Conduit Explosives

Since the 1940s there have been technological improvements in electrical conduit.  Over the years, in using conduit for electrical work, I have run into some unusual circumstances.

For instance, when building on top of a concrete slab very often the conduit will be put in place in the floor before the cement is poured.  The conduit ends are located so as to come up within the space of a future wall.  Then as the building goes through its various construction phases there are wiring raceways in which to pull wire.  When a wall is constructed where the conduit has been stubbed up, new sections of conduit are attached as needed to get to the termination points.

To run wire through the conduit a semi-rigid wire (called a fish-tape) is run through the conduit to an opening, wire conductors are fastened to it, and then the wire is pulled back through the conduit to the point where you are working.

There are a certain phenomena surrounding open ended conduit.  Some people are fascinated by an open conduit end, and will drop things into the open conduit.  I guess they just can’t help themselves.

One place we were working was next to a fast food place.  Someone emptied a bottle of Coca-Cola down one pipe.  When the liquid evaporated it left behind a substance of sticky syrup in the pipe.  Contrary to how cola works with your digestive system, this instance made it impossible to push a fish-tape through the conduit.  The only solution was to dig out the pipe and replace it.

Sometimes people would drop a marble or a little rock down the pipe.  The drag produced by these items made it very difficult to get wiring pulled.

One time, at a job site next to a college dormitory, the dorm residences used the open conduit as urinals.

Worse than that, yes – worse, was the time we terminated some conduit stub outs inside a location for concrete pillars.  Unknown to us the concrete workers had allowed some wet cement to get into the open pipes.  When the cement set it was impossible to get the concrete out of the pipe.  When we returned and attached the next sections of conduit to the stubbed out ends, we didn’t know about what was now in the conduit below.  Of course we found out when we attempted to fish the wire into the raceways.  Our boss suggested that we drop lit firecrackers down the open pipe to blast the concrete away.  It was a good idea that worked on some, but then we found one conduit that had too much concrete in it.

The ensuing blast took the conduit right out of the concrete pillar, taking a chunk of the pillar with it.  The conduit was split open, so we cut the bad piece out, put in a fresh piece of conduit, and continued.  We let the cement finishers figure out how to deal with the disfigured pillar.  However we learned to cover the open ends of conduit.

I know of at least three times where someone deliberately drove a nail through the center of the conduit into the wood framing.  On one of those occasions I was able to push the fish-tape past the nail underneath it and attach some of the wires and pull them back through.  Then I sent the fish-tape through one more time and got it to pass the nail on the upper half of the conduit, attach the rest of the wires and pull them through.

I never heard that it electrified the nail.

Bank Jobs

Montana weather usually can mean a work shut down in winter months.  Generally we planned for it by stocking up on basic necessities and food, as well as paying ahead on loans.

The 1^st National Bank was a plus for us all.  The boss told us that he had bid the job at bare cost just to keep us working.  We really appreciated that, and we were determined to make it come out ahead.  We were going to work extra hard.

When the light fixtures came in, which he had ordered, he assisted us in stacking them in an empty room.  When he looked at the invoice that had come with the fixtures he said; “Oh!  This is great!  They threw the light bulbs in free.  That gives us about $400.00 profit on the job.”

When we finished and all the numbers had been run, he told us he had come out with about a 10% profit.  Everyone felt good about that.   I don’t know how the other contractors did, but I do know there were some surprises on the job.

In the banks I have worked on there are two vaults.  One is a cash vault and one is a paper vault.  Each vault has about 18” thick concrete walls enclosing them.  They are outfitted with breathing tubes so that if someone gets accidently locked in the vault they won’t suffocate.  These tubes are placed on an upward angle out of the vault so that someone inside cannot toss items out the tube to someone else outside.

In this bank the two vaults had been placed side by side for many years.  There was a partition wall between the two vaults, and the store located in the same building.  The store had moved and the bank was taking over its space.  The decision to expand the bank also included a renovation on the vaults.  The two existing vaults were to be combined into one, and a new vault installed a distance away in the new portion of the bank.

The plan was to pour concrete to fill in the existing vault doors and cut a new door on the side of the vault that had abutted the partition wall.  Two men were going to jack hammer the opening in the vault for the new door.  The job was going to take two men and a rope suspension for the jack hammer to get the new opening in the vault wall.  It was, after all, an 18” thick wall, the jack hammer was heavy, and the door was going to exceed six feet in height.

When the two men started the jack hammer it practically fell through the wall.  When they showed the bank president, he got as pale as a sheet.  The wall had been constructed out of clay tile, not 18” thick concrete.  It had been that way since the bank had been built.  Anyone could have hid in the adjoining store over night and broke into the vault with an ordinary home owner’s claw hammer.

Making the door and taking out the partition was not a big problem.  However a whole new 18” thick concrete wall had to be built.

If you attempt to break into a bank vault, make sure it is very, very old and has been built by a contractor that cuts corners.

The 1^st National Bank

Glasgow, Montana was and still is a small town.  In a small town you get to know at least half of the people fairly closely.  As a family we knew the First National Bank President, Vice-president, and the Farm Home Loan officer.  My wife had gone to school with some of the tellers.

One winter the bank did a remodel and the shop I worked for had the electrical contract.  Inside the bank, scaffolding was erected over the entire bank floor.  We did all of our work over the top of the ongoing banking operations.

The General Contractor Company was out of Minnesota and the job foreman, a great big Swede, came with the job.  He was quite a character.  When it was time for him to saw a board, he would look around for the girl with the big black up-do on her head.  Then he would saw the board so that the sawdust drifted down onto her head.

I don’t know if she ever caught on to what he was doing but I heard her and another teller talking once.  The girl with the up-do said she had to wash her hair every night; “It is so messy.”

One time I was cutting off a length of conduit and I made the comment “Shoot!  I cut it off twice and it’s still too short.”

The big Swede was standing there.  He looked at me in a stunned way and said; “Of course it’s too short.  Did you think it would get longer?”

He walked over to one of his crew and said; “That crazy electrician cut off a conduit twice and says it is still too short.”  No wonder they do terrible work.”

I just let it go.  Some people don’t understand a joke.

Two other electricians were working with me on the job.  Somehow, though there was no official word on the subject, I seemed to be the one running the job.  A  point in the job came when we were all on the roof.  We were working on the air conditioning and heating units.  The other two men were standing and counseling together discussing how we would hook up all the equipment together.

I walked over and laid out the plan; “First we will do this (indicating one portion of the job), then we will do that (another portion), and then we will do that, and it will all work.”

They looked at me and asked; “How did you figure that out so fast?”

I told them; “Well there must be some reason why the boss put me in charge of this job.”

What I didn’t tell them was that I had been going over the job in my mind for some weeks.  (No time for singing on this one.)  I rarely bragged about anything as I had found it can have pretty bad repercussions.  However, it felt pretty good to be able to excel in this instance, as these two guys had been a little critical of me at times

Not so much after that.