Maybe you know this one already, but maybe someone will find it useful.
Needed to snake low-voltage wire thru 70 feet of 1 inch PVC buried under a driveway. Don’t have a snake-wire that long. Seems that the driveway was ripped up and replaced, and the pvc pipe containing the lawn sprinklers’ low-voltage zone wires got ripped up with it. Asphalt guys laid new pvc pipe but not the wires.
Took some thin but strong mason’s twine, tied one end to a small wad of plastic bag, and shoved it into one end of the pipe. At the other end, used the shopvac and sucked it right thru the pipe! I am told it will work on larger pipe and over a couple hundred feet too. Just tie off the other end of the twine cause it only takes a second or so to vac it through the pipe.
Never again will you have to snake wire while you connect sections of pipe. Just vac it thru when you are done.
HTH
Phil
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A friend of my Dad's is a retired engineer for one of the power companies in Calif.
He told of a situation where the messenger line broke while attempting to pull power cable through a large conduit several hundred feet long at a hydroelectric site. One of the laborers on the const. crew had one of his kids R/C cars in his pickup and used it to pull a heavy monofiliment line through to then pull a new messenger line through.
To paraphrase a frequent visitor to this site "ingenuity is its own reward!"
Reminds me of a job I plan on doing at my house. Part of house has very shallow crawl space, cannot roll over under there. 10 yrs ago, I crawled under there but now I won't (see post about back spasms!). Crawl area is L-shaped, cannot see around the bend. Gonna use a RC 4x4 (with dragback monofilament attached) with a flashlight and a mounted little wireless video camera , just like those in the annoying popup ads you see while surfing. With portable TV I can "see" anywhere.
You can also blow the plug, mouse or parachute through the pipe with compressed air, nitrogen, or the shop vac hooked up to blow, etc. A leaf blower works well on larger conduits. Avoid flammable gasses for obvious reasons. In a pinch I have even used water from a common garden hose. Underground pipes are considered wet locations and are frequently filled anyway so the extra water is no great problem unless there live equipment near the ends or the conduit.
A common trick to play on the rookie was to send him/her to a manhole to catch the mouse as it is blown from a underground run. A 500' of 2" works nice if it is the rainy season. Wait for them to get into position, head down listening for the mouse, and clear the conduit with a continuous blast. The water will emerge with the apparent force of a fire hose. Even from a distance of 500' you can sometimes see the splash and hear the cussing. More experience helpers ask, demand, that all conduits be blown clear before they get in the manhole.
By the way. Blowing a mouse through is often better than drawing a vacuum. If the pipe is full of water, especially if it is a larger trade size, the amount of water it can hold can rapidly overwhelm the holding capacity of the shop vac. In addition to possibly destroying the vac you can easily get a nasty, possibly fatal, shock when the always broken cut off device fails and water enters the motor while you kneel on wet concrete.