help with steel conduit and trunking

[Farmelectrics]

please read thread 21 electraserv not trying to be little you in any way ive read your threads many times and your obviously very qualified not douting that but if you would have served an apprenticeship like many have conduit was allways done by electricians you said any one can do conduit well i couldnt any every apprentice couldnt when they started they were taught by older electricians like my dad and guys is age to have a bubble and a dog leg in the same piece believe me took along long time to perfect its a true skill believe me so show some respect to the electrical industry there are enough people putting us down these days rant over

 

[somersetsparks]

Well looking in at this one, I would say Madmac has it dead right.

Conduit is a skilled job, requiring old school manual skills, The number of sparks I've seen who have trouble doing it is amazing.

How can anyone think that one of the mainstays of our work is for monkeys? 3/4 of as job is containment, so what electricalserv is advocating is giving the agencies and firms the license to pay 75% of there staff considerably less.

Its that sort of selfish thinking thats landed sparks where they are.
Every man for himself, Every man gets stamped on.


You say you spend your time wiring electricalserv, Surely thats just a grunts job in your books? Thats why we have cable gangs.

What about house clouting? You could teach someone how to wire houses in a week and then call them a 'domestic installer'.

I think the problem is mate, you only see it from your corner theres a big wide world of electricvsl installations out there and you have just passed 75% of it off as donkey work....

 

[Electricalserv]

Well looking in at this one, I would say Madmac has it dead right.

Conduit is a skilled job, requiring old school manual skills, The number of sparks I've seen who have trouble doing it is amazing.

How can anyone think that one of the mainstays of our work is for monkeys? 3/4 of as job is containment, so what electricalserv is advocating is giving the agencies and firms the license to pay 75% of there staff considerably less.

Its that sort of selfish thinking thats landed sparks where they are.
Every man for himself, Every man gets stamped on.


You say you spend your time wiring electricalserv, Surely thats just a grunts job in your books? Thats why we have cable gangs.

What about house clouting? You could teach someone how to wire houses in a week and then call them a 'domestic installer'.

I think the problem is mate, you only see it from your corner theres a big wide world of electricvsl installations out there and you have just passed 75% of it off as donkey work....

I think you guys see it from your corner only because you're all doing conduit day in day out.

I'm not wiring all day as you say. i'm out Inspecting & Testing most days recently. I do anything my job requires me to do.


My point here is when people say 'your not much of a spark' if you don't/can't do conduit. Its rubbish.


Btw conduit is not 75% of the work where I ply my trade. I do domestic and light commercial and I harly ever come across steel conduit!.

When I do I employ a mate, because its crap work!

 

[Knobhead]

i'm out Inspecting & Testing most days recently.

Well that’s just summed it up for me. If you can’t do it pick holes in other peoples work!

 

[Electricalserv]

Well that’s just summed it up for me. If you can’t do it pick holes in other peoples work!

If I couldn't do it I wouldn't have passed my tech certs. Bending conduit isn't hard. Anyone with half a brain cell could do it with practise. You don't need a phd degree in rocket science here. I think where it lies here is that many of you ARE doing conduit day in day out and for me thats just not sparking. Its the boring side of any job is containment and if I can pay someone else to do I will!

 

[rmc86uk]

I agree with somersetsparks that containment is pretty much 75% of our job. Also this might sound daft but I think wiring is one of the things I least like about our job. I know there will be a lot more guys on here who love working with containment also because like said it's an art and requires a lot of thinking.

Sent from my HTC Desire using Tapatalk

 

[somersetsparks]

Im not saying conduit is 75% of the work, containment in general is, do you agree?
After all you have to have something to put your cables in/on!

In your area of work you probably don't do much conduit, however, I think its good work and requires more skill then most electrical tasks especially when you get given a plan and you have to work out how to get to every point with the least amount of crosses etc. Calculate the cable capacity required for what you have, make up identical sets in different sizes of conduit, ensure all your saddles are spaced properly etc.
At the end of the day what is sparking if its not conduit? It's not wiring cos thats cable pulling, its not house bashing cos thats domestic installation, its not assembling panels cos thats panel building, Seems to me it may be a combination of all of the above + lots more and we need to keep it that way.

Anyone should be able to do a bit of conduit when necessary which by the sounds of it you can, I have worked in all different areas of electrical installation ( even house bashing!) And I can say I like nothing better then a nice challenging trunking and tube job, Wiring is tedious in my books and glanding and terminating certainly is. Testing can be interesting but is generally pretty tedious although it does require good knowledge of the book especially on ropey old installs.

Bottom line is all of the above form a part of sparking, take anyone of them on there own they are a skill in there own right but if you could do just one of them you would be only semi-skilled.

 

[rmc86uk]

I agree again with somersetsparks 100%! As said above I much prefer to work with drawings and put containment in be it trunking, tray or basket. Also agree with the fact that an electrician is a skilled trade requires us to have a mix of skills and should be kept that way.

Sent from my HTC Desire using Tapatalk

 

[Farmelectrics]

seems like we all agree here bar one person

 

[malcolmsanford]

Well I can honestly say that I can run, bend, and fit conduit.
There again I can run, and fit trunking, and cut all my bends and sets.
Though come to think of it I can run cable in them as well.
I can also if asked terminate all the appliances and DB and make sure they are good.
At a push I can design the circuits and make sure the right protection device, cable etc etc is used for the circuits required.
Well if I need to I can also test all this and complete the relevant documentation.
Not done it for a while but I suppose I could run, dress, terminate MICC.
With a little practice I could i suppose install a full fire alarm system, but that would take some working out.
Though most likely not seen it, I could fault find on a panel with a drawing, or in some cases without one.
I have been know in the past to rewire the odd house, but hate it.
Dug a few trenches as well and run SWA and had to gland and terminate it as well.
Been on a few towers and platforms over the years and just managed to run some tray or basket work.
Not been unknown for me to fit an entire wall with dexion and fit these bus bar chambers, isolators, switch fuses and distribution boards on it, and do some wiring.

Wow reading this I must be a mate/steel erector/wirer/designer/inspector/ domestic installer/alarm engineer/ panel and controls expert/ etc ...................................ah I know I'm an ELECTRICIAN

 

[Knobhead]

The old jack of all trades, master of non goes out the window when you become an industrial electrician.

Occasionally you get to play with the odd wire, but 9 times out of 10 you’ll be sorting out gear boxes, hydraulics, blockages, welding, digging holes, lining drives up, crane driving and even unblocking the bogs!

Fitter in blind panic mode, he’d been left a shaft to take a pinion off. Simple job if you cut down with the gas axe on to the key and stop at that point. He didn’t! He cut through the key and continued in to the shaft. So what should have been a quiet night for me ended up with me welding up the shaft, turning it in the lathe, re-cutting the keyway on the miller, I was bloody knackered! That was only my 2[SUP]nd[/SUP] day working with him! Eventually the management had to split us up before I strangled him.