OOOOooo, there are some words that make me cring. SMURF! (wiremold is another) Oh how I hate it! I'm refusing to use it any further.

• Roll it out, rolls back up behind you.
• Supply house is always out of the correct glue.
• Cold day, breath on it and it snaps.
• 20 people working on a rebar frame for a slab means you're out ten times for site damage.
• Some cuts or forgets a strap, and it float to the top.
• So easy to bend that underlings put 560 degrees of bend in a run before waking up for a day of straightening it all back out.
• [drum roll] Can't handle pressure of concrete pump!

Just got done watching GC's video/pics of walls right before pour, everything intact. Talked to the guy who poured the walls, who checked as well, and poured it himself, he didn't see anything wrong. No couplings in the run to leak, but my fish hits solid concrete a few feet in. Only thing we figure is it broke under the pressure of the concrete being pumped in.

Does anyone else like the stuff as much as I do right now?

mostly I hate getting cold-cocked in the face by the piece I am trying to feed doing a macaroni bend and coming right back at me.

In defense of smurf tube I will say that it fishes easier than flex, when it hasn't got 560 degrees of bend, that is.

So I'll raise my hand halfway.

I bet it was the pump operator that pinched your smurf.

I would never use corrugated conduit in a slab unless I was pulling in the cables before the concrete is poured. You're just asking for trouble otherwise. And don't expect to be able to use that conduit ever again. Personally I always use rigid in slabs.
Corrugated conduit is great stuff for certain applications but it has its limits.

"Smurf" is NOT a popular item in my area. I do not use it as an EC. As an AHJ, I can't remember seeing it on any jobs.

John

I've used it twice. Both times have been recently.

1) Used it as a raceway for the data cables in the middle of a conference room, and a separate raceway for floor receptacle.

2) Used it as a raceway for (3) switch legs in a shallow wall space where a 3-gang box had to go.

Both times worked out very well.

In cases where green-field and smurf-tube can be used interchangeably, what's the advantage of using smurf-tube? I've never used the stuff.

For example, ShockMe77, why'd you chose smurf insstead of flex to fish into a wall? Just price?

-John

Yup.

In my area Smurf is only allowed in concrete - nowhere else. Must penetrate with steel RMC.

The only reason to use it is that it DIRT cheap.

The only reason I used it was our over-zealous PM - Who has never really worked in the field, but feels she should be supervising.... The farther she is away from me the better.

I have a roll in my shed I bought years ago. It's only missing 10 feet.

Mr. B., what size is it? It's good for audio/video and other low-voltage wiring.

i.e., I may be interested in it.

[This message has been edited by Larry Fine (edited 04-13-2006).]

Larry, it's 1/2". I think it would cost more to ship it to West Virginia than it's worth! I just keep it around thinking I'll need it someday. I thought about using it to fish multiple circuits across inaccessable attic crawl spaces during re wires. Also for bath fan combo units and evaporative (swamp)coolers. Heck, maybe I'll use it to wire up my new shop.

Smurf is good pretty much anywhere you can use Romex with the flexibility to retrofit different conductors. I have it in my house for those attic runs that I didn't want to be crawling around in insulation to make. You can push/throw it quite a ways in the 3:12 attics we have here where headroom is only a foot or two.

As a totally unrelated aside, this is pretty tough stuff. I know it is not listed for "outside" but I have some on my boat that has survived over a decade and a half in the Florida sun. 3/4" smurf is the perfect size to sleeve a steering cable and the cable inside still looks like it just came out of the box. I also split a short piece and installed it to protect me from "wild hairs" on the boat lift cables. That is still flexible too.

Like the Carlon RNC straps and conduit body covers, the older smurf connectors are NOT U/V protected but the tube itself seems to be.

BTW have you noticed 362.10(1)(a) says "For exposed work, where not prohibited by 362.12" ...
and 362.12 points you back to 362.10

Yeah, the Smurfs was a really stupid show!

I just used it last week on a remodel job in a bank. I felt like I was working with thin ice. But I agree it is easy to fish in, and super easy to cut. Reminds me of LT NON-metallic conduit.

I just looked into smurf (because of it being mentioned here before) for some low voltage sleeves on a resi remodel. I was quoted $.60 per ft for 1/2 from one supplier (nonstock) and around $390 per 500 from another supplier. 500'min.

I was floored that 1/2 steel flex was cheaper. What's the deal? What are some of you paying for this stuff?

that seems pretty high, are you sure you didn't say Smurnoff?

