cable stuck in burried conduit

[vartz04]

Directional bore and replace.

My sister company does the pipe lining with a resin sock that is steam expanded/cured. Smallest they can do is 4" so I don't think that is an option.

 

[kaffine]

Everyone here is trying to help, (until your attitude)
Another solution to a question you didn't ask, Find yourself a 1/4 or 5/16 or 3/8" fiberglass fish and ram the hell out of it, the conduit, with the wire in it. If you can't get it one way , try it from the other side. Right now you have nothing to lose. With the right fish, (and the right experience), you should be able to fish it anyway, unless it's separated. And if it's rigid conduit, it should be screwed together, and not separated.

My issue was with Rookie2 second post for calling me out on not providing enough info the first time. Now that I have stated the cost of replacement he can provide more options and help on the issue.

Knowing this facility the conduit is not only screwed together the joints are likely welded. And 1/4" and 5/16" have been tried they make it about 70 feet from either end.

 

[kaffine]

Directional bore and replace.

My sister company does the pipe lining with a resin sock that is steam expanded/cured. Smallest they can do is 4" so I don't think that is an option.

Can't directional bore open trench only due to other items under ground.

 

[rockwithjason]

Boring is banned at many plants including ours
Too many incidents

 

[CNGsaves]

There's always the old backup plan that PoCo uses all the time . . .
. . . . .
. . . . . . . . . go AERIAL . . . !!!!

 

[kaffine]

No 120 ft buried 1" conduit replacement should cost $100,000 . . .

A guy could buy used Ditch Witch or Vermeer boring machine and make money on that job for much less. So, company with equipment already in use it's just another job.

If you decide you want it redone for $100,000 . . . give first dibbs to GJer's as I'd be happy to drive down to help another GJer and get little dirty for that kind of profit !!!

However, IF it's solid rock . . . . then whole different story !!

$100k is on the low end I would be surprised if it can be replaced for under $250k. Have to shut down operations. Not to mention what has to be taken apart and put back together again to replace it. Oh and I wouldn't want to be around any of the dirt they dig up there.

 

[slip knot]

The vault flooding had pushed **** back into the conduit. I'd try to vac the line or blow the line with compressed air. I dont have centuries of midwest experience but I've rebuilt several muni plants after floods and have very seldom had a conduit that had to be replaced. I'll qualify that most were ran in duct bank but still rigid and still underground. And without a doubt, ANY conduit will have liquid in it when you bury it in south TX.
As for $100K for replacement, you may be getting off cheap depending on the interferences. Good luck with your project.

 

[kaffine]

So ! Let me tell you what will happen. The project engineer will look you in the eye and say " I Got This" .

I think I am the project engineer for this fiasco. Not sure why our normal engineering department has not been involved in this project at all. Project was already underway when I started then they found out I could do some cad work and it became my project with no engineering support. I'm an electronics tech used to doing board maintenance not pulling conduit and running projects.

 

[kaffine]

Thanks to all that have replied and sorry for my attitude earlier. I should learn not to post after a bad day at work.

 

[rockwithjason]

$100k is on the low end I would be surprised if it can be replaced for under $250k. Have to shut down operations. Not to mention what has to be taken apart and put back together again to replace it. Oh and I wouldn't want to be around any of the dirt they dig up there.

Hmmm. Sounds like timet or olin chlor alkali. Maybe lhost?

 

[Dick in Wisconsin]

Good luck with this. Please keep us posted as to the outcome.

 

[CNGsaves]

Yowsa OP . . . . . sounds like you're in a pickle. If you magically come with solution and find cheap way to save that conduit, then you're a hero.

Conversely, If you approve a plumbing company to try harsh idea and it ruins a bunch of stuff costing $100K to $300K fix, then your employer might push YOU out the door.

I'd tread lightly and try way to push responsibility of this back to Engineering where it belongs !!

 

[zmaxmotorsports]

How about some pictures of the layout ?

