Getting Fishtape Through 1/2" EMT

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Ravenvalor

Senior Member
Hello,
Can anyone make a suggestion for getting a fish tape through a 40' length of 1/2" EMT? We are coming behind another electrician and I assume that there are too many bends in the run.
I am going to make a home made mouse and will let you know how it goes.
Thanks,
 

growler

Senior Member
Location
Atlanta,GA
Hello,
Can anyone make a suggestion for getting a fish tape through a 40' length of 1/2" EMT?

Round the loop on the end of the snake.


As Hackelectric states, round the end on the fish tape.

If you are having that much trouble getting a fish tape in 40 ft of 1/2 EMT there may be a problem with the run.

If rounding the end doesn't work you can always try hooking it with another fish tape from the other end of the pull ( normally done on longer runs ).
 
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HackElectric

Senior Member
Location
NJ
I have a feeling there is a coupling after a bend and the bend is aiming the snake right at the edge of the pipe at the coupling and the side of the snake loop is getting caught.

So round the loop real nice and bend the end of the snake a little bit in the opposite direction it is already bent. Also, once you hit the obstruction, pull back a couple inches and twist the snake so it flips 180 degrees inside the pipe.
 

growler

Senior Member
Location
Atlanta,GA
We are coming behind another electrician and I assume that there are too many bends in the run.

I have a feeling there is a coupling after a bend and the bend is aiming the snake right at the edge of the pipe at the coupling and the side of the snake loop is getting caught.


If they are comming behind another electrician and can't count the bends the conduit must be in walls that are covered.

Could be anything to include a buried box in the wall.

Working behind someone else I would push another fish tape in from the other end just to see how far it gets.

In hate 1/2" conduit to start with. Good for going box to box in straight runs but that's about it.
 

HackElectric

Senior Member
Location
NJ
In hate 1/2" conduit to start with. Good for going box to box in straight runs but that's about it.
For the first 15 years of my career, I never even knew what 1/2" EMT looked like until I was at Home Depot one day and saw the 5' "half sticks" they were selling.

Everything was always 3/4", even for 2 wires.

Now I will use 1/2" EMT in residential or small commercial applications because I am the one paying for it and I am cheap and lazy :p:lol:
 

K8MHZ

Senior Member
Location
Michigan. It's a beautiful peninsula, I've looked
Occupation
Electrician
Could be a rock? Or some mortar?

On a job I was on years ago, a bricky plugged up a run of EMT with a rock and some mud. Fish tape would not go through. Being suspicious of the brickys I set up my super secret pipe debris buster. The buster is a length of fish tape with no reel. One end is sharpened, the other put into a drill motor. Then, the tape is slid up to the blockage, the drill motor turned on, and the blockage is drilled into bits an pieces by the drill. A couple swabs and it was like new.

I did this while the brickys were at lunch and made sure they were watching when we did the pull. I could tell who the guilty party was as soon as the fish tape slid through the pipe with ease.

It wasn't me, BTW, that ticked off the brickys. I inherited the aforementioned project.
 

Cow

Senior Member
Location
Eastern Oregon
Occupation
Electrician
I'd try a Greenlee stainless fishtape with a flexible leader. I have one that I keep in perfect condition, I only use it for the tough runs when a regular fishtape won't make it. It comes out maybe 2-3 times a year.
 

K8MHZ

Senior Member
Location
Michigan. It's a beautiful peninsula, I've looked
Occupation
Electrician
As Hackelectric states, round the end on the fish tape.

If you are having that much trouble getting a fish tape in 40 ft of 1/2 EMT there may be a problem with the run.

If rounding the end doesn't work you can always try hooking it with another fish tape from the other end of the pull ( normally done on longer runs ).

If the run isn't blocked, just rounding the tape may not help. I have found that issue is the edge of the tape is getting hung up and rounding doesn't help.

What has worked best for me is making a thin double back loop then covering it with tape as to form a half a sphere. Then a liberal amount of lube, preferably Yellow 77 is applied to the tape sphere. In the rare event of a failure, marks on the tape will give some clues about the obstruction.
 

growler

Senior Member
Location
Atlanta,GA
Now I will use 1/2" EMT in residential or small commercial applications because I am the one paying for it and I am cheap and lazy :p:lol:

If I can get away with it I'm even cheaper and more lazy. Home runs in 3/4" and then it's MC cable.

I was a little hard on the use of 1/2" EMT but there are not many things I use it for.
 

K8MHZ

Senior Member
Location
Michigan. It's a beautiful peninsula, I've looked
Occupation
Electrician
On my very first job as a real registered apprentice, and I mean this was the first job of the first day, I was teamed up with a journeyman and we set about to pull some wires through some existing conduit that went from one room to the other.

We could only get the fish tape a little over half way through and it would jam. We could see the pipe, this was in a factory and the pipe was run on the surface. And it was a straight line from one room to the other.

Or so we thought. We messed with this for hours. The j-man tried every trick in the book and he knew lots of them. So it was decided we were going to have to cut the conduit to remove the obstruction. So, we used the fish tape to measure the length from the box to the obstruction. Upon measuring it appeared the obstruction was in the other room. So we went to the other room to do the same thing so we could mark the area we had to cut. Hmm....the two measurements overlapped by several FEET.

The j-man gets a funny look on his face and gets a shop person to move a huge cabinet (it took a small fork lift) away from the wall. Behind the cabinet, which was only inches from the ceiling tall, was a box and a receptacle. The box had two pipes. One from one room, and one from the other, running into the top. The cabinet obscured the two pipes running down the wall from view and it looked like it was just a single pipe running from room to room.
 

don_resqcapt19

Moderator
Staff member
Location
Illinois
Occupation
retired electrician
If it is just bends, try putting the end of the fish tape in some Yellow 77 before you try to push it into the conduit.
 
Location
NE (9.06 miles @5.9 Degrees from Winged Horses)
Occupation
EC - retired
I ran some 1/2" at a local new Walmart when helping another EC. We had another crew pulling wire behind us. Fish tape went thru, wire would not. Try different direction. Same thing. Length was 10' different. A small brass gas line fitting had found its way into the pipe via a coupling as I installed them. The fitting slid from one coupling to the next as they pulled wire. Or attempted to. Frustrated wire pullers and I wondered what kind of idiots we had pulling wire. At least ours was exposed conduit.
 

K8MHZ

Senior Member
Location
Michigan. It's a beautiful peninsula, I've looked
Occupation
Electrician
I ran some 1/2" at a local new Walmart when helping another EC. We had another crew pulling wire behind us. Fish tape went thru, wire would not. Try different direction. Same thing. Length was 10' different. A small brass gas line fitting had found its way into the pipe via a coupling as I installed them. The fitting slid from one coupling to the next as they pulled wire. Or attempted to. Frustrated wire pullers and I wondered what kind of idiots we had pulling wire. At least ours was exposed conduit.

What size and type fitting was that? :angel:
 
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