Pulling electrical wire -

[Henro]

Egon,

I've been meaning to ask...what kind of golf club are you swinging that picture?

On second thought, maybe this should be a question for Golfgar4... /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

 

[MossRoad]

I was always told the reason you assemble the conduit first was to keep the conduit from seperating. If you didn't, each time you pulled, the friction of the wire has a tendancy to pull fittings lose, especially on turns. If you assemble the entire run first, it locks every thing together. Thiis makes sense to me.

Any wire runs I have ever been involved with had the conduit assembled first. And we put pull boxes more often than every 360 degrees if possible. They aren't that expensive and sure make the pulls easier.

For example, a 300' run with two turns and very heavy wire. I'd put a pull box at each turn. If I have to do it myself, it is easier to pull to the first pull box, leave a 10 or 20 foot loop of wire and start down the 2nd run. When the first loop is down to about 5 feet, pull 10 or 20 feet at the first pull box, go back to the second pull box and pull some more... etc... It makes for lots of walking, but if the wire is heavy it is easier to make 30 ten foot pulls through 100 foot runs than one 300 foot pull through 300 feet of run.

 

[mahlers]

</font><font color="blue" class="small">( A couple of notes to others who offered advice and opinions: looked into solar, but decided against it since it was only going to save about $700 (net taking into account the 12V conversion for the hoist), and I would still need to run trail lights. Plus harder to guard against theft, since the boathouse is in a remote and secluded location out of sight of our house or even other property owners. And my cost will end up at around $2.10 per foot for the wire, elbows, pull box, and conduit.

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Not to push the solar alternative too hard, but you wouldn't need to convert anything to run on 12V - good inverters are pretty cheap these days and you wouldn't need to swap out any equipment. The deep-cycle batteries do cost a bit, though - but they give you the ability to have 24/7 power.

If you can do the wire run for a couple of bucks a foot - then that's definitely a good deal. I was pricing wire the other day, and the price nearly doubled since about a couple months ago. I couldn't believe it! I was looking at around three or four bucks a foot, and now it's up to around six.

 

[Egon]

Henro:

It's called

" Farmers Special # 3 iron "

The nice part about it is you don't have to run after and look for that silly little white ball that everyone becomes so aggravated with and there is no need for that heavy bag or bumper car.

Neither do you need spiked shoe's, although they were handy in the days of the key punch. No dress code and nobody yelling " Fore" or some such thing.



Ah- have you guessed I do not golf aside from several company functions where it was mandatory. Worse of it was this counting the times you had to swing the dagblam clubby thing. After 10 I'd always be holding things up as I'd have to take my shoes off.

That always brought this officious looking feller driving one of those little carts around telling me to hurry up. Seems one must hurry to enjoy the game. He also seemed real upset cause I'd lifted up a few pieces of sod on the area around the hole. Still can't figure out why he didn't get a decent cart that could haul dirt and tools and such things to fix up them holes. He surely didn't seem to appreciate that suggestion. Heck,he didn't even have a proper hookup for a koolatron or fridge.

Better picture of the farmers club.

Egon

 

[5030]

Egon:

I have one of those in the barn. I'll have to get it out and "sharpen" my game. /forums/images/graemlins/shocked.gif

 

[jrepp]

The reason I have been given for assembling the conduit first is that the PVC glue can damage the insulation on the wire.

 

[RalphVa]

I'd use a bigger conduit than 1 1/4" for #4 wire. I used 1 1/4" conduit for #10 wire to my carriage house. Even with it, I didn't try to go through more than one long radius ell at a time. Most corners, I put pull boxes in. If more than one ell, I'd strongly recommend putting the wire into the conduit as you go. If you want to pull that huge wire very far through very many turns, I'd go with about 2 1/2" conduit.

One interesting thing I ran into when they built my carriage house was they installed 2 regular ells to go from the basement wall through the floor into the main floor. I also had them stop the pour to get some long radius ells instead.

When I went to run the fish through those double ells, I first put a small threaded screw with washers on each side of the fish eye. It went through the 2 ells like a knife through hot butter. I ended up running both my wires through those ells and used the 2nd set of ells through the floor for a water line.

Ralph

 

[8NTX]

Trench was dug yesterday. The pull will be tomorrow. The electrician and sprinkler guy who dug the trench both strongly recommended against anything larger than 1.5" conduit since there are several long sweeping curves in the run. Seems anything larger won't bend much at all. Thanks again for everyone's help and I will post how it went in a couple of days.

 

[B7510]

Just a thought, if you haven't got it pulled yet. 600' is a long way but you may want to consider what else you could want out there in the future; alarm, phone, ...

Not sure what the cost of Cat-5 wire with 3 or 4 twisted pair is these days, or the effective did stance, but I know I have ended up haveing to do multiple pulls a few times and its always a bigger hassle later.

 

[mahlers]

Just be *very* careful if routing phone or computer lines in the same conduit as electrical. A short within the conduit can turn your phone into quite the shocker...