Rack-A-Tiers® Wire Pulling Strap
Filed under: Cable Pulling, Raceway, Duct and Conduit, Tools and Cases
When you think of pulling cables through conduit, what do you imagine one of the biggest problems to be? Working the wiring through tight bends? Or how about friction damage? Both of these are undeniably conduit-related pains in the, ahem… tokus, but there’s another possible pulling snafu that’s even more obnoxious: twisted cables.
Now, when I say “twisted,” I’m not talking about a little benign spiraling. I’m referring to the hard core wrapping and tangling that sends conduit friction levels through the roof, and can even cause your cables to start attenuating. The kind of mess that demands a do-over every time.
Spare yourself a lot of frustration, not to mention that overwhleming sense of deja-vu with every re-pull, by enlisting the assistance of a Rack-A-Tiers® Wire Puller Strap. This simple but ingenious cable-pulling implement actually staggers the wires you’re pulling, so while they’re technically together, they stay distinctly separate (read: knot-free and running parallel to one another). The cables enter the conduit untangled, and emerge at the other end the same way. Quite the winning concept, isn’t it?
Here’s how it works. The Wire Pulling strap is approximately 4 inches long, and has triangular wire holes cut out along its length. You just attach a cable to each of these holes, rig the pulling strap to your fish tape or wire puller, and haul away. Having the cables staggered just that little bit with the pulling strip makes a huge difference – as a matter of fact, it can actually cut labor time in half.
Rack-A-Tiers® cable pulling straps are made of powder-coated steel, and come in sets of 3 (one each of red, blue, and green). Having the multiples lets you attach 2 or more together if you have a large number of cables to pull, and the mix in colors helps you to keep different groups of cable visually separated while they’re being simultaneously pulled into the same pass-through or junction box.
MaxCell Fabric Innerduct
Filed under: Cable Pulling, Raceway, Duct and Conduit
It’s pretty well known among cable installers that when you’re pulling cables through long runs of conduit, friction is your biggest enemy. When cables are dragged through conduit, they not only rub together and against the conduit, they can also get caught in spots where the conduit bends. To keep things running as smoothly as possible – and to protect cables against the damaging effects of friction – cables are often sheathed in an innerduct material, like corrugated tubing. Corrugated tubing works great protection-wise, but since it’s rigid and essentially makes cables take up several times as much space as they would on their own, it can really waste conduit space. Wasted conduit space just means you need to use more conduit to get the job done, and more conduit translates into (you guessed it) more money.
So that begs the question: how do protect your cables from friction while saving valuable inner-conduit real estate? Easy. Give up rigid innerducts, and go with a soft and compact option like MaxCell Fabric Innerduct instead. These woven polyester sleeves surround cables to help them glide through twists and turns in conduit, but also conform much more closely to the cable’s shape and size, so you can fit many more cables into one conduit that you would ordinarily be able to with rigid innerduct.
MaxCell Fabric Innerduct is a soft, semi-sheer material, but it still has the ability to protect cables from moisture, petroleum products, chemicals, and UV light, and can be used in both manual/mechanical and air-blown cable pulling applications. It’s available in several versions to fit almost any environment: Standard protects against chemicals in conventional installations, Plenum and Riser Innerducts are low-smoke zero-halogen for safe use in indoor air handling spaces, and the Detectable version contains an 18 gauge copper core tracer that helps the conduit and cables be located easily in underground/buried installations.
American Polywater® CableFree® Cable Removal Aid
Filed under: Cable Pulling, Raceway, Duct and Conduit
Cabling technicians can have quite a sticky situation on their hands when removing old cables fom conduit. Aside from obvious challenges like friction, which can make it hard to pull cable around curves or bends in the conduit, there’s the trickier problem of conduit gunk, which can build up and solidify over the years, virtually cementing cables in place. The presence of sticky substances like wax, rust, soap, bitumen and dirt inside of conduit, combined with zero maintenance, almost always guarantees that cuts will need to made in the conduit in order to free cables. But cuts in conduit usually equal steep repair and replacement costs, which do nothing but kill your budget and make the task even more frustrating.
In the interest of saving installers the hassle of conduit cutting and replacement during cable removals, American Polywater® has developed CableFree®, a liquid removal aid that dissolves conduit buildup and frees cables so that they can be easily removed. A product like this can greatly lengthen the life of conduit, because it allows you to keep the conduit completely intact instead of cutting it open. Once cables have been removed, conduit can simply be cleaned and reused, saving you repair and installation costs.
Klein Tools Depthfinder™ High-Strength Fish Tapes
Measuring the length of a conduit run with ordinary fish tape can be a real pain in the neck. First, you have to work the fish tape down into the conduit. Next, you have to haul it all back out again – but make sure you marked the depth first! And finally, you have to break out a tape measure to measure the fish tape against. That sounds like too many steps, doesn’t it? There are better ways to use your time on the job, and nobody knows that better than Klein Tools, the company that developed Depthfinder™ fish tape.
Klein Tools realized that the hassle of measuring fish tape could be reduced to one simple step, provided that the fish tape is marked with incremental measurements, just like a measuring tape. So they got down to business, and turned that inspired idea into reality. And that’s how we got Depthfinder™ fish tape. To get an accurate measurement, you only need to thread the tape down a length of conduit, and then take a look at the markings on your end once the fish tape has reached the end of the line. How’s that for saving time?
Depthfinder™ flat steel fish tape comes in an ⅛″ width, but you can choose from lengths of 60, 125, or 240 feet, so it has you covered for just about any job. It’s high-impact plastic winder reel is bright orange for easy visibility, and has an extra tough internal reel that helps prevent the tape from kinking and jamming.
Wee Buddy® Fiberglass Conduit Rod
We’re into May and things are starting to heat up, but one thing never changes: Friday morning product training sessions. Just a little while ago, I had the pleasure of trying out some of Jameson’s most popular products, the first of which was the Wee Buddy® fiberglass conduit rodding system.
This fiberglass fish tape and reel combo is far more lightweight than steel, so it’s a lot less trouble to schlep around a jobsite than steel tape would be. Secondly, it’s completely non-conductive, so you don’t need to worry about electric shock or injury in the event that the conduit rodder accidentally comes into contact with a power source.
In the case of the Wee Buddy®, the fiberglass rod is covered in a bright orange polymer jacket, which not only makes the tape easily visible, but also keeps it smooth to the touch no matter how long you have it for – a huge advantage over bare fiberglass, which can start out smooth but eventually “bloom” after extended use and continuous exposure to UV rays.
If you’re not familiar with fiber blooming, it’s what happens when the glass fibers begin to disintegrate and separate from the rest of the rod, and let me tell you, it can lead to some serious skin irritation and discomfort for whoever happens to be handling the bloomed fiberglass. So as you can imagine, it’s a huge benefit to use jacketed fiberglass, because it not only strongly resists blooming, but is also far more comfortable for operators to use throughout the product’s entire lifespan.
A Wee Buddy® feature that I found extremely interesting is the fact that it can be repaired on the job should a break ever occur. Apparently all fish tape and rod snaps at some point, regardless of what it’s made of or who manufactured it. It just naturally weakens under the stress it’s exposed to job after job. If you’re using a steel tape, you’re pretty much out of luck if it breaks – the only option is to toss it and get a new one. But Jameson’s fiberglass rodding design, combined with a very well-thought-out repair kit, allows you to repair an injured Wee Buddy® tape on the spot in just a few minutes, so you can get right back to work without missing a beat. I may not be a contractor, but I can definitely see how preferable that would be to halting operations and waiting for new conduit rodder to arrive.