Smurf tube vs PVC

[ptjeep77]

lots of companys i have worked for always have fights between the foremans and pm's the battles have been fought and the majority of them come out this way: " sure smurf tubing is faster to install and have ready for the pour and occassionally nothing usually goes wrong during the pour,few connectors or whatever, but when you go to install your wireing it sucks and takes a long time. now pvc is more expensive takes longer to put in and have to watch it more intensively during the pour however the end result i ( the foreman talking) feel it is better. wire is easier to pull and usually you don't loose a pipe other than the occasional leak or someone drilling an anchor through it. i will admit smurf tubing is good in expansion joints but i want my men to use pvc and that's what i am ordering!" the foreman slams the door and walks off then well 70% of the time it is pvc and the rest smurf tubing i am young in the trade but have seen plenty of arguments go this way

 

[DIRT27]

lots of companys i have worked for always have fights between the foremans and pm's the battles have been fought and the majority of them come out this way: " sure smurf tubing is faster to install and have ready for the pour and occassionally nothing usually goes wrong during the pour,few connectors or whatever, but when you go to install your wireing it sucks and takes a long time. now pvc is more expensive takes longer to put in and have to watch it more intensively during the pour however the end result i ( the foreman talking) feel it is better. wire is easier to pull and usually you don't loose a pipe other than the occasional leak or someone drilling an anchor through it. i will admit smurf tubing is good in expansion joints but i want my men to use pvc and that's what i am ordering!" the foreman slams the door and walks off then well 70% of the time it is pvc and the rest smurf tubing i am young in the trade but have seen plenty of arguments go this way

I don't think the foreman had every smurf tube in this type of application. The PM had said it would be really fast and had used on other jobs for another company. I am sure if it doesn't go well when it is time to pull wire the Foreman will make sure it is known and will refuse to use it on any of his jobs every again. I was more skeptical than him but when they poured he wasn't impressed.

As far a watching the pour PVC is much easy and requires much less work when the pour is going on. We had to fix on 1 1/4 that got smashed because someone had stepped on it and I also had to keep going back and making the stub ups level. It was pvc stub ups with a pvc 90 to smurf tube. I don't care how much you tie the stuff it still wants to move PVC you can pretty much tie and be done with.

The last job we did on 1/2" stub up got kicked off easy fix. I barely had to do anything all day but watch. The smurf tube pour I was in the concrete almost all day. One got smashed that we know of plus straighting stubs and trying to straighten the smurf tube that moved.

I also realize that each bend when it floats or moves count towards the 360 degree rule. I guess I will use X-ray vision to see if I am kosher on that. It was pulled tight as they could get it and I just think the stuff shouldn't be used for that type of application.

I think I will throw a fit if they ask me to run that stuff on one of my jobs for that application. I will bring this thread back to life once we start pulling wire. I might have a change of thought but I am skeptical. Most of the time this PM is pretty good all though I don't deal with him much. I have heard people say that he has great Ideas for other people to do. He does have experience in field but I think he has been out too long.

 

[cadpoint]

I noticed that it wants to float in the concrete. The difference is if you tie pvc down it doesn't flex very much, so it doesn't try to float smurf tube you could tie down every 3 feet and would still try to float in the middle.

Denis it might look good untill you pour 600 plus yrds of concrete on it.

I was corrected on another post on Smurf, Sitting correct is good " Forum "