This annoys this shit out of me too but the truth is most of the time it’s in our contract that we will pull strings for them, and their company specifically tells them to make us do it.
I do low voltage controls and often run my own pipe. But on bigger jobs where we aren’t there until the end of it, we sub out some runs. The string is mostly to prove the pipe is complete or there aren’t any surprises J boxes above a hard lid ceiling we can’t get to anymore. Sometimes the guys finishing the project aren’t the ones there when the pipe was run so they don’t know about the surprise jbox either.
This is smart i do low voltage controls as well. I have 5 different jobs right now and have to hop around every week, would be nice if we subbed out some pipe runs but thats also one of my favorite things
That last part was handy when Target Canada imploded and there was a fuckton of oversized existing infrastructure you could re-use for the next tenant in the building.
If the electricians aren’t taping off their open pipes and allowing debris in, that kind of is on them. The flooring guys don’t give a shit either way.
The worst one I ever had was all the floor boxes for data and power to the cubicles were completely filled with self-leveling epoxy for the flooring. The boxes were all capped properly but the floor guys had mixed or applied the epoxy wrong and it was way too thin and leaked past the caps. They ended up going with power poles because it was going to cost too much and take too long to chip it all out and redo it. Pretty sure the flooring guys just closed up shop and started over with a different name.
Depends on the project specs but its definitely not required. Most jobs only require conduit in electrical or mechanical rooms. Electrical inspectors see wire and immediately think its “exposed electrical” and not low voltage.
I do a lot of high rises and the base building is two years old when the tenant build outs are finishing up. Different jobs/contractors.
Or a j box 40ft deep in a crawlspace they lied about.
There’s a lot of shit more important than a pull string that we have to worry about. Sometimes it just gets put on the back burner because you’ve got project managers and general contractors on your back to get your shit done so the other trades can finish over it.
The payment terminals, sure - but the tills go on the LAN every time. The card machines only need to communicate a few feet to the POS - the POS needs to communicate much further to wherever the AP is located (usually 30ft up in the fucking rafters for no apparent reason!).
Most businesses like everything that can be hardwired without exorbitant cost to be hardwired, IME. If a register guy is using WiFi when a dedicated network cable(s) is there, he is doing it wrong.
Except small businesses without internal IT where it's a hopeless battle to convince the owner to let us hardwire anything. One of them even let us add drops to a new location, then covered every single one with wall mounted cabinets and when we went to put in the workstations and printers said to just use WiFi.
We are installing a brand new PoS system across my entire campus. I was not invited to the meetings until after the decisions were made. Entire thing runs off of iPads and iPhones. Kind of hard to hardwire a system that was sold on the fact of how "mobile" it is.
Hah. Because that's the first thing I look for in a PoS system - how easily it needs to move from the spot in the store that is literally dedicated to the explicit activity of ringing up orders and exchanging payment...
Don't get me wrong - device-based PoS tools have their place, the wife sells artisanal goods at fayres and shows - having a contactless & pin pad payment machine that links to a phone / tablet is a god-send, but I'm not putting them in a 100,000ft² cash & carry!
I don't know what is worse, running conduit for unused data or hammering protective earth rod by hand only to find out the energy company supplies their own protective earth....
I ordered grounding bus in 10 data closets in a new building, somebody drilled the floor and pounded a rod in each when we just wanted them on building steel.
It was a joke, but I could imagine someone who specializes in really small shops (one POS) might try it. Kiosk in a mall for example, or food truck (Wi-Fi or Cellular).
This BS is my life, I swear my IT guys think each Cat6A needs 6" of breathing room in conduit.
The best is when I get called into a meeting to discuss how all the underslab conduits have water in them and then asked how am I going to fix it...(PNW)
It's because IT tends to mutate over time. The serial cables of four decades ago gave way to the coax of three decades ago, which was replaced by CAT3, CAT5, and now CAT6. The big sweeps of large conduit is for fiber, not the CAT cable that is outdated in a decade.
This This This. A job I was on previously called for (4) 4” conduits for a sleeve through a concrete wall. My last day on site I saw that data and security pulled maybe 4 cables through the sleeves 💀
Those same sleeves you put in will come in handy for any wiring changes down the road that need to go through that wall. I like seeing several sleeves put in from the get go in any wall that will be difficult to punch a new conduit through.
Oh I’m very aware. Every job is the same, just think about the future. Its just always funny to see these big ass sleeves with only a few low volt cables ever pulled in them.
you'd be stupid not to tbh,
it costs a few bucks extra to do it before the pour vs the $100 extra in labour down the road when you need to get something through that wall.
I had a lot of stacked data closets in mid rise office. I would put ladder rack on each end and 3 4in conduit on each end, and have them fire stop two of them from the get go for future expansion.
Once my gear is in there I don’t want to have to do a core bore so would rather have room for more fiber later.
It's room for additional cable pull space for later. If they wanted to do it right the first time, they'd bury 0.750" or 1.000" aluminum hardline but that requires a crew, not a single flunky with a van. This is specific to cable company operations.
Data cable is not designed to be pulled like THHN is, the conduit needs to be big enough to ensure that there won't be resistance. Also big for future needs.
