6 Helpul Tips for Commercial & Industrial Wire Pulls

Additional Helpful tips for Successful wire pulls.

1). It's not always better to let gravity help with the pull.
There are 2 types of pulls
A). Pulls That are strictly vertical (High Risk and only experienced electricians should LEAD)- unless you have either enough men to help drop the wire or the wire is not that heavy for the amount of men you have.
Reminder
Remember to figure out how you are going to support the wire after you are done dropping the wire. And be ready to support the wires immediately afterwards.
Example:
Vertical support Base or have a way to tie it off till you get the proper material needed.
B). Pulls that are vertical but then have a 90° bend some where down the line along with at least another 90° bend . So in total you need at least 180 ° worth of bend in order for the conduit to stop the wire from shooting out of a conduit in case of an incident. And preferably these 2 90° bends have some distance between them. But not entirely necessary. ( I've dropped 600 KCMIL wire 60 feet with 2 back to back 90s together and it stopped it)
Lastly if you have a vertical pull where you have one 90° down the line then you have something like 60+ ft. After that. Then you still want to be cautious be most likely the wire will stop itself from running.
2). If there are too many risks just pull up. It's not worth it. And the tugger can do the work. Trust me. Also ask your foreman what he thinks and wants you to do. If he left it up to you then think and choose wisely but also have a reason for what you chose in case your foreman asks. The only reason I drop my pulls are because I know what I'm doing and if there is too much risk but it would still be easier to drop the wire then I know how to use the proper safety net to lower the risk dramatically. With rope and a good wire gripping knot. I'll Maybe even back up my safety line with another safety line in case the risk is high. But you have to, way out the options. Because this method takes a lot longer but is safer and you don't need to worry about the wire falling 50 to 70 ft to it's death. If you want to know more about this technique just ask.
3). Use and set up sheaves properly. You don't need to be an engineer to know where to place your sheaves. Just a little common sense.
Prepping for your pull is the most important task you will do when it comes to wire pulls. Make sure you do it right the first time because you most likely won't get a second time to do it over.
What I mean is installing your sheaves with the right material
If your tugger needs to be mounted to the floor use the right anchors. Etc
If you don't have sheaves try to find things around the site that can help.
4). Use Wire pulling baskets correctly (they do have a range on them) if you have them if not and you need to make a pulling head then take your time doing so. If you have any doubts. Stop and do it over.
5). Use Pulling lube especially for aluminum and PVC. In my opinion you don't really need lube for any other conduit. There's just something about PVC and aluminum that makes the insulation on some brands of wire to stick to it. (Just an opinion) At the end of the day it doesn't hurt if you use it anyway.
6). Get as many hands on the pull as possible. You never know you might need an extra pair of hands. Or know where the nearest co-workers are and have there number so you could call for help if need be.
7). Make sure your pulling with the right size rope. You don't want a rope to snap. Bigger is better in this instance. Usually hard pulls won't go anywhere near 10,000 ft lbs of pressure so either get a rope that can handle that or try to figure out how much the rope your using can handle and if your tugger is pulling that much then you know you need to re assess the wire pull and think about either proceeding with caution or stop and do over with a better rope.
8). Learn a wire pulling knot your comfortable with because sometimes you'll have a wire pull where you'll need a lot more then what the motor can pull. Which mean you would have to untie the rope from the head and doing a wire gripping knot so the tugger can help you pull more. You might have to do this a few times till you have enough wire.
That's pretty much all i got brother.
Also if you feel it's too risky just pull up at the end of the day the tugger will do the work. But you always need to have you supports ready to go on hand when the pull is done so remember that.
Also I have 3 knots that will help you
Look up on my YouTube channel the electrician's knot playlist and you can find the videos there.
1). Stopper knot- to help you pull extra wire out of the conduit.
2). No name knot- to help you pull extra wire out of conduit. Really great knot.
3). Bowline knot - when you need a loop at the end of the rope. Either because your rope didn't come with an eye splice.

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[TheArtOfConduitBending]

Hope this helps someone out in the field
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[namkablam]

I'm digging the new intro! Very nice!

[ssc]

Yeah the other thing is if you are pulling out more slack you can always arrange the puller farther away and with more cable sheaves to keep it straight. Have seen a couple jobs done with tuggers where it was done without splices pulled from box to box and they would pull out say 30 feet, then re-attached the hitch knot to the conduit end and pull another 30 feet out until they had enough length to pull to the final box by hand. They set some temporary eyebolts in the ceiling to hang the sheaves. Setting up the boxes in the right spots helps a ton in making it more pullable. Have seen some jobs where a lot of it was done by hand so just needed more boxes to make the pulls box to box easier. Some of the new tuggers are pretty amazing they even make a light duty one for drills that can go up to 1000lb but for short pulls of a couple hundred pounds tension its handy.

[wirewaykingelectric]

I find the Greenlee G6 tugger and our G-10 tugger to be so easy. All you do is roll up to it attached to the end of the the conduit so your supported to the nose of the conduit, the pipe never moves as all of the force is into the conduit.
You can even attached up to 20’ of 3” imc conduit to the boom or use a feed through slack basket when more slack is needed vs floor mounting.
Either way works great though!
I love your videos! You are definitely a conduit bending master and trough king with those wire way

[GeometricShapes]

A lot of knowledgable stuff on your channel as always. Are you doing all the work shown? Are you an electrical contractor by now?

[bananaaaa]

First time I’ve seen a floor mounted tugger, was like oh they might come in handy one day. Looked it up and it’s over 6 thousand dollars damn lmao

[Electronman]

how do you tie thay knot @ 00 :57 when the loop of the rope breaks how did u make that new loop ?

[bananaaaa]

Hey Mel, what kind of rope would u recommend to use for 4/0 feeder pulls? The line keeps snapping for our pull and the boss isn’t very happy. Happy Thanksgiving man