I finally gave in and ran conduit on a residential job

Honestly, I always thought conduit was overkill for houses until last Tuesday when I was fishing a new run through an attic in 95 degree heat and the fiberglass rod snapped on me. I heard a younger installer on the job site say 'conduit is the only way to go for future-proofing' and it made me think about all the times I've had to go back and re-pull wire. So I ran conduit for the main trunk line on this 3,000 square foot house and it was a pain upfront but now I'm wondering if I've been doing it wrong for the last 8 years. Has anyone else switched to conduit for residential and regretted it or was it worth the extra time?

3 comments

3 Comments

stella_murray2mo ago

...and that's exactly what I keep bouncing back and forth on. On one hand, the attic heat and broken rods make me want to run conduit everywhere so I never have to do that again. But then I look at the cost of the pipe plus fittings plus the time to glue it all together, and I start second guessing if it's really worth it for a single family home. What kind of fittings did you use for the main trunk? I'm trying to decide if I should just stick with EMT or try a flexible option for the tricky spots.

king.andrew1mo agoMost Upvoted

Did you catch that article in EC&M a few months back about the guy who ran flexible metal conduit through his whole house and regretted it because the wire kept snagging on the inside? I think they tested a few different types, and the EMT with compression fittings came out way cleaner for the main trunk, but they also mentioned you gotta be real careful with the bending radius in tight spots. For the tricky spots in my own place, I just used a short piece of liquidtight for the last foot or so into the panel and the attic corners, but everything else is rigid EMT with set-screw fittings because I'm too cheap for the compression kind.

park.abby2mo ago

My buddy Mike over in Dallas decided to run all his resi jobs with EMT after a bad day in an attic. He said the first house took him almost twice as long as normal, and @stella_murray nailed it with the time vs cost thing. Three months later the homeowner wanted to add a couple extra outlets in the garage for his welder and Mike just had to push two wires through, no drywall repair needed at all. He told me it's paid for itself on that one re-pull alone.