THIEF Hits Construction Site

[hunterridgefarm]

I am documenting my house building project in the Project section under "Land Clearing to House Building". We have been involved in the actual building of the house for the last few months and have had no problems.

I am about 500' off the road and out of sight of the highway. Well last night someone walked in and stole 3 large spools of wire and a level. The builder called me this morning to see if I had noticed anything missing over the weekend. I had spent most of the day there Sunday. I had not noticed anything missing. I remembered seeing the air compressor and level but paid no attention to the wire. So it must have happened Sunday night.

I went out at lunch today and walked around to see if there were any signs of where they had pulled off on the highway. Since the 3 spools was on a hand truck you would have thought they would have rolled the hand truck with the wire on it. But for some reason they removed the pins and took all three spools off the hand truck and I guess carried it out, and those spools are heavy. I found a set of foor prints going around my gate at the road. The chain had not been cut so I am guessing the backed up to the gate. The top of the ridge where the house is it is a steep grade I don't think one person would have made three tips, one trip walking up it will get the heart rate thumping. So it must have been more than one person. We could not see any tracks where they rolled the spools so they had to carry it.

I plan to talk to the guy who lives across from me this afternoon when he gets home. He has been good to tell me if he see anything out of the ordinary. I know several people that live around me and they are all good people and would let me know if they had seen anything. But whoever it was most likely came late at night.

They did not strip any wire off the studs and all of my wiring has been completed. The builder is responsible for the wire and he "said" it would not be charged to me.

Thsi really lights my fire and I am ready for war. But the builder said he had been hit a couple of times in the past and has never had anyone come back a second time.

I have a camper Icould pull to the building site but he suggested we wait and see since the sheet rock should be up by the middle of next week. And he will start taking everything with him when he shuts down in the afternoon.

I guess I am just venting here a little...this just makes me very angry! I be loading the pistols tonight and driving out late to see if I can catch someone.

I may just go ahead and pull the camper up there and stay the nights until everything can be locked up.

What do oyu think?

 

[Tig]

I had a camper onsite when I built and it usually had someone in it. The biggy is the windows and doors. I slept onsite after they were delivered. Once they were installed and I could lock the doors I rested easier.
My wife once saw a guy get picked up at the build across the street at 3 AM. He must have been dropped off earlier and prowled the building.
I say bring the camper and stay when you can. Now that they know what else is there they may come back with bolt cutters and a truck.

 

[ultrarunner]

I'm on the West Coast, but I would be concerned about a repeat... something about a thief always returns to the scene of the crime.

It's a real shame it is getting to the point where you've got to nail down everything and just about post a guard on construction sites.

Several months ago, I posted on TBN about getting an early AM Sunday call from the Hospital where I'm employed... thieves stole two water back flows and left the facility and it's patients without domestic water for several hours Sunday morning until I could get temp water restored.

As hard as it is... try to remain rational... don't want to read about you in the papers.

 

[hunterridgefarm]

I had a camper onsite when I built and it usually had someone in it. The biggy is the windows and doors. I slept onsite after they were delivered. Once they were installed and I could lock the doors I rested easier.
My wife once saw a guy get picked up at the build across the street at 3 AM. He must have been dropped off earlier and prowled the building.
I say bring the camper and stay when you can. Now that they know what else is there they may come back with bolt cutters and a truck.

We will be able to lock the doors once the sheet rock is up. The build site is 3 miles from where we live now so spending the night would not be a problem. The only problem is I need to go out of town for a couple of days but can put that off until we can lock.

 

[hunterridgefarm]

As hard as it is... try to remain rational... don't want to read about you in the papers.

That will be the hard part.

 

[RonMar]

You did file a police report right? You might also touch base with the local recyclers. Unless the thief is wiring a house, they will want to turn that wire into cash. Giving the hardest job to the laziest guy will result in the easiest way to do the work, which means that the spools may be delivered complete as removed from the site to the closest recycler. The shipping/purchase invoices for the wire may even have the lot numbers that are on the spools so it could be identified as yours or your contractors property. A strategically placed, well concealed game camera or two may also net some interesting photographs.

 

[drssg]

Our house is about 650' off the road and the place was swarming with crooks during the building process. The good news is that we haven't had trouble once the construction was done. There seems to be a group of people that make their "living" stealing stuff from construction sites.

Sleeping there wouldn't have done it at our place. Our builder had his generator stolen in broad daylight. He had just left the build site for a couple of hours to check on another site.

The big difference for us was installing a locked gate at the driveway. Due to the lay of our land, the driveway is the only practical way to get to the house. Even a quad runner would have a difficult time finding an alternate route. If you can eliminate the crook's "drive-up" access to the house, that will discourage most of them. These guys want to get in and out as quickly as possible.

Good luck.

 

[SnowRidge]

Ever think about planting a wildlife camera just off the drive? You might get a picture of them.

 

[_RaT_]

They just nailed a guy out here hauling a few tons of unstripped copper wire on his truck in the early moring hours. The construction site has been hit repeatedly. This time the greedy jerk got his due payback. Typical thief, a drug user.

 

[WBWI]

Copper theft is a big problem here as well. The local utility recently busted 2 guys stealing scrap copper from one of their lots. I was worried about my house during its recent construction but fortunately there were no problems. We had a lot of gawkers that "tresspassed" but none of them were thieves.