 

[pstnbly]

100' of stiff plastic refer tubing with a garden hose connection. Start forcing the tubing in from one end and see what flushes out. Keep at it it may take a while (days). Rig a sump pump in the vault if necessary.

 

[Rookie2]

I started out asking how to get the cable out of the conduit. Why not answer the question that was asked instead of telling me to just replace the conduit until after I say why replacing the conduit is not a valid option?

Do you think a plumbing company would be willing to snake out a 1" conduit with a cable already in it? I had thought of a jetter but would not have thought of an actual snake.

I had to check they do make inner-duct small enough to fit 1" conduit. However the size that I can find takes up too much room in the conduit and would not be large enough to pull the new cable in. It would have been nice had they used inner-duct in the larger conduits in the area ***** having to pull 1 cable out when there are 10 others that are in the pipe.

From the onset it appeared to be a home project not an industrial complex. Most homeowners (like myself) will screw around for days or weeks and end up doing what most of us have learned from hard knocks. I am the McGyver type, I don't easily give up, I will heat,cut, weld ,jackhammer and re engineer till it becomes cost prohibitive.
We all see you problem and recall our own projects with similarities. Your sucess depends on your perseverance and ability to enlist shop mechanics or outside machine shops etc. to rip and tear the 18ga wire out and maybe get a camera in there 70 ft.to see if its crushed down or just plugged up, or build a 70' drill bit ,or high pressure water jet. 270 deg of bends are a challenge no doubt. good luck !

BTW: they make a wire tracer that can tell you exactly how long your 18ga wire is. You indicate 70 ft in from both ends , thats 140 ft ,if its a 150 ft conduit then 10 ft is blocked.

 

[theoldwizard1]

OP - Did you get the cable out/conduit open ?

 

[walrus]

I started out asking how to get the cable out of the conduit. Why not answer the question that was asked instead of telling me to just replace the conduit until after I say why replacing the conduit is not a valid option?

Do you think a plumbing company would be willing to snake out a 1" conduit with a cable already in it? I had thought of a jetter but would not have thought of an actual snake.

I had to check they do make inner-duct small enough to fit 1" conduit. However the size that I can find takes up too much room in the conduit and would not be large enough to pull the new cable in. It would have been nice had they used inner-duct in the larger conduits in the area ***** having to pull 1 cable out when there are 10 others that are in the pipe.

Is the cable bad? or do you need a different cable? if its bad you don't have much to lose but I would avoid pulling on it very hard as you don't want to break it. I'd put a vac on it first and see if you get vacuum on other end. I'd vac from other side to see if there is some blockage. Air pressure next, same thing try it both ways. Water pressure if you can get air thru it, try to clean it out with running water. if air doesn't go thru I think you are screwed. I work in the retail gasoline world, I've seen tons of bad wires in 3/4 rigid. I have had plenty of stuck wires, patience is a virtue. When vaccing out a pipe it might take hours to get all the liquid out. cable assys are the worst as they break easily or at least compared to THWN

 

[kaffine]

Yowsa OP . . . . . sounds like you're in a pickle. If you magically come with solution and find cheap way to save that conduit, then you're a hero.

Conversely, If you approve a plumbing company to try harsh idea and it ruins a bunch of stuff costing $100K to $300K fix, then your employer might push YOU out the door.

I'd tread lightly and try way to push responsibility of this back to Engineering where it belongs !!

If I actually was able to push responsibility back to engineering what would happen is the head engineer would push it off onto the junior engineer. The junior engineer would call me and ask how I would handle this, then take my suggestion put his name on it and send it back to us along with billing our department for 2 hours for the senior engineer, 3 hours for the junior engineer and an hour for the draftsman time.

Not worried about being fired upper management understands that this is a last ditch effort.

 

[kaffine]

OP - Did you get the cable out/conduit open ?

It will be several months before I get to attempt it if they let me. Nothing goes fast where I work. It took 6 months to get a WO approved for me to install a monitor on an existing piece of unistrut.

