I have been doing pretty well for a while. The last few weeks a couple of incidents occurred that quickly reminded me of my old streak of bad luck.
A few months ago I purchased the property across the street from my business. The property was considered one lot but it was divided and i purchased half. The building on the property was put up recently, the old one was destroyed in the hurricane 2 years ago. The building did not have any power in it yet. I had an electrician come in and add all the electrical components from the mete box (no meter) all the breakers,, 3 phase witing, on off switch, etc. It cost me a small fortune. When I caller Florida power and light to install a meter and hook up the power they came out and said i needed an inspection since the property was being divided (I knew this but thought maybe......). Sure enough they wouldn't do it. I hired and electrical engineer to pull the permits, do the drawings required etc. 4 weeks have gone by. On Monday the guy called and said he just got the permit in his hands and the following day they would be hooking up the power.
I walk across the street and find the cover of the breaker box in the middle of the lot. i go over to where all the electrical boxes are and guess what, GONE! All of the 300M wire, breakers, switches, etc all gone!! I'm sure one of the neighborhood shopping cart pushers got $62 by selling my thousands of dollars worth of copper wire etc!
Wouldn't you love to catch these guys??!!

****ing thieves...


Sorry to hear man.

I use to be an electritian and have to say it does not surprise me a bit..its not your bad luck, its just the way the world is these days..I have had many houses..I lost count that I wired up one day and came in the next and they were stripped clean...Some projects we had to start hiring security guards to monitor. Its just as much these freakin scrap yards fault as it is the thieves..they give em a place to take the **** and no questions asked. If they would crack down on that and ask more questions then you would see a SLIGHT crack down on it..

it was really bad around here for awhile, actually had someone cut thru the fence and roll almost a full spool away, then the cops got tough and started doing stings at scrap yards, put a few outta buisness..nobodies gonna steal if they cant unload. it was so bad people were comming home from work to find their siding gone, they sledge hammered thru the concrete wall of my friends auto shop and took cats...
last time I heard rustling out back I put 5 rounds of 7.62 into the ground...havent been botherd since.

I was working for a wireless company and we had to start wiring the ground bars at the towers with alarm contacts, that way at least we knew when they came up missing so they could get replaced. Always seemed like the ones in the hood got hit the most . My suggestion was to wire up a few decoy bars right out of the breaker box, at least make them work for it if they are going to steal it.

Gino I had the same thin happen at my place in Maine. It sucks. I refuse to wire up the house untill it is 100% weather tight. Then I am putting in a security system with camera's. There are companies that specialize in camera systems for places that are under construction. My brother does very high end camera systems for my customers. We have busted a few people steeling things at places that we have done.

I can't believe this but at the entrance to my NEW JERSEY house development there was a bronze statue of a bird worth about $20,000.I found out that the 2 young thieves stole it,cut it up,and sold it to a scrap yard located about a mile away from where it was stolen.I found out that they were caught because one of the parents turned them in after reading about it in the paper and finding some unsold parts of the bird in the family garage.I do have some good news though,the parts were recovered and can be welded or be brazed back together and is covered by our homeowners association insurance policy.I hope the insurance company goes after them for payment because our legal system will do nothing.

My bro-in-law owns a good sized GC company in KS. He was working a railroad project & these really technical small pieces of railroad iron/bridge connectors kept coming up missing.
The local scrappies kept getting these things for about a week. They would pay the thief & then put the pieces in a separate pile. Law enforcement was aware of the theft & recovered all the pieces & prosecuted the guys taking them.
Several school sports complexes in DFW have been stripped of all the copper wiring. A new stretch of highway lighting got hit 5 times. It was live but that didn't stop them.
Now these guys are touring new, high end homes & taking all the appliances often times ruining the floors because they drag the equipment out to the garage to load in a truck.
The nice thing about Texas is you can shoot a thief graveyard dead in your house, no questions asked.

I do construction inspections and these people will steal anything!!! One guy had his window broken and his building permits stolen off the inside of the glass. WTF? I hate thieves!!! One of them a**holes even stole the paper plate off my little work car when I bought it. I called the police and they said no biggie, just call the dealership and get another. Nice.

Back in the seventies when copper prices soared,people were coming home from work to find someone had stolen all of their plumbing lines from under the house. The only time I ever use a helper down here is when I am working downtown ,just to watch my tools.