I finally stopped fighting the old 2-inch conduit on a retrofit

Last Tuesday I had a job downtown where we had to pull three new Cat6 runs through this ancient 2-inch conduit that had been packed with who knows what for 20 years. My first instinct was to just hammer through it with a fishtape and pray, but the building super came over and said, "You ever try blowing a pull string through with a shop vac and a trash bag?". I thought he was joking, but he showed me how to tie a plastic bag to the line and use the vac to suck it right through the whole pipe. It took us maybe 15 minutes total, compared to the hour I usually spend fighting with stuck tape and swearing at bends. That trick saved me so much hassle and now I'm wondering how many other simple methods I've been ignoring on this job. Has anyone else got a weird trick like that for clearing out old conduit that they wish they'd learned sooner?

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hugoj122mo ago

Man, that trash bag trick actually works? I've been doing this for years and never once thought to try that. I always figured the bag would just bunch up or get snagged on the first bend, but hearing it cleared a whole 2-inch line in 15 minutes makes me want to kick myself for all the afternoons I lost fighting with a stuck fishtape. It's wild how the simplest solutions are usually the ones we overlook because we're so used to just muscling through the hard way. Good on you for posting this, I'm definitely stealing this for my next nightmare pull.

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