SELL SURPLUS BARE COPPER AND GROUNDING WIRE

Bare copper is the conductor behind every grounding electrode system: the conductor from the service to the rod, plate or building steel, the bonding jumpers across water and gas piping, the ground ring around a structure, and the equipment grounds that tie a distribution section together. It carries no load current in normal operation, which is why it is usually specified bare and handled as a commodity conductor rather than a circuit wire.

It is also the material most often left over. A grounding run is short and the coil is not: a contractor who needs forty feet buys a hundred, then puts the remainder in the gang box. Multiply that across a year of service work, add the coils released when a plant standard changes from #2 to 2/0, and a shelf in the corner of the shop fills with bare copper nobody has counted.

What we buy

• Soft-drawn bare copper — annealed, flexible, the usual choice for grounding electrode conductors and bonding jumpers.
• Hard-drawn bare copper — stiffer temper used where the conductor needs mechanical strength, including ground ring and overhead bonding work.
• Solid and stranded — solid from #14 upward, stranded in #8 and larger, including 250 and 500 kcmil stock.
• Tinned copper — tin-coated conductor specified where corrosion or a specific environment calls for it.
• Grounding and bonding sizes — #14 through 4/0, plus the larger kcmil sizes used for service and substation grounding.
• Coils, spools and cut lengths — factory coils with tags, opened coils, and loose lengths with known footage.

How to read a bare copper coil

There is no jacket print to read, so identification depends on the tag, the temper, the finish and an honest measurement:

Condition and length

Bare copper does not expire. Surface oxidation is normal, and a coil that has dulled to brown in a humid shop is the same conductor underneath. What matters is whether the metal is intact, whether the length is real, and whether the coil is one continuous piece. A hundred feet of #4 in four cut pieces is a different item from a hundred feet on one coil, at the same weight.

• Factory coils with the mill or distributor tag attached
• Cut lengths of 20 ft or more, measured rather than estimated
• Tinned copper spools from industrial or coastal stock
• 4/0 and 250 kcmil grounding conductor from service or substation work
• Mixed-gauge lots from a single shop cleanout

We decline short cutoffs, wire stripped out after installation, corroded conductor with strand loss, and any coil spliced or twisted together from odds and ends. Clean scrap has a value of its own, but it is a different transaction from reusable grounding stock, and mixing the two in one lot makes the good material harder to place.

What to photograph

1. The whole coil or spool, with something for scale so the diameter reads.
2. The tag or label, if there is one, including any footage or weight marking.
3. A close view of the conductor end, showing solid or stranded construction and the temper.
4. The surface finish, to show bare versus tinned and the oxidation.
5. Any damage, kink or splice, photographed rather than described.

Bare copper surplus in Washington, DC and Maryland

Maryland is where the larger lots come from. Industrial plants in Baltimore and Hagerstown re-ground equipment after a reconfiguration, water and wastewater work releases heavy kcmil grounding conductor, institutional and campus projects in Montgomery and Howard counties clear stock when a standard is revised, and demolition contractors end up with coils that were never installed. A single coil is rarely worth a trip; a pallet of them is.