I inquired if the homeowner could have his gardener trench from the house and around the fence line to install 8 outdoor speakers. With trenches in place I can lay the lines and make all the connections. Imagine my surprise, when I arrived to find a junction box on the side of the house, with eight individual three-quarter inch conduits run to each speaker. No boxes in between for intermediate pulls, some of the runs exceeding 200’.

The landscaper did all the conduit, and did not use any pre-fab sweeps, but just used his torch to make all of the turns and sweeps, so from end to end it was just 10 foot sections of three-quarter inch PVC.

I should have just walked, but I felt like my job was to get music in his backyard. I explained I would have to cut the conduit some places to make it work, he said that was OK. It sounded great when I was done, but when he saw all the cuts that I had to make in the conduit he was very unhappy with me.

That just sounds like inexperience.

I have never done anything like that, and in one way, I admire his craftsmanship, but mainly I think he's a bit of a knob, especially for being "unhappy" with you.

200 ft with no inspection/junctions?

No thanks. :D

If the conduit didn't collapse when the bends were created, it might have been possible to pull the wire the whole 200' if a shop vac was used to suck a cord through, to attach to the wire and by spraying silicone into the feed end with the vacuum on- the silicone coating on the conduit is an amazingly good way to make a crappy task go much better. Best to have a second person at the feed end to help, but it can be done if you're alone. If the silicone gets on something that's non-porous and you want to remove it, use denatured alcohol.

Exactly.
I don't think you gave him enough information. For instance, did you want any pull boxes? Where? That implies you have a pattern in mind; did you give him a sketch of that?

I do like that he ran 3/4" conduit everywhere. Too many people would just throw 1/2" in there and it would be your tough luck when you got out there.

Are any of the sweeps wrinkled? It's possible to compress the inside of a sweep such that the PVC ends up with wrinkles at 90 degrees to the pipe length. Those, being on a curve, might offer quite a bit of pull resistance.

I'm going to disagree here. I always say if your going to dig a trench put a conduit in it.

Heating the conduit for sweeps is better than 90's as long as it's done right. This is how most electricians do it only they use a conduit hotbox.

200' is not an excessive pull, I would consider this average. I have done pulls between 500-600', although this in 1 1/4" conduit (not by choice).

How would you manage the pull in an empty several hundred foot conduit?

[Link: cablinginstall.com]

Ernie - slow down and read better. All that was requested was a trench.

Kinda humorous that the gardener was unhappy when he saw all the cuts that had to be made in the conduit in order to complete the job. Maybe there was a language barrier between the homeowner and his gardener.

It's funny when the information police stops by to put his 2 cents in when the information provided was clearly enough and stated that only a trench was requested, no conduit was ever requested or discussed.

This.

Plus home runs to each speaker? It got out of hand pretty quick. Why not a conduit for each conductor?

I only saw displeasure in the homeowner’s face after conferring with the landscaper. I guess planting trees and flowers for so long, he knows more than I do about the electronic side of things.

Sounds like the homeowner took it upon himself to go over your head and design and execute this without discussing it with you, so he screwed himself by leaving you out of the loop. It’s not his judgement to criticize you for anything about the way you had to do anything or overcome the adversity he created, but sounds like you were able to adapt and make it work. Get paid and say goodbye don’t feel bad about anything. You can’t save somebody from their self.

That's not necessarily excessive if the pull is straight but the common recommendation is to install a box every 50' to make it easier and to leave options. If it was larger conduit, fine, but 3/4" makes this a PITA.

FYI I tried to attach a cable to one of the longer runs and the pull string did not even move, when pulled from the other end. Too far, too many bends.

I think its obvious that this was a DIY homeowner driven mistake.

Conduit to each location = Awesome

Conduit ran incorrectly to each location = Fail

Conduit "bent" with a torch with too many bends = Colossal fail

Erase this before someone thinks its a good idea lol