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RE: What is all this Off Grid Stuff anyhow? And why the civil war over it?
I avoid it unless I am doing AC power or just need to create a ground.
I avoid it unless I am doing AC power or just need to create a ground.
I use stranded wire on AC also, easier to pull through conduit.
:)That is a good tip to keep in mind. :) Thanks.
I am lazy, so I like easy pulls. I have no idea how many miles of wire I have pulled into conduit, but it is quite a few, LOL!
:D:) I have not pulled miles of it but I have done a good bit of it over the years. One of my favorite tricks to make it easier is to tie a lubricated condom to a long piece of mason string and suck it through the conduit with a shop vac. Once it is through I tie the wire to the end and start pulling. That trick has made some ridiculously curvy runs so much easier. I have used pieces of latex gloves to do the same. I learned that trick from someone years ago and I still marvel at the simplicity of it.
On the trailer we carried wire on, we had foam plugs, ane a bottle of nitrogen. The foam plugs had a spool of dental floss built in. We'd tie the floss off, stuff it in the conduit, and hit it with the nitrogen.
Then we pull in a pull line, connect the bundle of wires, and fill the conduit. *We always left a pull rope in the conduit, just in case....
:)Never seen that before. Pretty neat way of doing it.
It was pipeline, and they liked to buy expensive goodies (only if it sped up the work) for us to use. The busiest pull I ever did was 114 pairs in one pipe (main control hookup on a booster). We pulled in four wires that were just over an inch each, but we used a backhoe to pull that bundle.
I got away from that work, way too dangerous!
>:(Wow! That is a lot of pairs in a single pipe. I have heard of folks pulling large wires with machinery but never anything quite that size. I wonder what gauge an inch thick wire is? What a job that must have been.
I have a question you may be able to answer. I generally just do my own research but I have found mixed answers to the viability of this. I have some old shielded aluminum multi-stranded power line (the overhead kind) wire and I am curious how it would work for use with DC if I were using it in very short sections between one to ten feet? I was thinking to re-enforce the shielding with heat shrink tubing because it is a bit brittle but is overall in good shape.