reducers

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bigdaddy

Member
Location
South Carolina
I have been looking for somthing about reducing from one trade size conduit to another trade size directlly from a ductbank run to an above ground run with out a conduit fitting.should you put a fitting of the same size coming from underground then reduce down?
 

hornetd

Senior Member
Location
Maryland
Occupation
Journeyman Electrician, Retired
Re: reducers

You do need to make any change in the size of a raceway at a box or condulet. I can't quote you chapter and verse off the top of my head but not providing a pull point at any place you change raceway sizes is irresponsible.
--
Tom
 

don_resqcapt19

Moderator
Staff member
Location
Illinois
Occupation
retired electrician
Re: reducers

Tom,
I agree that you should not change conduit sizes, except at a pull point, but is there a code rule that says this? I can't think of one.
Don
 

hornetd

Senior Member
Location
Maryland
Occupation
Journeyman Electrician, Retired
Re: reducers

Don
Here I was hoping that you would be able to provide chapter and verse. If that is not a code rule it certainly should be. Can you imagine trying to fish that from the large end? You could never blow a line through it as the mouse would be wrong for at least one of the sizes. Given that the question concerns a duct bank the run might well be hundreds of feet. I have never seen a fish tape longer than 250'. Do they make them longer?

An apartment house I lived in had a rule that you could not ride bicycles down the stairs. They did not write that rule until some idiot started doing it.
--
Tom
 

iwire

Moderator
Staff member
Location
Massachusetts
Re: reducers

Sometimes things happen that you really do not want.

I was involved with a job that was in a rush as usual and we where trying to get in all the underslab PVC when we ran out of 3/4" in the middle of a run and switched to 1" PVC right there (3/4" bell end fits 1" bell end)

We did not want to do it, but short of that we would not have gotten the feed in before the pour, no code against it (possible 110.3(B) violation) and we went bigger then prints called for I say this to remind that it's a real world out there.

You can certainly take the view that the job should have been held up, but realalisticly that is not going to happen, we would have ended up saw cutting the slab later if we did not get it in.
 

gwz2

Senior Member
Location
Indiana
Re: reducers

I agree with Don's comment.

See the 1992 TCR page 201, Log # 466, Proposal 3-94.

Possibly should have added something similar to:

"by placing a "C" condulet fitting or similar at the point of size change"

in the proposal substantiation.
 

david

Senior Member
Location
Pennsylvania
Re: reducers

This reminds me when a contractor sent a grew of three, A five year man running the grew. Two men started a run of 2" PVC one man started from the sub panel and the other from the MDP. When they got 30 feet from each other they ran out of 2". The 5-year man made the decision to finish the run by filling it in with 1 ? PCV.

When the job got under way the Forman was not made aware of this decision until after he had a real hard time pulling the wire through. Three days into trying to figure out what was wrong, the Forman was told why. The owner even though the wire was semi stuck in the middle of this long pull would not let the Forman abandon the pull and run new pipe over head. You don?t want to know what was done to get that wire through. You could of played music on the pull rope.

If it weren?t fort that dog on kelm the pull would have been a synch!

[ March 08, 2003, 12:44 PM: Message edited by: david ]
 

Nick

Senior Member
Re: reducers

The Situation the poster describes is done all the time by the utilities around here. They require us to run 4? to the pole and where it comes out of the ground they reduce it to 3? to rise up the pole. If the 3? is large enough for the conductors being pulled, I don?t see a problem with it done this way. Never in the case described by David. :eek:

[ March 08, 2003, 05:03 PM: Message edited by: Nick ]
 
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