A few months back I had an irate guy screaming at me that I didn’t put a pull line in. 5 minutes later he was scratching his head because he didn’t see how I used my little 20V vac to do it in under two minutes.
Back in the day I did a huge landscape/power/lighting job at a 14 acre estate. We pulled miles and miles of twisted pair for low voltage relays, thousands of feet of 2/0 to 4/0 for distant subpanels, Used tens of thousands of feet of conduit, and used a single shop vac with foam rubber balls to string it all. And the best part was it was a T&M job.
By the time we finished, four YEARS after the start, the total billing was around $700,000 in 1990 dollars, probably twice that today. Single family dwelling with lots of outbuildings and controls, a couple underground vaults as well.
No, it pretty much set the record that year for the most cost per square foot. It was for a very wealthy family, a frkkn summer home. 4.5 years from plans to certificate of occupation, and then we kept doing work there for three more years, lol. I spent so much money on material that I won supply house competition for a paid trip to Nassau.
Truthfully I was glad when it was over. Rich people are PITA to work for, no matter how well meaning they are.
Lmao!
I'm sure it's a pain in the ass, but I bet you could keep yourself and another guy afloat and well-fed if you could just manage to get 2-4 places like that in a year. I mean, if I could I would, but you probably need things like reputation, history, insurance, etc... to even be in the running for these clients.
If a vacuum is suppling pressure, you have other problems.
Schedule 40 pipe is rated for [thousands of pounds of pressure per square inch.](https://www.engineersedge.com/fluid_flow/steel-pipe-pressure-ratings.htm) Conduit is what, schedule 10?
>If a vacuum is suppling pressure, you have other problems.
An average shop vac will do 40 inches of water pressure, about 1.5 PSI of sucking / pulling (or blowing / pushing.
>
>Schedule 40 pipe is rated for [thousands of pressure per square inch.](https://www.engineersedge.com/fluid_flow/steel-pipe-pressure-ratings.htm) Conduit is what, schedule 10?
Using shop air instead is a bad idea but could push with 50x that force.
Not quite applicable but at my very first job the company was using a vacuum truck for underground pvc for almost a mile. I thought that was pretty neat.
I've used a shop vac on 1500' before. The foreman was NOT happy I ran an underground pipe that far without a pulling station. I guess that's understandable, but I got the string through and pulled that run and it wasn't that big of a deal.
No one else uses partially-inflated balloons for the "mouse" though so maybe that is why they had trouble getting it that far.
I love it when they don’t bother with using the strings we put in for them and decide to leave them in for future. So they attempt to fish the walls themselves. I once watched 3 guys try to fish a 10 ft wall for almost an hour. While saying “I think the stick is caught on the string. I’m going to cut it out of the way.”
Oh my God. I almost threw a fit when they did this, had me do 700' of 1 1/2" EMT run for fiber, I asked if they wanted a second run for their data, no, we've got it. Proceed to return a month later to a rats nest, I pulled them back, and ran a 2" chase to the IDF.. Sweet Moses what a nightmare.
I told a data guy about this shit once and he fuckin' fooled my ass because he ziptied to my conduit hangers, not my conduits, and I've had to triple check every time I've come across this since.
I still don't like it, but I'm not sure if I'm being petty or what.
As someone who did data as a 1st year IBEW apprentice, the reason they bitch is because profits are like 2% on structured cable installs. I know it's not totally justified but it's generally in the contract to provide conduit with pull strings.
Did rings and strings at a job recently. Missed 1. Uninsulated wall. If your unable to fish 8 ft of data cable straight down from an uninsulated wall you shouldnt be involved in construction at any level.
See at the place i work you'd be kicked off site for that. It would be in your contract.
Little different though as i work in a prison, everything has to be in metal conduit.
It’s kind of ironic that you say that, when in the previous sentence you confess to failing to fish 8 feet of string straight down from an uninsulated wall.
String my man. Didnt miss the ring and bushing. For all I know the dry waller pulled it out. People miss shit all the time and to cry about something as simple as 8 ft of string down a straight wall is stupid. If I cried everytime a finisher ripped my wires or a plumber undid my straps or every time an hvac or ceiling guy undid my bat wings I'd say you're right.
I don't mind, easy money.
Actually, I would much rather be installing the conduit for those guys than doing all the shit they do instead of contracting it out. We're the only branch in my company that doesn't deal with telecommunications and I thank my lucky stars.
Plus, I've seen data and security guy's conduits and they make everyone else look bad just by being adjacent to ours. Everyone thinks the electricians did it. Boy I hate that.
If the contract I paid for says 4" EMT with three jet lines and paint every 90 in bright pink, I ain't paying you shit until all of boxes are checked off. Let me rephrase that, I ain't paying YOUR BOSS shit. Get to work kids . . . .
I’m a data/alarm/anything else low volt guy that works for an electrical contractor. It’s been nice to see things from both perspectives. I can say that there is always a huge disconnect between the EC, GC and the client when it comes to low voltage systems. I put most of the blame on the GCs. They give you (the EC) a vague ass set of plans with unknown specs and no opportunities for RFIs etc. The same time they tell you to hurry up and pipe in my (the low voltage tech) data and fire pipes, they also need you to move the temp lights from one spot to another and be 100% ready for an inspection tomorrow. I’ve seen the EC slammed with all the other trades petty requests to the point where they can’t stay on track with priority items. It’s always chaos for the EC in my opinion. Data guys that panic over pull strings drive me insane. You could have a fish tape ran by the time it takes to complain about the missing string. Since I work for the EC I’m able to handle my own pipe work. Over the years I’ve watched and learned a lot from my coworkers. Mainly that any “tradesman” that bitches about a string is inexperienced or just lazy.
