Pulling wire too hard or through too many bends

[growler]

I agre this shouldn't be at all hard with stranded wire and About 360 of bends. Might depend on what exactly "well over 360" means.

Yes, that well over 360 degrees could be a major factor, they may not have lubed the wire and they may have made a head on the pull about the size of a silver dollar and not properly staggered their wires to keep the leading end flexible.

I worked with a guy once that refused to use the soap provided and then complained about how hard all the pulls were. Even his helper tried to get him to use some lube but he wouldn't do it.

 

[oldsparky52]

Do you know how to FEED wire?

My wife was the best wire feeder I have ever worked with.

 

[Jerramundi]

My wife was the best wire feeder I have ever worked with.

I would outsource your wife for a stick of 1/2" This is how we lone wolves get er' done lol

 

[oldsparky52]

I would outsource your wife for a stick of 1/2" This is how we lone wolves get er' done lol
View attachment 2553769

Most of my work was wiring fuel systems. I was doing the electrical for a convenience store fuel dispenser upgrade and when it came time to pull wire I asked my wife to help me. The old man that owned the oil company we were working for happened to be out there and asked my wife, "What do you do, hold the sign?". She was pissed, but held her razor tongue. He saw us set up and asked her again what she did, she said she feeds the wire. He said "This I've got to see".

Well, we sling through our pulls and she is awesome. When we are finished, the guy says (with a lot more respect in his tone) "I guess you do know what you're doing".

What made her so great, she listened. I told her to push a little and when the wires started to move, get the hand close to the conduit out of the way and keep pushing with the other hand that started as far away from the conduit as possible. Her instructions were to not let the wire get straight (we pulled stranded) but not let it bunch up either, all the time keeping the lube on the wire. She really was great at feeding, better than anyone I worked with in 30 years.

 

[Cow]

It's the little things...

 

[flashlight]

... She really was great at feeding, better than anyone I worked with in 30 years.

That's great to hear. I have a daughter who helps me sometimes, she is really good too. A natural.

 

[LarryFine]

My wife was the best wire feeder I have ever worked with.

What made her so great, she listened. I told her to push a little and when the wires started to move, get the hand close to the conduit out of the way and keep pushing with the other hand that started as far away from the conduit as possible. Her instructions were to not let the wire get straight (we pulled stranded) but not let it bunch up either, all the time keeping the lube on the wire. She really was great at feeding, better than anyone I worked with in 30 years.

Mine was, too. When we met, she already had a nice tool collection and had done her own minor wiring.

She understood the physics and mechanics of the work. She had a poor sense of direction, though. If I said, "Move one foot toward the front of the house," she would say, "How the hell do I know which way the front of the house is?!"

I was the boss on the job, and she was the boss at home. All other times, we were the best of partners.

 

[LarryFine]

That's great to hear. I have a daughter who helps me sometimes, she is really good too. A natural.

So great to work well with family when you can, and it makes you proud when they excel.

Sounds like I'm bragging, but my son (not from the above-mentioned passed-away lady) is an excellent helper, too. Works hard, understands, takes initiative, cleans up well, is polite and well-spoken with customers, gets along with animals as well as I do; you know, the important stuff.

 

[paulengr]

Calculate tension needed here:

electrician.com Wire Pull Calculator

At some point you need pullers.

Way before you pull it apart, you will damage the insulation. On #14 it takes about 1200 pounds as per Amercable charts. But at 300 pounds you are damaging the cable for #14.

http://www.prioritywire.com/techdocs/bending.pdf

A Warn Pullzall costs something like $200-300 from Northern tool with 1000 lbs capacity and compact enough to go anywhere. That and a $10 bottle of cable lube is more than enough to cause damage. If you want to just abuse apprentices Rack-a-Tiers has a rope lever thing which puts out just as much tension. Beyond this you step up to Greenlee and Current Tools pullers that you either rent or pay thousands for.

