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Home based chrome plating business

 

I have worked as a journeyman plater/engraver in the gravure industry for twenty years and know the extreme hazards of chrome plating. I have been thinking about chroming parts for the fire service in a home based shop. I know how you condemn the small business platers but I could bring my waste to work in small quantities for disposal in the waste water treatment facility. The imitation chrome I have seen on the market appears to be a little less dangerous than the Heef 25 I have been working with in gravure printing.

Do you think this would be an acceptable "home based" idea since I could get rid of the small amount of waste I am generating?

Your site is really informative and I would appreciate your insight.

Rich J [last name deleted for privacy by Editor]
- New York, New York

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I don't know for sure, but I believe imitation chromes are cobalt based.. Whether they would be satisfactory to your potential customers, I don't know.

If you were doing a hobby at home, it MIGHT just barely be possible to have your employer dispose of the waste since individuals who are not in business are apparently not regulated. But if you bring in a dollars worth of business, you absolutely have to deal with your own waste products, you absolutely can't bring them to your employer to dispose of any more than he can ship his waste products to you. Don't entertain that idea for a millisecond.

Ted Mooney, P.E.
Striving to live Aloha
finishing.com - Pine Beach, New Jersey

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Technically, you require permits for the business. Specifically, you can be hung out to dry by both EPA and DOT, as well as your state, county and city agencies. Your boss would have to be dumb as ---- to let you bring waste into his facility as he would be an unlicensed waste treatment facility. Notice the word treatment-not generator. Big big bucks if caught.

If I were doing it in my garage, I would live in fear that someone would casually mention it to someone in a regulatory position.

You would be far better off to try to talk the boss into letting you use his facility after hours.

James Watts
- Navarre, Florida
 

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I plan to start a home based chrome shop. I have more than twenty years in Environmental engineering & permitting. And small quantities of hazwaste can be managed, and legally disposed of from a small business.

Take it to work, and pour it in the wastewater treatment system? Not real smart. Especially if it is a non-metal bearing, non-haz treatment system.

John Hallisey
- Georgia, USA
 

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The earlier letters were from before 9-11. Add anti-terrorism laws to waste management laws, and it has become out of the question to move solutions or wastes around from one business to another.

And if I were considering a home-based plating business, I wouldn't like the fact that regulators of every stripe could enter and search my home at whim, without a warrant. One of the main reasons for a permitting process is so that the regulators can keep close tabs on it; and it seems that this would be far more important in a basement/garage operation than in a properly designed industrial facility.

Ted Mooney, P.E.
Striving to live Aloha
finishing.com - Pine Beach, New Jersey