Pulling 8 guage ground wire through conduit
 

The last 3 things I need to do to have everything done for inspection are:
1) 3 split bolt connections for garage feeder
2) knockout plugs
3) garage feeder ground wire through the last 3' of conduit.

It's the last one that's giving me trouble. Things that have not worked:
- metal fish tape
- 14 gage THHN
- twine, tried to pull through with shop vac
- pushing the ground wire

I can't get anything all the way through. I also can't get the conduit run's locknuts loosened, and I really don't want to pull the 1/0 back out of it either... It's 1-1/2" conduit.

I'm just going to hope for the electrician fairy to make a ground wire materialize inside the conduit, fully installed and magically transformed into something that's going to be guaranteed to pass inspection.

Unless anybody has a better idea, I will probably be losing sleep over this now.

If ithere might be any way I can pull push or twist the 1/0 wires already in there that might help, that might be an idea I could use... The bottom end of the wires are not yet connected to anything.

On one hand, I'm close to done. On the other, maybe I should just postpone the inspection until Weds. Maybe even make this an EMT run with money I can't spare.

Will, I'd be concerned about damaging the existing insulation on the other conductors trying to push a #10 bare wire. If you can't get a fish tape in there to pull it (and that seems risky as well), I'm afraid you may have to pull the others out and start again, with the bare #10 end taped to avoid nicking and damaging the others.

How was it pulling the 3 insulated conductors through 1-1/2" PVC?

Heh... I cheated and put em through as I assembled the pipes.

It's going to be a matter of lifting the main panel to get that out. Then I'll just run all 4 through EMT 1 piece at a time I guess. Maybe I'll even go with 2", the junction box hole is 2" with reducing bushings because the bushings were cheaper than the second size of hole saw.

Well, what do you want to use: 2" PVC or EMT? For 1-1/2" Sched 40 PVC will allow 4 1/0 AWG (sched 80 allows 2 - 4 depending on whether or not the wire is THW or THHN).

Source: http://www.carlon.com/Master%20Catal..._40_and_80.pdf, citing Table 1, Chapter 9 of the NEC)

2" pvc would fit into my budget better, but it'd be the 3rd PVC conduit I've built for this and I'm out of straight pipe so I'd have to buy that instead of just fittings.

I'm starting to lean towards EMT because it can be disassembled and reassembled if I need to rework again. I suspect that if I'd done EMT before the first 2 PVC runs I'd be ahead of where I would be after the 3rd PVC run.

Oh hell, for that matter, replacing the other straight run with EMT might be cheaper than also having to replace the 8 ga. solid.

Do apprentices go through this much problems?

2" EMT will allow 7 1/0s
1-1/2 EMT will allow 4.

If you have Sched 40 PVC, I'd think about just rerunning the wires, as it's likely to be faster than running to the store, buying new conduit, traveling back, and all the work. idk :)

Your problem is the back to back 90's. They eat up all the pushing or pulling force and the most efficient path is already taken by the 1/0s.

Two 45s would be way easier.

I would pull that out and start over, using a straight pipe up from the junction box and a LR fitting across to the panel feeding through the lower right side. I would also purchase some Polaris connectors to join the 1/0 wires in the junction box. Much easier than split bolts and tape.

I grabbed EMT with 90's and they're bigger, so I'll be returning it since 2 90's will miss the knockouts... 2 45's should work better anyway.

The problem with conduit bodies is in 1-1/2" the big boxes only cary LB, no left or right turns.. And then I have to frame an openning because the area is going to be enclosed (note the 14-3 NM for the 3-way switch). That and the cost, I'm between jobs now.

I appreciate the suggestion and I'd probably go with it if the finances weren't a concern.

I know that the next time I put it together will hopefully be my last, but at this point I just feel like I've thought that before and it's time to build in a way that I can still reuse parts if I do have to put it to rebuild again.

You know... like if I have to replace an 8 ga. solid ground wire.

That'll teach you not to cheat .... :laughing:

We NEVER do that .... ALWAYS install the complete conduit system ahead of time, and THEN pull in all the wires together as an assembly.

You are now reaping the headaches of doing the job b@$$-ackwards.

All I can say is that I wish there was such a thing as 1/0 SER or even SEU so I didn't have to use conduit at all between the panel and this junction box because even the straight run in the garage was a bit of a pain.

Not to jack the thread, nor to confuse the issue, but does the ground absolutely have to be inside the conduit? I understand that it is not the way to plan a project, and am not implying circumventing the NEC, but, technically speaking, as long as the proper cable is used, and proper connections are made at each end, could it be laid separately in the same trench as the conduit?

I believe the options are to have a complete conduit run acting as ground conductor or have the ground conductor with the cable inside the raceway. A ground wire seperate from the raceway the conductors is in does not protect from a ground fault... Think of piercing the conduit with a shovel, if the ground wire is there it allows the short to return through ground... If not, then there's a live wire sitting there waiting to return to the person holding the shovel.

Probably imprecise, but I think that is the general idea.