 

[Pwrgeek]

It will be several months before I get to attempt it if they let me. Nothing goes fast where I work. It took 6 months to get a WO approved for me to install a monitor on an existing piece of unistrut.

Well yeah ... We had to have an outside structural analysis done to see if the strut could take the load. Then we had to have an outside electrical analysis to see if there was sufficient supply to add the electrical load. Then we had to check to make sure the monitor was cyber protected properly. Then we had to test the installation in the lab to verify that there was no interference with other equipment. Can you tell I've worked in a plant or two?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[kaffine]

Is the cable bad? or do you need a different cable? if its bad you don't have much to lose but I would avoid pulling on it very hard as you don't want to break it. I'd put a vac on it first and see if you get vacuum on other end. I'd vac from other side to see if there is some blockage. Air pressure next, same thing try it both ways. Water pressure if you can get air thru it, try to clean it out with running water. if air doesn't go thru I think you are screwed. I work in the retail gasoline world, I've seen tons of bad wires in 3/4 rigid. I have had plenty of stuck wires, patience is a virtue. When vaccing out a pipe it might take hours to get all the liquid out. cable assys are the worst as they break easily or at least compared to THWN

The cable is bad I can see where the jacket has been damaged but it is too far inside the conduit to reach. I was able to slip some heat shrink tubing over it for a temp fix but it wont last long. Water has gotten in and corroding the wire it is only a matter of time before it completely fails. If the wire gets bumped near that conduit the circuit goes down then we have to move the wire around a little until it comes back up. I don't have access to cut some of the conduit out to do a better repair either.

 

[kaffine]

From the onset it appeared to be a home project not an industrial complex. Most homeowners (like myself) will screw around for days or weeks and end up doing what most of us have learned from hard knocks. I am the McGyver type, I don't easily give up, I will heat,cut, weld ,jackhammer and re engineer till it becomes cost prohibitive.
We all see you problem and recall our own projects with similarities. Your sucess depends on your perseverance and ability to enlist shop mechanics or outside machine shops etc. to rip and tear the 18ga wire out and maybe get a camera in there 70 ft.to see if its crushed down or just plugged up, or build a 70' drill bit ,or high pressure water jet. 270 deg of bends are a challenge no doubt. good luck !

BTW: they make a wire tracer that can tell you exactly how long your 18ga wire is. You indicate 70 ft in from both ends , thats 140 ft ,if its a 150 ft conduit then 10 ft is blocked.

Thank you for continuing to offer suggestions.

Come to think of it I don't have a copper TDR at work for giving cable lengths. We have great tools for fiber and hardly do anything with fiber but our tools for copper ****. That is a good idea I'll have to order one or check to see if the IT department has one.

One of the other conduits we pulled figured it would be about 70 to 80 feet depending on how deep it was buried. The 100 foot fish tape wasn't long enough. Finally got the cable in and checked the foot marking I had 120 feet in the ground. I'm guessing they ran it slightly different than I thought and there is another 90 bend that I would not have put in.

 

[kaffine]

How about some pictures of the layout ?

No pictures of the layout. All I can see of the conduit is a few inches sticking straight up out of the ground at each end. The blueprints I have show the conduit going to a different vault than it actually does and has several other known mistakes so not trustworthy. It has been verified that it is the correct cable and conduit. My guess is that it goes straight down for a few feet then a 90º then east ~100 feet then a 90º north for ~40 feet then 90º up into the floor of the vault.

 

[CJ7VFR]

If you tug on the wire at one end, does the other end move at all? Even just a little bit?

Since you say you can't really run any new conduit in this situation, before you try to pull out the old wire, maybe you could try to attach a new wire to one end of the old one, and then try to pull out the old one.

This way, if by some chance of dumb luck, the old wire stays intact, you will have pulled a new wire thru the old conduit.

Just a thought. It sounds like the old wire will snap once you really start pulling on it, but it might be worth a shot.

Jim

 

[wyliesdiesels]

$100k is on the low end I would be surprised if it can be replaced for under $250k. Have to shut down operations. Not to mention what has to be taken apart and put back together again to replace it. Oh and I wouldn't want to be around any of the dirt they dig up there.

why is that?

