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...

 

[Inspector507]

Not to mention, in his scenario, it would not meet code. But yes it could be dangerous and his phone line quality would suffer.

 

[B7510]

Oops. Sounds like I have another project to put on the list. Need to abandon the phone line in the conduit with the 220 out to dad's trailer and run him a new one. Haven't noticed any quality problems with the line. Not using it for data, just the phone. Good thing its a cordless I guess.

Wonder how much 120 ft of direct burry CAT5 is gonna hurt my wallet?

 

[8NTX]

Did the big pull on Saturday. Not too bad, really. We broke it down into two sections; about 300' each for the wire. The pull rope was done in 4 sections since we used my new 240' fish tape. The only real problem was that the supply house sent a couple of the rolls on the huge master reels used for 5000'. They were so heavy that when we started the pull, it broke the saw horses we had set up. Rebuilt them and took it a little easier and no problems, but I am a little sore today. But the bulk of the muscle was no doubt provided by my 6'7", 260 pound son.

For the record, I used 1.5" conduit and it proved to be pretty flexible. The glue-up went really fast with 3 people working plus the electrician. Installed a pull box at the mid-way point and pulled the first section from that. Then fed another run down to the sub-panel. That pull was a little tougher, with more turns, etc. , but we made it with the help of lots of wire lube. We still have to do 5 mini-pulls for the trail lights and wire to the boathouse from the sub, but that should be no problem. Thanks again to everyone for all the help and advice.

 

[keeney]

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Wonder how much 120 ft of direct burry CAT5 is gonna hurt my wallet?
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Cat-5 is cheap, cheap, cheap, cheap. Maybe $0.15 per foot for the teflon-coated stuff. $0.05 for the cheap stuff in retail quantities.

I would buy a 250' roll of the teflon stuff and just dump it in the trench next to the conduit. (Not in the same conduit as line-voltages, because that would not meet code). Put it in its own conduit if you really want to, but its probably not worth the effort - it will last fine raw.

Just keep all splices and breaks indoors and above grade.

Becuase so much of it is used these days, Cat-5 with 4-pairs is cheaper than cat-3 phone wire with 2 pairs!

One cat-5 can run both ethernet and 2 phone lines. Ethernet uses two pairs, and each phone line uses a pair. Just use the right punch-down recetpacles at each end.

Rick