OSHA has ergonomic standards that tend to set maximum pull limits at around 50-100 lbs. sure you can exceed these but you are flirting with law suit and medical insurance cases (back injuries) that turn into endless Workman comp claims that never go away and put you out of business.

That’s not to say that millennials aren’t a bunch of whiners that think anything heavier than their $1000 phablets and a joystick is too much work.

 

[sameguy]

Having just come from a ~30 day 7/12s nuke outage, I see our trade is in very poor shape with the younger generations.
Our base pay is $39.75/hr. Then add a large benefit package and the "children " feel they are being bullied and over worked. When you work an outage you might sit for hours before doing any work, so when called to do your work you go no matter if on the clock it shows break time (you just sat eating, drinking, playing on your phone for 3 hrs); my point? Pull the dam wire!

 

[paulengr]

Having just come from a ~30 day 7/12s nuke outage, I see our trade is in very poor shape with the younger generations.
Our base pay is $39.75/hr. Then add a large benefit package and the "children " feel they are being bullied and over worked. When you work an outage you might sit for hours before doing any work, so when called to do your work you go no matter if on the clock it shows break time (you just sat eating, drinking, playing on your phone for 3 hrs); my point? Pull the dam wire!

“Way back” in the 1990s we had some HR training thing on how the new young generation (X) was young, aggressive, and wanted everything handed to them and didn’t want to work for it.

Human brains have a curious development pattern. The part of the brain that handles things like humility, fear of failure, and other things that we consider “mature” develops at a slower rate from everything else. The difference peaks at around age 15 or so and is different between males and females. The “maturity” part does not fully develop until age 25-28. So in between we reach the age of infinite wisdom. In other words you are an idiot and can’t tell them anything. This isn’t just an emotional thing, it’s medical fact. Denying it is like denying that males and females are different. It’s why I’m a strong supporter of increasing the voting age among other things.

After that point you look like a genius and they start to pay attention and learn. But today’s society expects them to be functional adults at age 16 (the peak) and so we are “surprised” by the result where if we go back to recognizing that kids are kids until age 25 we are better off. Then it takes another 5-10 years for this new found wisdom to sink in and they truly figure out what they want out of life and figure out that Mario is not life skills.

 

[brantmacga]

I’ve got a job going right now for university of Florida; most of the electrical is MC cable, but we had to run 1” EMT for all the LV. Took a crew down, went over specs and layout, left them with it. Went back Friday to put pull strings in the pipe for the UF IT guys to come pull their cable and had a really hard time getting the fish tape in. Started tracing conduits down, found almost all of them had 450 to 540 degrees of bend BETWEEN pull boxes. Spent the rest of the day tearing pipe out. We’re having a company meeting next Monday. Going to get our minds right. Lots of things to discuss that should’ve happened awhile back but this was the catalyst that triggered putting everything on hold for a couple of days.


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[jmellc]

I’ve got a job going right now for university of Florida; most of the electrical is MC cable, but we had to run 1” EMT for all the LV. Took a crew down, went over specs and layout, left them with it. Went back Friday to put pull strings in the pipe for the UF IT guys to come pull their cable and had a really hard time getting the fish tape in. Started tracing conduits down, found almost all of them had 450 to 540 degrees of bend BETWEEN pull boxes. Spent the rest of the day tearing pipe out. We’re having a company meeting next Monday. Going to get our minds right. Lots of things to discuss that should’ve happened awhile back but this was the catalyst that triggered putting everything on hold for a couple of days.


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Ow! Someone is going to be awhile living that down. I’ve seen people assume that if it’s LV, bend rules don’t apply. Flawed thinking.

 

[markebenson]

Having just come from a ~30 day 7/12s nuke outage, I see our trade is in very poor shape with the younger generations.
Our base pay is $39.75/hr. Then add a large benefit package and the "children " feel they are being bullied and over worked. When you work an outage you might sit for hours before doing any work, so when called to do your work you go no matter if on the clock it shows break time (you just sat eating, drinking, playing on your phone for 3 hrs); my point? Pull the dam wire!