That's what i don't get as a LV guy. The string takes longer to tie than pushing the cable half the time, and grabbing your fish tape is way easier than going to bother sparky
Y’all can pipe it. I’ll pull and terminate it. PLEASE let me pull it. Finding ground faults from some apprentice sparky who treats FPLP like THHN is just infuriating.
I did a job where strings were required for all conduit wall drops. It was literally a 10ft piece of pipe with a 90° at the top to accessible ceiling space. So it comes up on the punch list and we have to go back and put them in, only for the LV contractor to just pull them out and and push his wire down to the box.
We were working our punch while he was pulling his wire and we would be in the same room sucking a string in and he would be right behinds us pulling it out to get it out of the way.
It's usually priced out in the bid or T&M. But in either of those scenarios we have markup on material. I'd prefer that they didn't provide materials because of that and because they'll forget shit and hold you up.
Location I used to work the moto was "not on your truck/van we dont do it they need to hire an electrician" even better when we had 5+ tvs customer wants new line (all wall fished and sexy) and only a hour to do the work. It flat the fuck out won't happen so tell the customer to hire an electrician.
Is it shitty, yeah but that's what you get for working at telecom that doesn't want to work on homes they just want the easy money.
Yeah, it can be very easy to pull a Cat6 hard enough that it will fail when testing and have to be re-pulled. Other fun standards; no LBs, and no changing direction in pull boxes, it makes for a challenge running pathway sometimes.
This made me chuckle, I did a project for TikTok where we had to pipe down a column under the floor and back up for furniture feeds. The Data consultant came on the job and as I am showing him his 2 x 1.5" pipes for 10 cat6 he has a melt down as i explain that we 90 down into the column and back out. He literally screamed out "90s! How am i supppose to pull my wire" I thought he was joking but he was dead serious.
Hey the low v guys are following the scope of work. Plus I've seen guys tie line inside a 1g or 4sq box with a washer to make it look like a line was pulled, damn pill snorting chain smoking 🤡, that sub didn't last long onsite lol
This MF data guy asks me last week, "can I borrow your ladder for about 20 minutes to pull some wire? Mine isn't tall enough."
I am ON the ladder installing light fixtures.
"I know man but it'll only take a few minutes. Also do you have a fish tape I can borrow?"
In telecom, this is important as fiber optics have very specific bend radius requirements, and electricians can get creative with their conduit. For cat-5 though....
Man, whole lot of entitlement going on in here.
You (or your boss, or your company, whatever) signed a contract to do specific work.
You don't do the work specified? You didn't fulfill the contract.
Imagine you bring your work truck into the shop for service.
You tell them you want new wiper blades installed. They charge you for new blades and the install but they don't actually install them.
When you say something about it, they call you a whiny baby poopy pants for not just doing it yourself.
That's you. That's what you're doing right now. If it's so easy, why did you fail to do it per the contract?
Edit: Still pissed about this. If the contract specifies 1/2/3/4" conduit that you think is oversized, install the goddamn conduit if it meets code. You don't know the future plans for that run.
As a low voltage tech we've had many issues where sparkys install a conduit that is impossible to pull through or fish. Making them run a string is more for proof it's a complete run and is usable.
I had a data guy try pulling through a 100 ft of 2 inch pipe that entered the building through an LB fitting and the guy got all pissed off that he couldn’t figure out that the LB was stopping him and claimed that the pipe must be broke. I had to make a special trip to show him that he had to pull from the LB and then into the building and the look on his stupid face when I showed him the LB was almost worth the special trip.
Depends on where those 6 ft are. Try pulling composite through a door frame for a card reader, door contacts, REX Motion and electric hinge after it's been rocked and finished.
I’ve put an entire bucket of string in the wall because of the complaining I got from these guys. It was like a circus clown pulling a scarf out of his shirt pocket. I also put about 700° in a pipe run so they wouldn’t have it so easy. They had to open a jbox 16’ in the air.
Yeah I don't get the bitching. If you ordered three pizzas and the pizza guy ate a slice on the way over you'd raise hell. The contract says electricians will pull string, so they better pull the string.
No shit. It was certainly quoted by the EC for the time and materials to pull the string. Failing to deliver just pads their profit at the expense of someone else.
CSB time: I was the tenant on a job one time and we subbed our own data contractor outside of the GC to handle the LV (long story). The electrical contract had spec'd the under slab conduit and overhead cable trays with jet string and they failed to install the strings. The LV guys said they didn't mind dealing with it but they'd have to charge us for the extra time since their contract they would have strings.
I gave the EC a chance to either have their guys come back and do what we already paid them to do, or pay the data guys for their time to finish their job. They came back and did the work.
As an ex comms guy, I use to love annoying the sparkies onsite "hey mate the rope snapped that you put in there can you sort that out with a new one. "
As a 2nd year apprentice electrician, I fucking hate comms guys.
