Freecycle

I've been registered with Freecycle, the website where you can give stuff away for free, and obviously also collect things for free, for a while. Todate I've not got around to using it, as anything I've wanted to get rid of has either ended up on Ebay or hasn't been worth trying to pass on other than via the dump.

If you read early Hillside posts you'll know that we had to buy a replacement oil tank. We went for a second-hand steel one as we thought it was the more environmentally friendly option. Now that the oil fired boiler has gone, and with the wood pellet boiler due to be ordered, we've been trying to get rid of the tank. It turns out that nobody wants to buy a second-hand steel tank, they'd rather have plastic ones. And with the scrap metal market having collapsed recently due to the crash in metal prices we've not been able to give it away. It looked like we were going to have to pay someone to get rid of it, especially as the oil contamination limits how such a tank can be disposed.

A couple of Irish guys turned up last weekend and, after asking, took away some of our scrap metal for free but they wanted £20 to get rid of the tank. We didn't pay them - who knows if the tank would've ended up in a hedge somewhere!

Hence Freecycle. As a last ditch attempt I posted the tank on Freecycle, and was pleased that we got an almost immediate response from somebody who wanted it for their biodiesel manufacture, but it turned out to be the wrong size for them. Another post on Freecycle and I got a reply from Garry who said he could take it off our hands, which he did this morning.

And after spending a few attempts trying to get rid of the tank on Freecycle I'm hooked - with the build budget getting more challenging every day freebies are looking more appealing. Just put a request in for 100 paving slabs!