Conduit routing book?

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Twoskinsoneman

Twoskinsoneman

Senior Member
Location
West Virginia, USA NEC: 2020
Occupation
Facility Senior Electrician
I'm an licensed electrician but in my work I have not done much "stick bending" nor foresee much in my career. I would, however, like to become a more well-rounded electrician. I desire to learn about the practical aspects of routing conduit.

Can anyone recommend a book?
 
480sparky

480sparky

Senior Member
Location
Iowegia
I've never seen a book that tackles the issue of designing a layout for raceways.

The best advice I've heard about the subject is:

Running conduit is like playing a game of chess, and the building is your opponent. You have to be thinking 10-20 moves ahead or else you will lose the game.
 
Twoskinsoneman

Twoskinsoneman

Senior Member
Location
West Virginia, USA NEC: 2020
Occupation
Facility Senior Electrician
480sparky said:
I've never seen a book that tackles the issue of designing a layout for raceways.

The best advice I've heard about the subject is:

Running conduit is like playing a game of chess, and the building is your opponent. You have to be thinking 10-20 moves ahead or else you will lose the game.
Click to expand...

Sounds like good advice.
I guess I was hoping for a book that talked about both routing and bending but mainly the practical portion of bending... ie measuring, accounting for pipe length loss whatever.
 
C

Cow

Senior Member
Location
Eastern Oregon
Occupation
Electrician
Planning your route is a fine line, timewise.

Spend enough time planning that you may save yourself some extra bends but take too long and sometimes you could of finished already even going the worst route.

The only time I account for pipe length loss is when I bend and offset after I cut the pipe. That's it. And that's not very often. You should be able to find that info on the label stuck to your bender handle if it's new enough.
 
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B

Barndog

Senior Member
Location
Spring Creek Pa
Cow said:
Planning your route is a fine line, timewise.

Spend enough time planning that you may save yourself some extra bends but take too long and sometimes you could of finished already even going the worst route.

The only time I account for pipe length loss is when I bend and offset after I cut the pipe. That's it. And that's not very often. You should be able to find that info on the label stuck to your bender handle if it's new enough.
Click to expand...

Very well said. i bent alot of small EMT in my job and if you just start at one end alot of times you get about half way done and wished you would have thought about it some more before you started. As for tools to help you alot of the benders i use have the deducts and stub up distances onthe bender along with the multiplier. Also the Ugly's book has a good page or two on bending
 
P

peter

Senior Member
Location
San Diego
You seem to have the bending part. So...

You want as few bends as possible in each run.
Obviously a straight line is often the shortest. Less conduit, wire and couplings.

Often I will use a 22.5* offset rather than the usual 30* bends because it saves a whopping total of 15*. I've seen cases in which they needed everybody [15 people] to make a pull which had 5 90*s in it.

In walls, often they will go up a foot or two, then 90* across to the next box and 90* down. Now two 90*s aren't that much and it's only three or four wires anyway, but still. It's possible to run straight if you want to [no bends].

One way to do walls is to run a conduit from the outlet box up to the top stud and poke thru. Arlington makes a bracket that allows you to mount your top box about 2" above the top stud. I don't know why you want to do that.
What you should do is cut your conduit about 1/8" short of the top surface and stick a connector on it and then install it. That way, your top box will fit flatly on the top surface and can be held down with two screws thru those little holes. [Those holes near the front edge were originally so they could add brackets on, before the age of spot-welding.] [These holes are often the perfect size for self-threading, 10-32 ground screws.]

Remember that you can go 36" from the box before you need to fasten it down. Starting from your lowest hole, this is hardly noticeable so you save a box offset.

For a large number of conduits going in the same direction, Uni-Strut and racks make sense.

~Peter J. Michael
 
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