Best way to pull wire

3 wires and a # 6 wire from a run from my house to a 100 amp sub panel in a detached garage. It will be 2 inch PVC conduit. The run will start in my attached garage where the main panel is located. It will go inside that wall up about 10 feet into an attic space above my garage. It will run about 20 feet across the attic and then go outside into an LB fitting. It will go down to the ground on the outside of the attached garage for about 15 feet into a sweeping 90 then a straight run of 50 or so feet to my detached garage. The total run is about 110 feet. I will be mostly working by myself maybe the wife could help.

Anyway, is it best to start in the attic, run the wire down into the main panel then out through the outside wall. Will it be a pain to unravel this wire in the small attic?

Or would it be best to start at the detached garage, run it through the long straight run, then up the attached garage wall into the attic ect.

I will have LB?s above the main panel, Outside the top of the garage, and inside the detached garage just below the sub panel.

Any advice is appreciated! I have a small tractor if that helps but I am hoping I can do this by hand.

reply:

I can't advise you about all the pulls around the 90s and stuff, but I will offer one thing about laying out the wire. When wire is coiled, particularly stiff wire, unless it is rolled directly off a spool, it comes off in a spiral. In order to keep it from spiraling, it has to be laid out in a straight line, then taken in 2' diameter loops, one over, one under, nontypical of the usual way you roll up a garden hose in your hand. When the stuff comes off the roll, it will not kink all up on you in the attic after the second or third loop, making a big tangle.

This is used particularly for wire rope, but works well for garden hose, electrical cable, and anything you want to keep from spiraling. It takes a few minutes to learn and master, but once you learn it, it's impressive when you can toss out a big roll of something, and pull it all out without any spiralling, while your observers scratch their heads. It keeps all manner of stuff from kinking, good garden hose being the most common.

I watched a team of divers at a dock one time try to take down some wire rope. They had the spool laying on its side. They took off a little, and the diver started down. As he went down, they just rolled loop after loop upwards off the side of the roll. Within a few loops, they had such a tangle they had to pull up the diver with the wire rope and hose and all tangled into one big mess.

I just kept on walking, chuckling to myself. Wire rope can be a pure d bitch if you don't know a couple of tricks.

So, if you're using rolls, take it straight off the roll. If you are buying precut lengths, lay it out, and do the one up one down laying of it in your opposite hand, and it will come off straight. Just be sure that you don't take the end of the loop through the center of the roll at the start, or you will end up with a series of overhand knots.

I really need to learn how to post this stuff to youtube, as I have a great video camera, and could do this easily.

Steve

Look here for some ideas:

This was all solo work, 3x 1/0, 1x #2, 4x #8, all copper THHN, 80' run between the shop and house.

I once played roadie to my brother's rock band; one of my jobs was to wind up all the cords when they were tearing down. I did all of them like this, but in the shape of a figure-8: Through my hand towards me, across my forearm, and under my elbow towards me, across my forearm, and so on.

I've found it a lot easier than trying to do every other loop inside-out. ;-)

The longest wire I've ever pulled was about 12 feet; the corners are a bitch. Either make wide sweeping bends in the conduit, or use Ells at the corners, to get another "bite". And grease everything - it's a mess, but it makes the pulling significantly easier.

Cheers! Rich

Get a gallon of the special wire pull lube.

Crisco works pretty well as does simple, heavily soaped water.

Dawn dish washing detergent works GREAT

Gunner

"Aren't cats Libertarian? They just want to be left alone. I think our dog is a Democrat, as he is always looking for a handout" Unknown Usnet Poster

Heh, heh, I'm pretty sure my dog is a liberal - he has no balls. Keyton

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I had heard dish wash hurts the wires?

Shrug..I ran an alarm company for 15 yrs..didnt seem to hurt anything.

My alarms are still up and running, nearly 25 yrs later.

Gunner

"Aren't cats Libertarian? They just want to be left alone. I think our dog is a Democrat, as he is always looking for a handout" Unknown Usnet Poster

Heh, heh, I'm pretty sure my dog is a liberal - he has no balls. Keyton

All the previous posts have covered the obvious problems well, grease the cable , uncoil it so its not kinked , start in the house , etc, what could problem area is the 90 degree bend. Have you buried the conduit yet? I hope not!! as its there where you might find it doesnt want to come through. Its abit like drainage runs, when ever you change direction, you put a manhole. Now you dont need a manhole for your 2in conduit, but you might need to have a rt angle joiner at that point in the run. leave that junction disconnected but with the pull through rope in the

1st straight length, through the rt angle bend then through the remaining 50 ft straight piece. pull the cable through the first straight length, coiling it up on the ground, pull it through the rt angle bend, then pull it through the remaining 50 ft length.. Then connect the 2 straight lengths with the rt angle joiner. and then bury this area.

hope you follow. Ted Dorset UK

My better half went and took my Dawn to wash dishes. What a waste!