Phones should not be allowed on a jobsite unless you are a supervisor.

 

[Hv&Lv]

“Way back” in the 1990s we had some HR training thing on how the new young generation (X) was young, aggressive, and wanted everything handed to them and didn’t want to work for it.

Human brains have a curious development pattern. The part of the brain that handles things like humility, fear of failure, and other things that we consider “mature” develops at a slower rate from everything else. The difference peaks at around age 15 or so and is different between males and females. The “maturity” part does not fully develop until age 25-28. So in between we reach the age of infinite wisdom. In other words you are an idiot and can’t tell them anything. This isn’t just an emotional thing, it’s medical fact. Denying it is like denying that males and females are different. It’s why I’m a strong supporter of increasing the voting age among other things.

After that point you look like a genius and they start to pay attention and learn. But today’s society expects them to be functional adults at age 16 (the peak) and so we are “surprised” by the result where if we go back to recognizing that kids are kids until age 25 we are better off. Then it takes another 5-10 years for this new found wisdom to sink in and they truly figure out what they want out of life and figure out that Mario is not life skills.

I told my son and his friends after they graduated high school they were at the point in their life where they were the dumbest they would ever be..
They think they know everything but they really don’t know anything..

once he came back from Parris Island he admitted I may be right..
He turned 36 yesterday..
Awesome kid now.

 

[oldsparky52]

The PoCo crew was reworking the primary counduits on a project I was doing. I watched them install a 2" PVC with 6 90's in it. I mentioned it to the supervisor explaining that by the NEC that would not be allowed and that my experience said he was going to have a problem. As usual, he knew best.

Well, a week later they came in to pull in the primary and guess what ... lol, I was vindicated. They wound up digging the conduit back up at the fifth 90 and tearing the conduit apart and pulling the cable in assembling the conduit over the cable as they finished.

 

[GoldDigger]

The PoCo crew was reworking the primary counduits on a project I was doing. ....
....
They wound up digging the conduit back up at the fifth 90 and tearing the conduit apart and pulling the cable in assembling the conduit over the cable as they finished.

Which the NEC would not have allowed, of course.

 

[Fred B]

The PoCo crew was reworking the primary counduits on a project I was doing........ They wound up digging the conduit back up at the fifth 90 and tearing the conduit apart and pulling the cable in assembling the conduit over the cable as they finished.

POCO not bound by NEC

 

[paulengr]

Phones should not be allowed on a jobsite unless you are a supervisor.

That is simply ridiculous. In today’s world a cell phone is just as useful as an Uglys book or a tape measure. You can run pull calculations to set up your puller. You can take pictures either to document what you or someone else did, document wire numbers, or ask questions from the office or supply house. You can use it to see around corners. You can access manuals. You can use it to communicate to the supply house, to your supervisor, and to tell your wife you are working late on the job. You can connect to some tools including IR cameras, adjust some Milwaukee tool settings, track tools, use it as the screen for a boroscope, and see and even test some IR lighting. Ive used it as a stroboscope and some of the software is getting pretty good at measuring motor load via sound (still has a ways to go). We have our entire work order and email system and phone directory on it.

It has become an indispensable tool on the job site. That does not mean that someone can’t use one to hang out in the portajohn getting their rocks off or making drug deals or wasting time on Twitter. Before cell phones they did all the same things just in a different way and it doesn’t change the need for progressive discipline. But given how many times apprentices cut themselves or each other, or smash their fingers, you may as well ban utility knives and hammers while you are at it. And before you laugh there was actually a large mining company that actually did this for a while.

It’s a tool. How you use it is a choice. The tool is not the issue, it’s the tool user.

 

[Hv&Lv]

POCO not bound by NEC

Your correct, but if it was it wouldn’t be allowed as he stated.
Doing POCO work as long as I have, I can tell you they were set up for failure when they were using 2” conduit for primary cable. The radiuses (radii?) are too similar. Too much surface area touching to be an easy pull.