Anyone noticed you can play music with it?
Just grip one end of a yard-ish long offcut, and swing it round like Tex Ritter [ showing my age agin! ] a-twirlin' his lariatt. The centripetal forces pump air down the smurf so it plays like a bugle- sets of fixed notes depending on the rpm. With a bit of practice you can play bugle stuff like the Last Post, Reveille or, for the really sophisticated, Beethoven's Fifth !

Alan

That will change my mood for the day.


Agreed. Whenever I'm doing 'old work' stuff in my house I've fished in smurf (aka ENT in Canada) instead of romex. Not only does it let you add-on easily later, but it covers your butt if you missed something.

I've used TONS of smurf on concrete construction - suspended slab and vertical. IMO, 3/4" is the smallest realistic size you should be using. 1/2" can be okay if used very sparingly or for very short runs. IMO, smurf requires more attention to securing it than it otherwise appears to require.

Running it through boxes, and/or not using connectors allows for more 'give' and actually decreases the number of lost pipes. Religious taping of cut ends and boxes helps too. Its the details like this that seperate a good slab from a bad one.

Locally we are allowed to use in anywhere that's concealed - not just concrete. There are some derating conditions when in contact with insulation though.

So, no, I won't raise my hand for this topic.

I figured out how you could sneak a hot tub out of a Home Depot.
I was there Friday buying some stuff and I had carefully stacked and rolled 10 sticks of 10' precut ENT into a shopping cart. I left one separate from that rat's nest for the scanner. Nope that wasn't good enough for the cashier, she wanted to see the UPC tag on all of them. Well when she yanked on one of them, 90 feet of smurf tube sprung to life. Within seconds everyone in the store was either trying to stuff it back in the cart or rolling on the floor laughing. You could have gone out the door with anything at that moment.

My experience with "Smurf Tube" (ENT) was limited to a single project, where the tubing was used in Post Tension Concrete type floors.

Prior to my arrival on this project, two other people from the Company I was with, installed tubing on lower floors.
We were only installing tubing for HVAC Control systems, not Electrical systems - which was done by another Contractor.

In the Parking levels (below ground level parking), at least half of the smurf runs were unusable - either the 90° elbows were gone, or the tube became filled with Concrete.
At the lowest Parking Level - the one where we had interconnections to ventillation and alarm equipment - in addition to the typical C.O. sensors, over 3/4 of the smurf runs were unusable - resulting in surface mounted EMT runs.

Got to the project right as a floor was ready to be poured, and got to observe the Concrete Crew to learn "What Not To Do".

I ran the tube under the rebar and attached the 90°s against and directly next to the rebar - which kept the tubing and elbows out of the Concrete Crews' footsteps, plus protected it from the Vibrators and the directly falling Concrete from the bucket.

This approach took an additional hour of labor time, and used an additional 25 feet of tube - making the TOTAL installation time 4 Hours, as opposed to 3 hours; and the total material used 350 Feet, as opposed to 325 Feet.
On floors done by others, maybe 1 run on every other floor could be used - due to Concrete filling the tube; whereas all the runs on the floors I installed could be used.

(FYI: TOTAL Installation time includes time to gather materials + tools, bring up to ground floor level, load to man lift, go up +13 floors, offload materials + tools, install everything, pick up trash and unused materials, load unused stuff + tools to manlift, ride back to ground level, replace unused stuff in material container, log the days' work + inventory, order materials for following week's installation, then log out of the project)

Apparently (to a certain Know-Nothing Brown-Nosing Spaz Clown), this was unacceptable!
He figured this should be told to the Company Owner - but told biased in his view only.

That Joker went nuts when I was called into the Office to defend myself, and explain the reasons - In Complexity - just why it was not counterproductive to do the installs my way, but it was extremely counterproductive any other way.

I eventually left the company, because that Joker had it out for me big time following the "Office Meeting With The Boss".

Needless to say, just the very sight of Smurf Tube makes me uncomfortable - if not angry!


Scott35

Some folks down the street from me have a piece of it on the outside of the house. Looks like a circuit coming out of the basement and then back into the first floor. Pretty.

Know-Nothing Brown-Nosing Spaz Clown, I know a few of them. In particular was the one who spec'ed the smurf.

"What do you mean: "it's busted and full of concrete?"

"I mean, it's busted and full of concrete?"

Remediation of repairs cost 2x's more than original work. Working with it in concrete is just a gamble you stand to loose IMO.

I HATE THIS *(#%^%#$%^#&#^&*($#@@^&^! (pardon my yelling.) The only thing I'll ever use it for is for data wiring through the floor and into the crawlspace. My dad brought home a piece once, needless to say, my face had corrugation marks the next day.

Ian A.