Murphy Rears His Ugly Head, Cabin Update

     Well that rotten Bast^%# Murphy showed his ugly head hear for the last two days at the Cabin Build. We are in the process of running the main power feeders, (3) 2/0 and a ground. Everything started off great as we sucked in a pull string with our shop vac and made our check to see if any foreign material made it in the 180' of 2" pipe we had in the ground. Having found no problems we used the pull string to pull in our main pull line, that being a 2500# flat pull line, that went in as well. So we hooked up the 4 cables and I set up the pulley system over the panel and got everything set up for the pull. Now at this point I will say that I have been in the electrical field for some 20 years now and this type of pull is something I have done many many times and I expected no problems in the least, Well I was wrong.

     The pull started off great, better then expected actually until we had about 70' of wire in the hole and then snap, we break the pull line, That's when I knew the day was going to suck, fortunately for us the pull line broke outside of the pipe so we were able to tie right back into it. I checked over the pulley we were using and I could not find a sharp edge or any other problem so we decided to pull again and with the same results, a broken pull string. At this point I am starting to get a little hot under the collar because I installed every single stick of the pipe that is in the ground so I know it was done right. Whats even more frustrating is that I can still push the wire into the pipe as we are only into the first 90 degree sweep so I know that it is not the wire hung up but it is the pull line.

     After some considerable deliberation and a little poking and prodding I decided that some exploratory surgery was going to be necessary in the form of digging up some pipe and doing some spot checking. I had my suspicious pointing to the two remaining 90 degree sweeps as that is where that is where the most friction and tension is ( before any one asks, yes lube was used ). Now I have came across pulls where the pull line has cut through a 90 before but it is pretty rare. The digging has commenced and I will fill you in hopefully tomorrow, it's late, Thanks for stopping bye.

Prepology