Another trick. You need to have a pull wire. Total pain in the butt to use fish tape for all your runs. Put the whole line together and put a shop vac on one end. Make a kite out of a wad of plastic shopping bag, the wad should sort of fill the conduit but not tight. Tie a string to the wad. The vac will suck it through in seconds. Then pull a pull wire through with the string.

Karl

Indeed!

Tape the fished wires very well to the fish wire..and in several places.

"Aren't cats Libertarian? They just want to be left alone. I think our dog is a Democrat, as he is always looking for a handout" Unknown Usnet Poster

Heh, heh, I'm pretty sure my dog is a liberal - he has no balls. Keyton

I always used foam plugs, cut out by using a chunk of sharpened conduit and a hammer to cut them out, we called them a mouse.

Wes

-- "Additionally as a security officer, I carry a gun to protect government officials but my life isn't worth protecting at home in their eyes." Dick Anthony Heller

I use the braided wire grippers, kelems grips? or something like that, have a handful of them and for stuff with a number of larger conductors I will use several.

"Rich Grise" wrote

Yes, that works equally as well. When we used 300' and 600' dive hoses, which were four hoses taped together, the figure eight was the best way. Especially for stowing, where you could tie three lines around them at three points, keeping everything straight. For shorter runs, the one in one out works best. For long runs of big stuff, figure eight works best.

STeve

Start at the LB and go both ways. Get the long run in place first, then pull the remainder into the LB from the attic end. Start early, but eat a good breakfast.

Pete Stanaitis

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stryped wrote:

GREAT IDEA! Why did I never think of that? One could also use compressed air at the feed end at the same time with a bit of panache.

2 inch pipe, with nothing else in it? - wow, what luxury. Seriously, I used to do this for a living as part of being a telecoms lineman. Hope you have a draw wire already in there from when you laid the conduit. And pull in another draw wire when you do your cable for future expansion - used to really piss me off when I had to rod ducts because the previous worker hadn't bothered......slack....the sort of person to whom you leave a dead fish in their truck while they go on leave for a month.....

As mentioned, unroll the cable, get all the kinks and spirals out of it. Start at the bend outside the attached garage - its going to be the logical place to have problems. Get your wife to feed it in so it doesn't jam on the edge of the pipe. If its not too long, she SHOULD be able to feed the cable past it as the bundle will have some rigidity for such a short distance.

The secret is HOW you attach the cable bundle to the draw rope (dont know what you guys call it, here its known as ski rope ala water skiing towline - 3 separate strands of polypropylene , about 12mm dia. If you want to be fancy, use a cable snotter - its like a Chinese finger trap in that it gets tighter under load. Failing that, do the following.

Strip off sheathing and insulation of cable bundles for, say, about a foot, twist then together tightly. Then, weave them into the pull rope

- then use copious amounts of black tape (or green if you like, but decent quality stuff - NITTO is the local good brand). The finished rope/cable junction should be equal to or preferably smaller than the cable bundle diameter, the tape is used to taper from the rope to the wires. If it sticks, work it back and forward, it will be a joint in the pipe (you DID glue the conduit, didn't you?).

Dont know about lubricant, dont know its long term effect on the insulation. There was stuff we used on lead sheathed cable, but that was a special case as you tried to prevent scouring of the sheath.

Like the plastic bag/vacuum cleaner idea, brilliant in its simplicity. I used to have a large reel of fiberglass rod on the back of the truck, about 200ft long.. No vacuum cleaner though.

Then pull it in - the rest is just normal PITA stuff and will probably take longer than doing the main run. I have noticed that roof crawl spaces have seemingly gotten more cramped as I get older....

Andrew VK3BFA.

And DONT be afraid..as a last resort, to cut your run in half. Install a fullsized 4square box and pull into and out of it. Wire nuts are cheap as is a cover.

Gunner

"Aren't cats Libertarian? They just want to be left alone. I think our dog is a Democrat, as he is always looking for a handout" Unknown Usnet Poster

Heh, heh, I'm pretty sure my dog is a liberal - he has no balls. Keyton

pvc pipe on the wall into a 90 LB.

Oh, I have attic acess through a attic ladder.