mstrlucky74
Senior Member
- Location
- NJ
You you have vertical feeder runs say about 200 average what would determine if you would splice that and why? To make pulling easy? Thanks
Vertical riser splices
- Thread starter mstrlucky74
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- Location
- New Jersey
- Occupation
- Journeyman Electrician
For large conductors 250 kcmil and up I would splice only when that became easier/faster than pulling straight through. Sometimes trying to pull long runs without any splices is more time consuming and costly then making separate pulls and splicing. What size conductors are we talking about?
mstrlucky74
Senior Member
- Location
- NJ
4/0 and larger. I was curious as to what determines that cutting and splicing would be faster than pulling straight through..footage, insulation type etc
mstrlucky74
Senior Member
- Location
- NJ
mstrlucky74
Senior Member
- Location
- NJ
When you say strain reluef you mean something like this????
http://www.emersonindustrial.com/en...ng/cable_supports/OZGEDNEY_Cable_Supports.pdf
Fulthrotl
~Autocorrect is My Worst Enema.~
- Occupation
- E
there is no reason to splice vertical feeders, assuming they are piped correctly.
and a number of reasons to avoid it like the plaque.
let's say that you, personally, yes you, are going to splice feeders in a 2' x 2'
junction box. and that they are 500 mcm copper.
firstly, in that j box will be a strain relief for two reasons. one, code requires it,
and two, without it, the feeders will be in a pile at the end of the conduit, 100'
below your box.
now, some lucky soul who pulled these feeders, and had to get them chocked
has left a 2' tail on the ones going up, and going down.
your job is to join them together. how? you have three choices... kearney,
cup-l-tap, and hypress butt splice, with heat shrink tube.
hypress is the best solution. now, you cut a piece of heat shrink, slide it up
onto the upper conductor, which has a hypress splice already crimped on,
and you go to shove the other stripped conductor into the splice.
100' of that wire weighs 180 lbs, and is held by a chock a foot below your
hands. if you loosen up the chock, and you, yes you personally, hold that
wire, guide it into the lug, and hold it there while you reapply the wire
chocks? you are a stud, and can hold that in place?
good.
don't forget the other four conductors. when you take the chocks loose,
they will fall unless you hold them with your other hand.... so let's see...
you now have a 2' x 2' x 1' box with ten hands in it, (don't forget the ground),
supporting three hots, a neutral, and a ground. add another pair of hands
with the hypress.
unless you have twelve hands, you now have six monkeys attempting to have
sex with the same football, while holding the football up in the air, at arm's
length.
the football weighs 900 lbs.
now, your weakest monkey loses his grip on his wire, and it slides 2' down
the conduit, getting stuck. i'll leave you at that point. good luck fixing it.
here is something i had to fix last week, to give you an idea of what your
idea looks like. while it wasn't vertical risers, and there was no weight on it,
i had to remove damaged conduit, replace with sealtight, and hypress it
all back together.
that heat shrink is ul listed for 600 volts, and is $14 a foot... all told the
makeup was about $275. the labor is another thing altogether.
- Location
- New Jersey
- Occupation
- Journeyman Electrician
Depending on the conductor size you may need several support points in a 200' run. For example with 500 kcmil you will need a vertical support for every 50'.
- Location
- Placerville, CA, USA
- Occupation
- Retired PV System Designer
Looks like a job for the Melni (TM) Butt Splice Connector. Too bad it is not actually in production yet.
(What would you be willing to pay for something like that?)
Last edited:
Fulthrotl
~Autocorrect is My Worst Enema.~
- Occupation
- E
well, as i have the hypress, not so much....
it's an interesting thing, to be sure, but a pressure connector,
not a swaged one.... the thing about hypress is that it's a
permanant connection, and structurally sound... you can pull
awfully hard on a hypress without it coming apart... i don't see
this having that level of strength. the other trick would be getting
cable ends into it when they were a bit curved and tweaked,
like the box i did.... but if it would be UL listed, it would save a
lot of grief.
the only downside i could see is that it looks pretty bulky,
and it looks like it would be better if you could stagger the
splices... something that wasn't possible with my thing.
the thing is, it looks like you end up getting some free
length, as it doesn't seem to have the wires butted up
to each other hard, and being able to get a little bit of extra
wire length at times could be a godsend.
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