Thanks & Praise

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J

jmellc

Senior Member
Location
Durham, NC
Occupation
Facility Maintenance Tech. Licensed Electrician
Went in Saturday to pull new wire. We were replacing a 208 single phase cutter with a 3 phase cutter. Discovered that someone pulled a spare wire first time & all we had to do was change a twistlock pigtail cord. Pleasant surprise.
We hadn’t been able to open things up & discover this before; area always running production.
I sure appreciate people who think ahead like that. I do it myself as much as I can.
 
The place I work at part time, since retiring, had a fault in the primary from the utility connection at the street a few years back. It was a long, at least 700' underground run. Luckily, the original contractor, or the EE designer had the foresight to install a spare conduit along with the one that was used. We ran on generator that was large enough to power the whole building for many days until the new primary was pulled and connected but that was a fraction of what a complete new install would have been or cost.
 
ptonsparky said:
Old homes, if we pull up a circuit to the attic for whatever, extras are always taken up. We may not see that house again, but someone will be happy to see them.
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I’ve seen similar. I pulled lots of spares to attics & crawl spaces. Have also done conduit sleeve both ways & spare conduits to ceilings in offices, etc. Buildings get reinvented a lot & such efforts are seldom wasted.
 
oldsparky52 said:
So, on a low bid job, would you just throw in the unused (conduit, wire, etc) item or would you suggest that for a small extra the customer can have the luxury of forethought?
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I mostly included it in my bids. If I had forgotten to do it, I would still run 1 spare both ways, knowing I might be the one to benefit later. Sometimes I did, sometimes not. Maybe I gave too much away. Might have been part of my business death. However; I did have the satisfaction of very few complaints or callbacks. And half of those were faulty products, not faulty work.
 
I'll drop in some extra conduit on projects 'cause you never know. Depending on the project cost, I may not charge if it's a relatively short run and usually additional conduit size is no bigger than 1" anyway. With all the landscape lighting these days, and communication cables for pool side WiFi and even security cameras, it makes life easier for the next guy.

Project I'm on now has gas fired, fire features in the waterfall area running on 12V for hot surface igniters. They will operate off the Jandy automation system.
The fire pit is lit manually. I told my client I would run conduit in the event he changes his mind and wants it to be automated. Running conduit after the fact would be a nightmare. It was about 80' of 3/4" PVC conduit. No biggie.
 
I like the idea of running extra conduit or cables, but the reality is I have to charge for all labor and material, or I risk going out of business. This means running extra makes my bids higher and less competitive therefore I don't do this.

I do like it when I find an extra conduit or cable I can use on a job.
 
Coppersmith said:
I like the idea of running extra conduit or cables, but the reality is I have to charge for all labor and material, or I risk going out of business. This means running extra makes my bids higher and less competitive therefore I don't do this.

I do like it when I find an extra conduit or cable I can use on a job.
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Yes, another rock & hard place decision.
 
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