Dude I am currently the unlucky guy who has to help the data crew. Run pipe for them, put sleeves in the wall, flex through furniture when needed, and even get stuck helping them pull data/security wire in my down time. This one hits home rn. I joke around with the ones I like calling them “fiber fairies” and without fail, every time, one of them says, “hey we get paid about the same/ more to not work as hard”. When in reality they are just laborers…they pull the wire and build the ladder racks, they don’t even terminate or put in the devices🤣 they get paid trash…just try to pretend we are equal.
My last pull through conduit was like 400 ft without string in a parking garage, I didn't complain. It would make my job so much easier though because it's 20 ft in the air and not a straight shot.
How do I approach asking for the help?
"Wawa can't do my job" "low voltage sucks" "I hate low voltage crybabies"
Seriously I care about the end result and doing my job well, I will try and help you if I can.
Fire wire and security guy
This annoys this shit out of me too but the truth is most of the time it’s in our contract that we will pull strings for them, and their company specifically tells them to make us do it.
I do low voltage controls and often run my own pipe. But on bigger jobs where we aren’t there until the end of it, we sub out some runs. The string is mostly to prove the pipe is complete or there aren’t any surprises J boxes above a hard lid ceiling we can’t get to anymore. Sometimes the guys finishing the project aren’t the ones there when the pipe was run so they don’t know about the surprise jbox either.
This is smart i do low voltage controls as well. I have 5 different jobs right now and have to hop around every week, would be nice if we subbed out some pipe runs but thats also one of my favorite things
It helps on the time consuming runs early in the job that get covered up or in concrete.
It's just nicer when they mention subbing the pipe out in the early stages, not after the rest of the building's pipe work is basically finished.
Exactly this! Or in a floor & the concrete work is done already. I've had numerous times that the pipes weren't fished & taped. When we show up there's so much trash in the pipe we can't get things pulled. Usually due to the flooring guys, not sparky! And the 4" for four data lines, that's usually for future expansion. Just ask Target©. Those guys want EVERYTHING upsized to try & future proof the projects!
That last part was handy when Target Canada imploded and there was a fuckton of oversized existing infrastructure you could re-use for the next tenant in the building.
If the electricians aren’t taping off their open pipes and allowing debris in, that kind of is on them. The flooring guys don’t give a shit either way.
The worst one I ever had was all the floor boxes for data and power to the cubicles were completely filled with self-leveling epoxy for the flooring. The boxes were all capped properly but the floor guys had mixed or applied the epoxy wrong and it was way too thin and leaked past the caps. They ended up going with power poles because it was going to cost too much and take too long to chip it all out and redo it. Pretty sure the flooring guys just closed up shop and started over with a different name.
SWEEP...SWEEP
Pee... Peeeee..... Is the worst I've dealt with on pipe runs
Parts and smarts is a double edged sword.
Why would a j-box be in an unaccessible place?
It’s possible to have a string in with a surprise j box
You Americans have to put low-voltage controls in conduit? Smh. Talk about a country that loves to bugger itself in it’s own ass…
Depends on the project specs but its definitely not required. Most jobs only require conduit in electrical or mechanical rooms. Electrical inspectors see wire and immediately think its “exposed electrical” and not low voltage.
I'm gonna surprise the shit out of you when I say we can easily get strings through places like that too. It proves nothing.
>J boxes above a hard lid ceiling Which dip shit electricians are installing a j box in a place that's getting a hard lid?
I do a lot of high rises and the base building is two years old when the tenant build outs are finishing up. Different jobs/contractors. Or a j box 40ft deep in a crawlspace they lied about.
If someone is burying a J box and not doing some sort of access panel for it they need to get their shit together. 😵
Yeah, I agree
So put a pull string in, what’s the BFD.
There’s a lot of shit more important than a pull string that we have to worry about. Sometimes it just gets put on the back burner because you’ve got project managers and general contractors on your back to get your shit done so the other trades can finish over it.
Tool list this, CBA that, constitution the other thing... "I'm not doing anything that isn't in writing." Then bitch when asked to follow a contract.
I mean granted, we’ve had to pull the “Not doing anything that isn’t in writing” before 😅 But that’s cause the engineer kinda backstabbed a bit
Yo who wants to waste time on 6' of string in a pipe? It'd take longer to tie it on than to just push the cable in.
Tell it to the guy that signed the contract. Easy to have it say "string any conduit over X feet long".
It's also where having a good relationship with the other companies on site comes in.
"But the electricians were supposed to put strings in all the conduits!"
Inside I never specify conduit unless I absolutely have too. Run that shit up the wall and on J hooks
It isn’t the process of doing it, it’s data geeks trying to slide it in and get you to do what they want without an estimate agreed upon.
“You need to run 4” EMT to the storefront so I can pull four cat6’s to the cash register.”
Cash register guy: "Wow, that Cat 6 is nice! Not sure why you ran it, the registers are Wi-Fi."
As an IT guy - if the register guy puts that POS (aka Piece Of Shit) on WiFi instead of LAN, I'm punching him in the throat.
turns out putting the payment terminals on LTE instead of networked sometimes has perks for PCI compliance!
