ENT or EMT

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AC\DC

Senior Member
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Florence,Oregon,Lane
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EC
Hello, I am getting ready shortly to wire my small shop about 1100 sq ft, Will be 3/4 small lighting store, the 1/4 my office room. Since NMB is so expensive, I am either going to use EMT or ENT. walls are 2x8 exterior interior 2x4.
Same price per FT for either way.
ENT Is a lot quicker,
EMT pulls better.
Will be using 4x4 for either option.

I have not wired either method a lot in wood studs. What method would you use?
the 3/4 portion may some day be a Small market so expandability will be preferred.
 
EMT can be used for equipment grounding.

Can be a pain and add a lot of time if you need to use many small pieces though. If you can drill out to the end of a wall with horizontal runs and insert from the end it might actually go pretty quick - have to get them holes nearly perfectly lined up though.

MC or AC cable is another option, might even cost less than NM cable right now.
 
I would pay the premium price for NM rather than face pulling a thousand square feet of wiring in smurf.

EMT in wood studs is tougher than steel studs if you try and stay in the center of the stud. Instead drill your first hole about an eighth inch back from the face and shoot a laser through it to make the rest of the holes and things go much easier.
 
I would run EMT in a shop any day. NM and ENT are not rated for any kind of potential rough service. AC and MC are as quick as NM. They aren’t as strong as EMT but a good second choice.

On bigger lines or underground aluminum XHHW has not jumped in price.
 
ENT is hard to pull thru, the OD is larger than same size EMT.
My suggestion is surface mount EMT, show off your skill on bending. And no ECG required.
 
Stupid question, why run EMT horizontally thru the studs? Why not run overhead with drops into wall? If I can get above ceiling joist as part of rough in or within a drop ceiling, that is how I would go, rather than death by a thousand cuts trying to run horizontally.
 
paulengr said:
I would run EMT in a shop any day. NM and ENT are not rated for any kind of potential rough service. AC and MC are as quick as NM. They aren’t as strong as EMT but a good second choice.
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As long as it's hidden in the walls what difference does it make? I would go for what is cheap and easy if you can get both. If not pick one or the other. For such a small space it's probably not going to make all that much difference in either labor or cost.

With the cost of wire what it is these days I wonder if it would be cost effective to install a panel board on several walls of the shop and just run a feeder from panel board to panel board rather than doing all home runs from one panel board.
 
Fred B said:
Stupid question, why run EMT horizontally thru the studs? Why not run overhead with drops into wall? If I can get above ceiling joist as part of rough in or within a drop ceiling, that is how I would go, rather than death by a thousand cuts trying to run horizontally.
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More efficient use of pipe is one big reason. Vertical drops in the wall aren't always easy either. Just depends on how the room lays out. Like I said earlier, if you drill your studs close to the face it's not hard to get EMT in horizontal runs.
 
The trick with ENT, is strapping, hard to run a fishtape when it’s loose and flopping. Second trick is to use a nylon fishtape, nylon pushes much easier than steel in smurf tube. Wired quite a few Waffle Houses in smurf.
 
And with EMT, I would notch the 2x4's bend a 90 with a kick to go out to the face, lay in the notches and then kick back down to the next box. But for a shop, would put the outlets high, say 4-6 so they are above a sheet of plywood and you don't have to bend over to plug things.
I also used nail plates even though not required.
 
Fred B said:
Stupid question, why run EMT horizontally thru the studs? Why not run overhead with drops into wall? If I can get above ceiling joist as part of rough in or within a drop ceiling, that is how I would go, rather than death by a thousand cuts trying to run horizontally.
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Walls are furred out and ceiling sheet rock is not being disturbed( don’t want more work). Seem like ENT is not a recommendation.
The reason I wanted conduit is ease of possible equipment changes if I end up opening a small Mexican market, if my lighting store flops.
 
James L said:
Good grief. People act like Romex is a million dollars a foot. As a lead man told me 25 years ago, and it's still true, material is cheap and labor is expensive.

Quit worrying about trying to save $400 on material. Spend the money and make it quick. Then you can go make $4,000 with all that time you saved wiring your shop
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The company I work for now, thought the opposite many years ago. When I first came to work for them, they were drilling and bolting one hole straps when wiring a building. Introduced them to Caddy straps and Scotch 567’s. Now they are one of the 50 largest EC’s out there now! LOL!
 
petersonra said:
As long as it's hidden in the walls what difference does it make? I would go for what is cheap and easy if you can get both. If not pick one or the other. For such a small space it's probably not going to make all that much difference in either labor or cost.

With the cost of wire what it is these days I wonder if it would be cost effective to install a panel board on several walls of the shop and just run a feeder from panel board to panel board rather than doing all home runs from one panel board.
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If someone is contemplating ENT or EMT vs NM it looks automatically like exposed wiring. In wall prices are all over the place right now but I can’t seriously believe NM is that special. If it’s DIY where labor is $0 then maybe ENT makes sense. AC/MC and EMT will cost more in materials. If it’s contracted then labor cost vastly exceeds the material cost and the only guy not happy is whoever is eating the cost increase.

Running separate distribution panels maybe makes sense but I doubt it. First you are adding at least one additional breaker and possibly more if you use one per sub panel. So that’s half an NM roll. The wiring to the sub panel is larger so it costs more per foot vs however much branch wiring you save. If diversity works out you save money but if you are say using a 60 A feeder to feed four 15 A branches, the increased wire size is going to cost more than the smaller branches. Plus the cost of the panels that is about the price of a roll of NM. So without running numbers it seems like a wash at best.

In controls we often look at all home runs to giant overstuffed control panels vs remote IO. Almost every time the giant control panel wins in terms of pricing for initial installs. But over the long term there is a big difference between troubleshooting and repairing 10 feet of cable to a remote IO panel and hundreds of feet of home run, particularly if the home run is a multi conductor cable and gets damaged.
 
AC\DC said:
Walls are furred out and ceiling sheet rock is not being disturbed( don’t want more work). Seem like ENT is not a recommendation.
The reason I wanted conduit is ease of possible equipment changes if I end up opening a small Mexican market, if my lighting store flops.
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We talking about masonry wall and furring strips or something similar?

If so run EMT on the masonry wall before installing furring strips
 
AC\DC said:
I used 2x4 so my exterior is now 2x8 ( wanted depth for sound )
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Could still have run EMT on the face of existing before furring it out to make it easier to run the raceway.

All the drilling and boring is eliminated from electrical install, but framer has more cuts to make, but even it that were me doing the framing, I'd still do it that way
 
Ya I was thinking about. Did not know what methods,and I wanted the walls up to speed things up. I did notch them for whatever I eventually would run
 
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