Health Gazelle: Copper

Copper

Copper is antimicrobial: It kills micro-organisms on contact. I mentioned this in my blog back in February and have been continuing to do research and add copper things to my lifestyle. We have been using copper pot scrubbers for some time now. ("Chore Boys" brand is what my local grocery store happens to carry.) I have always hated sponges, brillo pads, you name it. When I found out copper is antimicrobial, I finally understood why we liked copper pot scrubbers but not anything else.

Since learning this interesting tidbit, we have bought a copper paper towel holder and copper canisters from Target. The paper towel holder helps keep our paper towels cleaner, which has brought down expenses and improved the overall cleanliness of our home. We use paper towels a lot to wipe down surfaces with diet tonic water, peroxide and (more recently) distilled water. So having cleaner paper towels helps raise the bar on cleanliness for a great many things. We also sometimes stick paper money or other small items underneath the copper paper towel holder to kill stuff on them. The largest of our canisters holds flour. The next size is being used as a "bread box" for the flat bread we have been cooking. The second to the smallest has our teabags. The smallest has our back-up Chore Boy pot scrubbers. It also sits on the counter where we leave dirty dishes and we move it around to help kill stuff on that counter. We are going through fewer ziploc bags and the kitchen is generally cleaner. In the long run, this will definitely save us money.

On the down side, copper is quite pricey. I bought from Target in part because they had the best prices I could find. (I found one site with a slightly lower price for the canisters. Naturally, they were sold out. Since I bought mine, even Target increased their price for these canisters.) I have fantasies of someday having copper kitchen counters and a home with a copper roof. But I will have to make some serious money before anything like that happens. I did find a do-it-yourself discussion board where folks had installed their own copper kitchen countertops. I liked doing the fixer-upper thing back when I owned a home. So that gives me encouragement that maybe copper countertops aren't a completely unreasonable thing to hope for.

I have been looking for some kind of copper sheeting for several weeks. I was unable to find anything that looked useful on craft sites and home improvement sites. Industrial sites generally sell huge amounts in sizes I don't need and for a price I cannot afford. I finally found a source today -- OnlineMetals.com -- and promptly ordered the following items:

Sample Pack: This is $7.50 and I will get 5 samples of different weights of copper sheet. It will give me a better idea of what I am ordering in the future and at 4"x4" I think the pieces will be a handy size for experimental uses around the home.
Copper Foil: I got the smallest size they have (12" x 25" - $3.94). I want this for my laptop. My laptop is pretty disgusting these days in spite of being wiped down with peroxide and diet tonic water several times a day. I am concerned about using liquid cleaners so frequently on it. We recently put two Chore Boys and a copper canister lid on the keyboard while we went grocery shopping. We were very impressed with the results. So I want to be able to improve on that. The price is right and it seems to me it should be lightweight and pliable enough for our purposes.
Copper Sheet: I bought a one-foot-by-three-foot sheet of this. (12" x 36" - $27.04) Our plan is to put this underneath our clothes rack. The dripping onto the carpet has created a sizable mold and mildew stain. (Yes, my landlord will think we are vandals and charge us big bucks when we move out. It's still cheaper than the typical cost of health care for people with CF doing conventional treatments.) This routinely gets bad enough that it interferes with our sleep. We also find that high levels of mold keep the apartment more humid, which just encourages even more mold to grow. This effect is so noticeable that we have found that our clothes dry faster when we keep the mold under control. This had turned into a crisis yet again and I had to leave work three hours early today because I wasn't feeling well and I needed the time to come home and resolve this problem. We have been going round and round about what to do for about 18 months. Tonight, I have throw-away aluminum oven drip-pans on the floor under our clothes rack with salt sprinkled in them to kill anything, plus our usual baking soda boxes -- and waiting with baited breathe for the copper sheeting.

(Under "Interior Design", Online Metals even has copper tile. I don't have any use for it yet but I'm happy to see it there and wanted to share.)