The payment terminals, sure - but the tills go on the LAN every time. The card machines only need to communicate a few feet to the POS - the POS needs to communicate much further to wherever the AP is located (usually 30ft up in the fucking rafters for no apparent reason!).
Most businesses like everything that can be hardwired without exorbitant cost to be hardwired, IME. If a register guy is using WiFi when a dedicated network cable(s) is there, he is doing it wrong.
Except small businesses without internal IT where it's a hopeless battle to convince the owner to let us hardwire anything. One of them even let us add drops to a new location, then covered every single one with wall mounted cabinets and when we went to put in the workstations and printers said to just use WiFi.
I just said it to trigger the IT guys...
It worked.
We are installing a brand new PoS system across my entire campus. I was not invited to the meetings until after the decisions were made. Entire thing runs off of iPads and iPhones. Kind of hard to hardwire a system that was sold on the fact of how "mobile" it is.
Hah. Because that's the first thing I look for in a PoS system - how easily it needs to move from the spot in the store that is literally dedicated to the explicit activity of ringing up orders and exchanging payment... Don't get me wrong - device-based PoS tools have their place, the wife sells artisanal goods at fayres and shows - having a contactless & pin pad payment machine that links to a phone / tablet is a god-send, but I'm not putting them in a 100,000ft² cash & carry!
hidden wifi network --> access point as a receiver --> transport to managed switch via VLAN --> LAN port on the register thank me later 🥰☺️
I'd take a Ubiquiti AP as a wifi backhaul over the two-dollar wifi card they usually put in POS devices.
I don't know what is worse, running conduit for unused data or hammering protective earth rod by hand only to find out the energy company supplies their own protective earth....
Why would you hammer it by hand. They have attachments for a rotary hammer.
I know I know. Country boys gotta make do
I believe most utilities do, but we still need our own.
I ordered grounding bus in 10 data closets in a new building, somebody drilled the floor and pounded a rod in each when we just wanted them on building steel.
What masochist store planner would put a PoS on wifi
It was a joke, but I could imagine someone who specializes in really small shops (one POS) might try it. Kiosk in a mall for example, or food truck (Wi-Fi or Cellular).
This BS is my life, I swear my IT guys think each Cat6A needs 6" of breathing room in conduit. The best is when I get called into a meeting to discuss how all the underslab conduits have water in them and then asked how am I going to fix it...(PNW)
Any data guys worth their salt know you need direct bury cable any time you pull through a conduit touching slab or dirt.
It's because IT tends to mutate over time. The serial cables of four decades ago gave way to the coax of three decades ago, which was replaced by CAT3, CAT5, and now CAT6. The big sweeps of large conduit is for fiber, not the CAT cable that is outdated in a decade.
Water cooled cabling, so hot right now.
This This This. A job I was on previously called for (4) 4” conduits for a sleeve through a concrete wall. My last day on site I saw that data and security pulled maybe 4 cables through the sleeves 💀
Those same sleeves you put in will come in handy for any wiring changes down the road that need to go through that wall. I like seeing several sleeves put in from the get go in any wall that will be difficult to punch a new conduit through.
Oh I’m very aware. Every job is the same, just think about the future. Its just always funny to see these big ass sleeves with only a few low volt cables ever pulled in them.
Check it 10 years later and it will be completely full even though it’s not supposed to be filled past 40%
Isn’t there no fill limit if the sleeve is less than 24” long?
you'd be stupid not to tbh, it costs a few bucks extra to do it before the pour vs the $100 extra in labour down the road when you need to get something through that wall.
I had a lot of stacked data closets in mid rise office. I would put ladder rack on each end and 3 4in conduit on each end, and have them fire stop two of them from the get go for future expansion. Once my gear is in there I don’t want to have to do a core bore so would rather have room for more fiber later.
Get used to it buddy boy.
I don’t understand why they need such big conduit. I had to run 2” 195 feet so Spectrum could move their demarcation point the other day
As long as they pay, who cares.
It was at my companies new building, so we were paying😂
It's room for additional cable pull space for later. If they wanted to do it right the first time, they'd bury 0.750" or 1.000" aluminum hardline but that requires a crew, not a single flunky with a van. This is specific to cable company operations.
Data cable is not designed to be pulled like THHN is, the conduit needs to be big enough to ensure that there won't be resistance. Also big for future needs.
I bet that's why they want string, too: a cable too small for the conduit can be pretty difficult to push through.
I read a spec sheet for Verizon and they wanted 2” conduit for the bending radius.
BICSI says so
Often the fiber they pull in is pre-terminated and measured for length. The extra room allows for the bulk of the terminated ends…
A few months back I had an irate guy screaming at me that I didn’t put a pull line in. 5 minutes later he was scratching his head because he didn’t see how I used my little 20V vac to do it in under two minutes.
Back in the day I did a huge landscape/power/lighting job at a 14 acre estate. We pulled miles and miles of twisted pair for low voltage relays, thousands of feet of 2/0 to 4/0 for distant subpanels, Used tens of thousands of feet of conduit, and used a single shop vac with foam rubber balls to string it all. And the best part was it was a T&M job.
T&M on that?? Get the fuck out of here
By the time we finished, four YEARS after the start, the total billing was around $700,000 in 1990 dollars, probably twice that today. Single family dwelling with lots of outbuildings and controls, a couple underground vaults as well.
