Having just come out of my first solar field job (Which I came into about the 2/3rds point) I must say that the common sense (and code practices) that a general electrician uses when it comes to conduit installation did NOT reach the design phase of this job. I saw the most bizarre things over there....
2" PVC 40 stubs coming from a pad, had 1" "duct" shoved inside maybe a foot and then duct seal was stuffed around the 1". This duct was for fiber with was about 1/2" diameter and runs ranging from 400' to one just above 3500'! Through this we were expected to suck a string through. Unused conduits were stuffed with duct seal. (There was literally 2 pallets of duct seal on this job and nothing was "fire rated". Duct seal was easier to find than duct tape!
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We managed to get string in some of the runs with a large shop vac and generator. For a couple runs we "borrowed" a hydro dig machine that was onsite and used the vacuum hose on it, still having to use a slinkied fish tape to catch the balloon in the 2".
Did I mention there were up to 7 - 90° bends in some of these runs???
We ended up using a pulley attached to a Landall forklift and an atv to do the pulling. Some runs made it, and on some we snapped 2500# muletape. A kellems and a 5 gallon bucket of aquagel was used on every run.... Eventually I found out that this ducting was run through some bizarre routings around the solar tables "because thats what they drew on the print!". (One run was about 450'-500' if you walked from end to end. The pull used 1486' of fiber in the ground somehow???)
The job was supposed to be done last August and the group who owns the field finally kicked the EC off the job and hired another one. I'm deciding if I want to roll in with the new EC and take on the headache I know this place will be with the over strained fiber pulls, grounding issues and who knows what else. Lots of OT (7 X 12's) so it'll be nice for the bank account but will I live to spend it?