Contaminated?

 

[kaffine]

If you tug on the wire at one end, does the other end move at all? Even just a little bit?

Since you say you can't really run any new conduit in this situation, before you try to pull out the old wire, maybe you could try to attach a new wire to one end of the old one, and then try to pull out the old one.

This way, if by some chance of dumb luck, the old wire stays intact, you will have pulled a new wire thru the old conduit.

Just a thought. It sounds like the old wire will snap once you really start pulling on it, but it might be worth a shot.

Jim

I will be attaching a pull string to the old cable before pulling it out. Then if the old cable doesn't break I will use the pull string to pull the new cable in. I don't want to attach the new cable to it as it will make the pull harder and increase the risk of breaking the old cable.

[/b]

why is that?

Contaminated?

Yes contaminated. At least I consider all dirt in that area to be contaminated until proved otherwise.

 

[ford33]

Recommend you don't use a pull "string". Use a small steel cable and if possible leave it in the conduit after you run the new wire.

 

[mburrus]

is this a power or comms circuit?

if you pull and break both ends off, i would try a plumbing snake, or air pressure, as others have mentioned.

using a sewer camera of some sort would give you a better idea of what youre up against.

 

[rockwithjason]

Recommend you don't use a pull "string". Use a small steel cable and if possible leave it in the conduit after you run the new wire.

under no circumstances should you leave a steel cable in a conduit. the steel will corrode and leave small shrapnel that will shred any cable that is pulled in.

 

[ford33]

Thanks, rockwithjason, I didn't think of that corrosion issue.

 

[kaffine]

is this a power or comms circuit?

if you pull and break both ends off, i would try a plumbing snake, or air pressure, as others have mentioned.

using a sewer camera of some sort would give you a better idea of what youre up against.

It is a 12Vdc power circuit.

So far the sewer cams I have found are too large to fit in the conduit.

 

[walrus]

is the cable jacket compatible with whatever is contaminating soil?

 

[kaffine]

is the cable jacket compatible with whatever is contaminating soil?

The contamination should not have an effect on the cable jacket.

 

[walrus]

The contamination should not have an effect on the cable jacket.

An excavation around conduit that you know of, settling afterwards, rigid breaks easily at a coupling. Frost movement can break it also but less likely than settling.

 

[FullRaceMerc]

An excavation around conduit that you know of, settling afterwards, rigid breaks easily at a coupling. Frost movement can break it also but less likely than settling.

Especially in Henderson, Nevada.

 

[kaffine]

An excavation around conduit that you know of, settling afterwards, rigid breaks easily at a coupling. Frost movement can break it also but less likely than settling.

No excavation work that I am aware of that would have been deep enough to cause issues. I know there was some trench work a few years ago but that should not have been much below 2 feet and conduit is at least 5 feet deep in that area. However the conduit has been in place for 20 or so years no one in my group has worked here for that long that would know if other work was done.

Frost damage is not likely however settling could be an issue. Not sure how well they did the original install and trench fill. At times they did great work and did everything way overkill. Other times I look at what they did and have to remind myself where I am because I can't believe they got away with such horrible work in that facility.

 

[CNGsaves]

Especially in Henderson, Nevada.

Never know . . . . OP is scared to tell us WHAT's contaminating everything there !!

Maybe radiation coupled with liquid nitrogen spills wound indeed have "hot frost" that no one, nor any electrical cable, ever be exposed to !!!

 

[kaffine]

I know of no liquid nitrogen spills in the area.

 

[CNGsaves]

^ ^ ^ I do SEE what you did there !!

That qualify as Clinton-speak . . . .as in Bill Clinton ?? . . .
. . . . I did NOT have ****** relations with that woman . . .

 

[mjbasford]

Never know . . . . OP is scared to tell us WHAT's contaminating everything there !!

He is in Nevada, maybe he works at Yucca Mountian?