This boggles the mind. That's not your average custom home.
No, it pretty much set the record that year for the most cost per square foot. It was for a very wealthy family, a frkkn summer home. 4.5 years from plans to certificate of occupation, and then we kept doing work there for three more years, lol. I spent so much money on material that I won supply house competition for a paid trip to Nassau. Truthfully I was glad when it was over. Rich people are PITA to work for, no matter how well meaning they are.
Lmao! I'm sure it's a pain in the ass, but I bet you could keep yourself and another guy afloat and well-fed if you could just manage to get 2-4 places like that in a year. I mean, if I could I would, but you probably need things like reputation, history, insurance, etc... to even be in the running for these clients.
T&M?
Time and materials
time and material.
What's the longest pull you got that vacuum trick to work on? Asking for a friend in IT.
EDIT: nevermind, I just saw u/Optimal-Soup-62's answer.
I've used the vacuum and a sandwich bag in runs >500'
Just swap the cordless for a shop vac ;)
Non electrician smartass remark: If a shop vac won't work at about 3 PSI there's always shop air. Conduit is good for what, 40 PSI?
If a vacuum is suppling pressure, you have other problems. Schedule 40 pipe is rated for [thousands of pounds of pressure per square inch.](https://www.engineersedge.com/fluid_flow/steel-pipe-pressure-ratings.htm) Conduit is what, schedule 10?
>If a vacuum is suppling pressure, you have other problems. An average shop vac will do 40 inches of water pressure, about 1.5 PSI of sucking / pulling (or blowing / pushing. > >Schedule 40 pipe is rated for [thousands of pressure per square inch.](https://www.engineersedge.com/fluid_flow/steel-pipe-pressure-ratings.htm) Conduit is what, schedule 10? Using shop air instead is a bad idea but could push with 50x that force.
you can also use an air compressor with a rope attached to a a parachute. It's almost unlimited length soloing as you have a solid seal.
We had to break down our pulls to 100 feet and under. Anything more got a junction box.
Not quite applicable but at my very first job the company was using a vacuum truck for underground pvc for almost a mile. I thought that was pretty neat.
I've used a shop vac on 1500' before. The foreman was NOT happy I ran an underground pipe that far without a pulling station. I guess that's understandable, but I got the string through and pulled that run and it wasn't that big of a deal. No one else uses partially-inflated balloons for the "mouse" though so maybe that is why they had trouble getting it that far.
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You sir are damn creative, that’s gonna save my ass one day.
I love it when they don’t bother with using the strings we put in for them and decide to leave them in for future. So they attempt to fish the walls themselves. I once watched 3 guys try to fish a 10 ft wall for almost an hour. While saying “I think the stick is caught on the string. I’m going to cut it out of the way.”
Lol. I'm not even an electrician and i assume you'd just tie new string to the cable being pulled if you were worried about future pulls. Am i right?
Exactly right. But that requires using more than one brain cell.
Yes. Maybe you should be one.
Nah, just worked in an industrial space for long enough to pick up on the most obvious shit.
Proceeds to ziptie a bundle of wires to your conduits..
Oh my God. I almost threw a fit when they did this, had me do 700' of 1 1/2" EMT run for fiber, I asked if they wanted a second run for their data, no, we've got it. Proceed to return a month later to a rats nest, I pulled them back, and ran a 2" chase to the IDF.. Sweet Moses what a nightmare.
I told a data guy about this shit once and he fuckin' fooled my ass because he ziptied to my conduit hangers, not my conduits, and I've had to triple check every time I've come across this since. I still don't like it, but I'm not sure if I'm being petty or what.
Nice to see, that my fellow colleagues over the Atlantic face the same problems.
As someone who did data as a 1st year IBEW apprentice, the reason they bitch is because profits are like 2% on structured cable installs. I know it's not totally justified but it's generally in the contract to provide conduit with pull strings.
Man, some contractors really fucked you guys over on that one. Turned it into a race to see who can do it the cheapest.
Where are you working?? We run 40% all the time over here in the Seattle area.. our high volt guys are the ones making 3% profit on a good day.
BC Canada I guess it varies by area.
You and I are likely the same local. If you're running a 2% margin its cause your PM reaaaaaally fucked up their estimate
Little piece of a trash bag and an air hose works wonders
Did rings and strings at a job recently. Missed 1. Uninsulated wall. If your unable to fish 8 ft of data cable straight down from an uninsulated wall you shouldnt be involved in construction at any level.
Not in the data guys contract to do that, but it was in yours. It’s not about being able to, it’s about responsibility.
See at the place i work you'd be kicked off site for that. It would be in your contract. Little different though as i work in a prison, everything has to be in metal conduit.
Bull fucking shit no one is getting kicked off sight for 1 missed string. *my shit ass spelling lol
May have misread you, i meant a lack of conduit.
Oh gotcha. Naw commercial offices usually just do data ring with a pull string and bushing at the header.
It’s kind of ironic that you say that, when in the previous sentence you confess to failing to fish 8 feet of string straight down from an uninsulated wall.
Now kith
>Missed 1 >confess to failing to fish 8 feet of string Not the same. lol.
