How real men pull wire!

[Jason Roehl]

Now before all you electricians out there get your panties in a bunch, I realize that what I just did may not be up to code, but at this point, I don't care.

Situation: A while back I ran a 50A subpanel out to my garage/shop with 6/2 in 1" Sched40 PVC, 12-18" deep, not realizing this was not adequate. Thanks to various discussions and questions on BP, I eventually discovered that I needed to run a neutral out there in addition to all this. So, I finally got a round tuit and went after it this weekend...

I come home with 75' of 6awg wire, some lube and a 120' fish tape. After some near-swear, grunting and digging up both ends of the conduit so that I have a more-or-less straight run, I attempt to feed the fish tape. No success starting on the garage end, so I pull it and start from the other. I eventually have to pull the end off the fish tape, but do get it through.

So now I bend the fish tape, loop the 6awg wire through and tape it all up. I say to myself, "I am NOT going to get this through--1" conduit with 6/2awg UF already in it? No way." The connection between the tape and wire is already approaching 1/2" diameter.

The solution?

Fire up the ol' Ford F150...

[Terry Quiram]

A friend of mine told a story about his uncle that used a 9mm to "drill" a hole in the floor to run a wire.

[Phil Phelps]

....I'm thinkin', now, you might get frustrated and pitch a gallon of paint in front of a buzz fan. :D

[Steve Clardy]

I ran into that myself Jason, when I ran the underground wiring from the pole to my shop. I ran 3 #2o copper in a 2"od gray plastic. Thought I had plenty of room to spare. Well, I did till it came to the two 90 degree turns. Was pulling it through with a 3/4 rope, and when I hit the second 90, trouble started. Seems copper doesn't give like the cheaper aluminum. It did not want to bend into the second 90. It was already dragging through the first 90. Had my wife on one end pushing, I was on the other end pulling with a flat bar wrapped with rope. No go. Got out the soap bottle, using it all, no go. Finally broke the 3/4 rope. Didn't know I had it in me to break it. And it broke below the conduit. Wow. Ended up sawing off the conduit, retying, pulling it through with a comealong, and going 22 miles to town to get a connector to put the conduit together. Hour job turned into 6 hours I believe. Steve

[Tony Laros]

Before landscaping I trenched in about 500 ft. of 1¼" poly pipe from the house to the front gates. The security/telephone/gate dude said we needed a junction box every 150 ft. or so, because we wouldn't be able to pull all that wire 500 ft. but I said "Don't worry, I'll use the Suburban". The wire bundle contained 2 phone cables of 3 pair each, 2 intercom cables of 2 pair each, and a power cable to connect to a camera, and a pull rope. That much wire has to be overkill, but you never know when you might need an extra pair if wire for something, right?

I'm in the Suburban pulling very slowly, they're in the basement frantically feeding wire and lots of lubricant, both sides communicating with cell phones, when suddenly the pull rope hits the back window of the truck, and the wire bundle is somewhere lost in 500 ft. of buried pipe. Finding where was a a lot of digging and a lucky guess. Needless to say the pipe was cut and a McGyver'd junction box installed.

This process repeated itself about 3 more times, with the security/telephone/gate dude telling me "I told you so", but we eventually got all the wire pulled. Unfortunately in the process most of the wire got so stretched as to render it useless. So.............this summer I'll be digging up the gardens and burying a 12 pair telephone cable. No pulling/stretching and nobody telling me "I told you so".

[Lee Schierer]

I ran some platic conduit under the driveway to our storage building so I could have power in it. It is about 25 feet fromt he house. I installed the conduit and through the basement wall and up through the floor in the storage building. I had 50 feet of flat braided nylon strapping that was really flexible and sucked the line through the pipe with my shop vac. Tied the line to the wire and pulled it through. That was easy.

Three years later when we decided to get satellite TV we decided to mount the dish on the storage building because the south end of the house is shielded by tall trees. No problem, we'll just pull the coax (2) through the conduit. Well, it took the better part of four hours to get the nylon strapping to suck through the conduit with the #12/2 with ground romex type wire already in it.

I did get smarter though. I left the pull strap in the conduit in case any thing has to be pulled through again.

[Dick Howard]

Usually it is faster and easyer to pull the existing wires out, add the new one to it and pull them all back in. A little wire lube will also help a lot.
Dick in Emmett, Idaho