I plan on updating this page after I get the items and have used them a bit. In the mean time, I was so happy to find it I promptly signed up for their affiliate program. They ship via UPS, our favorite shipping method. My oldest son said that ordering copper from them was "the best Christmas ever", nevermind that it's June. (He also said "I love copper. I think I will marry it" -- very high praise for this resource since that is not the kind of thing he ever says.)

Today has been a very good day, in spite of starting out rather crappy.

17 June 2009

This page has only been up a day and a half and I am already updating it. Why is that? Well, I ended up ranting at my kids about the amount of time I searched high and low for some kind of copper sheeting. They had no idea I had spent so many hours looking for some kind of source for copper. They had been baffled by my uncharacteristic enthusiasm when we found OnlineMetals.com. I don't normally find a site and promptly make a purchase. I usually go looking at what my options are. But I had spent many hours looking at my options and finding nothing. I've also been thinking for about 4 or 5 years that I probably ought to become an Amazon.com affiliate because I routinely recommend books. I still haven't gotten around to filling out the forms. But I found Online Metals and made a purchase, joined their affiliate program, and wrote a new page for my website about copper all in one day. So here is the story behind that.

The blog post where I first mentioned copper is dated February 13, 2009. It states that my son and I watched an episode of Modern Marvels "a few weeks back". So you can guess that was probably some time in January and I had been doing research on the web well before I wrote the blog entry. That would make this search about five months long -- and it was a fruitless search until 2 nights ago.

Here are some of the things I looked at:

Home Depot: I figured they would probably carry copper flashing. I mean, home improvement stores are supposed to carry just basic materials like wood and so on, right? Here is the message I get when I search their site for "copper flashing": Sorry, we could not find any matches for "copper flashing" Please check your spelling or search for a different key word. So I search the site for "copper". This yields 338 Products and 7 Articles. They carry outdoor lighting, face plates, weather vanes and all kinds of stuff. But the closest thing to a basic material I can find is copper cabling. There were undoutbedly a few more terms I used to search the site, all to no avail. I tend to be meticulous. I most likely looked at most or all of the individual products listed. And I did this on site after site after site for about five months.

Lowe's: A search for "copper flashing" gives me about five results. They do not list any prices. Instead, they talk about how availability varies by location and ask for your zip code. When I put in my zip code, I get "page not found". I am assuming that means there is no Lowe's store in this zip code. Even if there were, the odds are good it would be five miles away. I don't have a car. Part of the reason I shop online is so stuff can be delivered to my home. I have zero interest in ordering something online and having to physically go pick it up, especially if it means walking about 10 miles round trip. If I have to physically go pick it up, I would rather go there and make the purchase there after physically examining it, holding it in my hand and comparing whatever option they have in person -- especially if it is something new and unfamiliar.

Craft sites yielded nothing or, at best, very fine copper wire for making jewelry and the like. On such sites and many others, "copper" items listed in the search results were very frequently copper-colored rather than something made of the metal copper. Copper tables listed online are often huge, heavy in the extreme and typically cost somewhere between $1000 and $3000. No can do. I checked out E-bay in hopes of finding something kind of largish and flatish for a reasonable price. I was willing to buy a tray or rectangular baking pan in place of copper sheeting to try to get around the fact that I was coming up empty. I was still not finding anything remotely acceptable. Here is an industrial site: All Metal Sales. On their page for copper sheet, they state at the top: "2500 to 10,000 lbs minimum order depending on the item. Please do not inquire for less." Another site, Basic Copper, is probably the next closest thing to Online Metals. The cheapest thing I can find is around $17 dollars and they don't offer custom cuts or anything like that. They sell a 25 pound roll of it for $490.00, which is well out of my budget. So 2500 pounds (like the industrial site lists) is not happening. Ever.

So when I found OnlineMetals.com, I knew it was a unique resource. It's included as a resource on my site in hopes of saving my readers the months of headaches and frustrations I suffered through before finding a source that worked for me.

In other news, here are some links about the antimicrobial properties of copper:

19 June 2009

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