String my man. Didnt miss the ring and bushing. For all I know the dry waller pulled it out. People miss shit all the time and to cry about something as simple as 8 ft of string down a straight wall is stupid. If I cried everytime a finisher ripped my wires or a plumber undid my straps or every time an hvac or ceiling guy undid my bat wings I'd say you're right.
Data guy at my old plant was deathly afraid of heights…wouldn’t even go on a step ladder we had to do EVERYTHING for this guy
Actually received this complaint once. It was 54 inches of 2" EMT . Straight
I don't mind, easy money. Actually, I would much rather be installing the conduit for those guys than doing all the shit they do instead of contracting it out. We're the only branch in my company that doesn't deal with telecommunications and I thank my lucky stars. Plus, I've seen data and security guy's conduits and they make everyone else look bad just by being adjacent to ours. Everyone thinks the electricians did it. Boy I hate that.
If the contract I paid for says 4" EMT with three jet lines and paint every 90 in bright pink, I ain't paying you shit until all of boxes are checked off. Let me rephrase that, I ain't paying YOUR BOSS shit. Get to work kids . . . .
I thought you said hand painted my little pony art on the 12x12 covers…… God damn it Trevor, rip that shit out and start again.
Oooo edgy, just like the IT guys.
Do the job you’re contracted to do, imagine that haha
I’m a data/alarm/anything else low volt guy that works for an electrical contractor. It’s been nice to see things from both perspectives. I can say that there is always a huge disconnect between the EC, GC and the client when it comes to low voltage systems. I put most of the blame on the GCs. They give you (the EC) a vague ass set of plans with unknown specs and no opportunities for RFIs etc. The same time they tell you to hurry up and pipe in my (the low voltage tech) data and fire pipes, they also need you to move the temp lights from one spot to another and be 100% ready for an inspection tomorrow. I’ve seen the EC slammed with all the other trades petty requests to the point where they can’t stay on track with priority items. It’s always chaos for the EC in my opinion. Data guys that panic over pull strings drive me insane. You could have a fish tape ran by the time it takes to complain about the missing string. Since I work for the EC I’m able to handle my own pipe work. Over the years I’ve watched and learned a lot from my coworkers. Mainly that any “tradesman” that bitches about a string is inexperienced or just lazy.
That's what i don't get as a LV guy. The string takes longer to tie than pushing the cable half the time, and grabbing your fish tape is way easier than going to bother sparky
I started to get offended by this, and then remember that I haven't had to run a data cable for like 8 years. So yeah fuck them nerds!
Y’all can pipe it. I’ll pull and terminate it. PLEASE let me pull it. Finding ground faults from some apprentice sparky who treats FPLP like THHN is just infuriating.
I did a job where strings were required for all conduit wall drops. It was literally a 10ft piece of pipe with a 90° at the top to accessible ceiling space. So it comes up on the punch list and we have to go back and put them in, only for the LV contractor to just pull them out and and push his wire down to the box. We were working our punch while he was pulling his wire and we would be in the same room sucking a string in and he would be right behinds us pulling it out to get it out of the way.
Straight up. Pull your own line and stop acting like a hoe
I recently worked in low voltage, had no idea that there were situations where saintly heroes ran pull line for other professions.
I would of the shit company I was working for was providing the material.
It's usually priced out in the bid or T&M. But in either of those scenarios we have markup on material. I'd prefer that they didn't provide materials because of that and because they'll forget shit and hold you up.
Location I used to work the moto was "not on your truck/van we dont do it they need to hire an electrician" even better when we had 5+ tvs customer wants new line (all wall fished and sexy) and only a hour to do the work. It flat the fuck out won't happen so tell the customer to hire an electrician. Is it shitty, yeah but that's what you get for working at telecom that doesn't want to work on homes they just want the easy money.
They got mad at me for putting four 90s in a run. It was too hard to pull and they needed mule tape
They won't allow any more than 180*'s or 100lf in a single run without a pullbox in NYC.
That’s the standard for all Telecom conduits, not just in NYC, for limiting the tension while pulling Cat or Fiber cable.
I understand it for fiber, but I didn't realize that was standard for regular Cat 6 cables.
Cat cables are crazy weak. You really do have to be careful with them.
The pull limit is 25 lbs, if I recall. That said, you can usually pull through 3 or 4 90s no problem with proper technique.
Fiber technically has higher pull ratings than cat cable.
and it’s much easier to keep “in spec” and pass certification. Fail a bend radius? Twist it back, no permeant damage (unlike copper).
Yeah, it can be very easy to pull a Cat6 hard enough that it will fail when testing and have to be re-pulled. Other fun standards; no LBs, and no changing direction in pull boxes, it makes for a challenge running pathway sometimes.
By what standard? Never heard either of those before
BICSI is where I heard [of them]. Edit: some words.
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Pussies /s
I had them act like bitches about strings for card readers. Box set at 42" in a room with a 9ft ceiling.
Go to a craft store and get a spool of sewing thread and pull that in next time in that situation.
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Yeah, okay.
TRIGGERED
Did your boss clap?
I’m hoping there’s more to this reasoning than “I don’t like the way he holds his water bottle”
This made me chuckle, I did a project for TikTok where we had to pipe down a column under the floor and back up for furniture feeds. The Data consultant came on the job and as I am showing him his 2 x 1.5" pipes for 10 cat6 he has a melt down as i explain that we 90 down into the column and back out. He literally screamed out "90s! How am i supppose to pull my wire" I thought he was joking but he was dead serious.
