[TowerTalk] Buried conduit pull rope

[Steve Maki]

Yes, the footage marks on muletape are an added benefit.

At the *pull* end of the conduit I usually rig up a strategically placed 
pulley in line with the conduit to avoid pulling over the sharp edge. A 
Little Giant ladder is handy for things like that. And a helper at the 
feeder end (with a handy talky if it's a long run) is indispensable.

-Steve K8LX

On 8/29/2017 12:09 PM, Grant Saviers wrote:

> Good advice.  I'd add: put a chafe collar on the ends of all conduit, a 
> standard pvc conduit part (also code on 3/4 and larger IIRC).  The sharp 
> end edge of a conduit can slice thru cable insulation.  Another 
> advantage of using mule tape or conduit measuring tape as the pilot is 
> exact length measurements of the conduit as installed.  One calculated 
> length I used was much shorter than actual and resulted in only 1' tails 
> - ouch but better than -1' tails.

> On 8/28/2017 20:45 PM, Steve Maki wrote:
>> Depends on what you're pulling, how big the conduit is, how many 
>> bends, etc. In worse case scenarios I avoid knots of any kind in the 
>> pull line. I stagger the cables being pulled and simply tape each 
>> cable to the mule tape with generous TIGHT wraps of electrical tape. 
>> I'm not afraid to use a whole roll or two of tape, and a fair bit of 
>> time preparing the mass of cables. I'll cut the ends of the cables at 
>> an angle to lessen the chance of catching on a conduit joint. A little 
>> cable lube helps.
>>
>> As you probably noticed muletape is commonly available in 1250 lb and 
>> 2500 lb strengths (and stronger), so it's good for pulling fairly big 
>> bundles of cables thru hundreds of feet of conduit with a capstan 
>> winch. If you try to do this with twist rope you'll melt PVC 90° bends 
>> almost instantly.