kwired
Electron manager
- Location
- NE Nebraska
If you are going to use a tugger then I would tie the rope or a string to one of the wires and pull them all out at once. Unless there is some rusted metal pipe, #4 should come out of a 2" OK. Next question is, how many people do you have? Are you pulling 3#2/0 and no ground or what? can you get close enough to use your truck? To save money, one time deal, you could wrap a rope around the hitch or a lumber rack one time, have one person holding the rope, one slowly moving the truck and one to two people feeding. The one wrap and a person holding gives you control if there is a problem. If you need 2 wraps, it probably won't work because the rope can bind up on itself and then you have a safety issue. Otherwise, rent the generator and go for it.
OK, when you use a tugger, you wrap the rope around a capstan. wow, how to explain this.... Think of the tugger as a multiplier. You still need to have control of your pull and you need to "feel" the pull. A tugger does this! You wrap the rope, and if you wrap it twice, you need 1/2 as much tension on the rope to "feel" the pull as if you wrap it once and so on. If you use my truck suggestion, you don't have this luxury, because just wrapping around the going 180 degrees around the ball give means that you have to hold the rope for virtually 100% of the tugging force. Wrap around 540 degree and you can hold with much less force, but any further and you take a VERY strong chance that the rope will twist up or bin up on itself and no longer slip around the ball. Once this happens, you have no control and 1 foot of truck movement could equal 1 foot of conduit pulled out of the ground.
I've read many of your posts, and see the pride you take in "doing it right".
Would this not be a code violation?
(as I have memories of my brother pulling out 500's (maybe 250's, was along time ago), some 300' from a pole to a school.....tide to a little Nissan pick up truck........running full speed at the school, back wheels flying off the ground a
couple of feet as the rope became taught..........He convinced me to let him use the 1 ton van as that's what is was made for ( :blink: ).........it ripped the bumper off........retide to a stronger part of the truck......and eventually
got them out..............what a day )
Where in the NEC does it tell us how to pull conductors?
Iwire has the part about using a truck with low gears correct. If you have 4x4 with low range put it in low range low gear. You should not even need to use accelerator in most cases as it will be able to pull pretty hard just with low gearing.
You do need a sheave to change direction of the rope when pulling with a vehicle. Unless you can drive your vehicle straight up into the air.
If you use the method of taking a run with a vehicle and let the rope suddenly tighten... you are simply an idiot. Not only do you risk damage to installed equipment, conductors, vehicle, you are asking for someone to get hurt. Say you do pull the bumper off the truck, what kind of force may it have behind it when it comes flying back toward the raceway you are pulling from. The only way to pull is with a slow but steady pulling speed. If you have to resort to taking a run at it there is a problem and you likely damage conductors at the very least.