued for something or another…can be used in many areas…copper is not cheap anymore! Anything that gets ‘recycled’ usually ends up in China or India-reused and sent back to us in one form or another…not a big deal…but why not ‘cut out the middleman’!

  5. louisa says:

    I guess I should have said that my father-not-in-law, who is doing a lot of the work for us, is a master recycler and he’ll certainly be salvaging the bits that will be of use again in the future — the pipes were apparently a mix of metric and imperial sizes and he only had the right bits for replacing the imperial stuff because he’s been collecting and hoarding pipes and fittings for years. :)

  6. kathleen says:

    look up steampunk its a rocketing new trend me and my husband have tried moding a few items into steampunk and the parts like copper pipes and fittings are pricey if you aren’t up to or intrested in art projects yourself maybe you have an artist friend or local sculpter you can give/sell them to.



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