I am adding a subpanel to a detached building. After traversing the yard in sch 80 conduit is it legal to snake the feeders (#8 or so) through the wall into the sub panel without conduit? The distance is less then 4 feet from where I would enter the wall and the panel. I would like to avoid running pipe on the outside of the house. Any help would be appreciatted. Thanks
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No.
You need to use an approved wiring method.
Basically that means appropriate cable (with protection where is might be exposed to damage, ie coming out of the ground). Or wire in a conduit.
You could pull underground cable through conduit***. But you would still have conduit where you exit the ground and transistion into the building.
So why not the same for conduit? I don't see where any more conduit would be exposed in either case.
*** While cable can be pulled in conduit you will need to calculate the size of the conduit and it will probably have to be upsized. Also it is much harder to pull than wire.
I'm not sure I understand how you want to get the wire from the conduit into the building - could you explain that in a little more detail? It sounds kind of like the conduit would end somewhere before it got to the building, and then you'd like to run the conductors out the end of the conduit and fish them into the wall somehow. As Bill said, the conductors need to be protected.
J-box on inside of exterior wall (Flush with DW)
Extender penetrates wall
Pulling 90° connects conduit (from soil) to extender
Flex conduit from J-Box to panel
SamT
If your conduit isn't in the ground yet, the cleanest way to go would be to drill vertically thru the footing where you want it to enter, and run PVC up thru the hole and into the wall.
If you already have conduit coming up out of the ground next to the building, put an LB on top of it to make the 90 degree turn towards the building, and another LB or box inside to turn back to vertical.
Bottom line, you do have to run in conduit the whole way.
-- J.S.
Actually, the one place where he doesn't positively need conduit is underground.
My initial thought was your second option (LB into the building just above the footing. The question was does the code allow a limited amount of distance from there where the wire would in the wall without the protection you get from romex or conduit. The walls are already finished so I will need to do a bit of fishing to get conduit, etc. in there once I make the 90. Thanks for the help. TJ
"The question was does the code allow a limited amount of distance from there where the wire would in the wall without the protection you get from romex or conduit."No.What you could do is to use the PVC flex conduit (asuming that you are using PVC conduit) and fish that from the panel to the and out the hole where the LB body would go.Glue it up to the LB body and then mount the LB body on top of the conduit.Then you can pull your wires from far end to the LB body and then feed them from there to the panel.