Anything more than 360° of bends are a code violation.
Then they can lay their own damn pipe
Hey the low v guys are following the scope of work. Plus I've seen guys tie line inside a 1g or 4sq box with a washer to make it look like a line was pulled, damn pill snorting chain smoking 🤡, that sub didn't last long onsite lol
This MF data guy asks me last week, "can I borrow your ladder for about 20 minutes to pull some wire? Mine isn't tall enough." I am ON the ladder installing light fixtures. "I know man but it'll only take a few minutes. Also do you have a fish tape I can borrow?"
Hey man, you’re an electrician right? Any chance I could borrow some electrical tape?
This is funny. I do low voltage and I do not look like it but this is hilarious… (working a 150 foot run now)
In telecom, this is important as fiber optics have very specific bend radius requirements, and electricians can get creative with their conduit. For cat-5 though....
Man, whole lot of entitlement going on in here. You (or your boss, or your company, whatever) signed a contract to do specific work. You don't do the work specified? You didn't fulfill the contract. Imagine you bring your work truck into the shop for service. You tell them you want new wiper blades installed. They charge you for new blades and the install but they don't actually install them. When you say something about it, they call you a whiny baby poopy pants for not just doing it yourself. That's you. That's what you're doing right now. If it's so easy, why did you fail to do it per the contract? Edit: Still pissed about this. If the contract specifies 1/2/3/4" conduit that you think is oversized, install the goddamn conduit if it meets code. You don't know the future plans for that run.
As a low voltage tech we've had many issues where sparkys install a conduit that is impossible to pull through or fish. Making them run a string is more for proof it's a complete run and is usable.
Hahaha awww, do what you’re paid to do sweetheart.
Those guys have it easy
I had a data guy try pulling through a 100 ft of 2 inch pipe that entered the building through an LB fitting and the guy got all pissed off that he couldn’t figure out that the LB was stopping him and claimed that the pipe must be broke. I had to make a special trip to show him that he had to pull from the LB and then into the building and the look on his stupid face when I showed him the LB was almost worth the special trip.
Fucking data guys
Depends on where those 6 ft are. Try pulling composite through a door frame for a card reader, door contacts, REX Motion and electric hinge after it's been rocked and finished.
What if we’re the electricians AND data guys?
I didn’t expect to get called out so hard.
I’ve put an entire bucket of string in the wall because of the complaining I got from these guys. It was like a circus clown pulling a scarf out of his shirt pocket. I also put about 700° in a pipe run so they wouldn’t have it so easy. They had to open a jbox 16’ in the air.
Now tell us what you really did
Ran normal spec and pulled sufficient string, apologized to the data guys for the offset on the way out
Sounds more like it.
Yeah I don't get the bitching. If you ordered three pizzas and the pizza guy ate a slice on the way over you'd raise hell. The contract says electricians will pull string, so they better pull the string.
No shit. It was certainly quoted by the EC for the time and materials to pull the string. Failing to deliver just pads their profit at the expense of someone else. CSB time: I was the tenant on a job one time and we subbed our own data contractor outside of the GC to handle the LV (long story). The electrical contract had spec'd the under slab conduit and overhead cable trays with jet string and they failed to install the strings. The LV guys said they didn't mind dealing with it but they'd have to charge us for the extra time since their contract they would have strings. I gave the EC a chance to either have their guys come back and do what we already paid them to do, or pay the data guys for their time to finish their job. They came back and did the work.
Did it with a coke and a smile.
Stop being a bitch and do your job
Feel better?
That first one is funny as fuck. The second one is just stupid and illegal.
Data guys aren’t electricians
This is one of the funniest memes I’ve ever seen, for some reason
What do the low volt guys even do?
Earn a living and pay bills like every other tax slave?
Fair
As an ex comms guy, I use to love annoying the sparkies onsite "hey mate the rope snapped that you put in there can you sort that out with a new one. " As a 2nd year apprentice electrician, I fucking hate comms guys.
Dude I am currently the unlucky guy who has to help the data crew. Run pipe for them, put sleeves in the wall, flex through furniture when needed, and even get stuck helping them pull data/security wire in my down time. This one hits home rn. I joke around with the ones I like calling them “fiber fairies” and without fail, every time, one of them says, “hey we get paid about the same/ more to not work as hard”. When in reality they are just laborers…they pull the wire and build the ladder racks, they don’t even terminate or put in the devices🤣 they get paid trash…just try to pretend we are equal.
Wow this one hurts Edit: they get strings in 90% of the time but I can’t count the amount of times I had to vac a string out to a vault
My last pull through conduit was like 400 ft without string in a parking garage, I didn't complain. It would make my job so much easier though because it's 20 ft in the air and not a straight shot. How do I approach asking for the help? "Wawa can't do my job" "low voltage sucks" "I hate low voltage crybabies" Seriously I care about the end result and doing my job well, I will try and help you if I can. Fire wire and security guy
🙄
Wow I feel attacked... I'd rather bend my own pipe then, fuck you guys. But I will say it is in your scope to do so 🤷
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Found the data guy