just finding what is what can be time consuming. i've done similar installs ( but with more troffer) when relocating a panel, and used the wire #'s to reference circuit #'s.

Scott,

The general public is not sympathetic to this. They just want you to make the lights & plugs work again. Myself, the first tool I'd reach for is a hatchet.

If this was a junction box with the same cubic inch capacity, would that make the job any easier? I only ask this because of my past quaestions about custom made junction boxes that are 4x4x whatever that you could possibly fit several hundred #12's into.

Tom

[This message has been edited by Tom (edited 08-24-2001).]

Tom, I knew this one would get your interest
Nothing can save me now, not even your custom J-box. This was done by somebody that worked for the same company that I do, but isn't there any more. It wasn't ever energized, a church job with volunteer labor doing framing, drywall, etc. has taken over a year. There were ripped up M/C cables,boxes buried under drywall, and the like everywhere.
If the moron that did this had just brought the cables down into the panel (this gutter is absolutely unnecessary) it would be much easier to fix. He stuffed those 3/4s so full that you can't budge the wires. All the stuff in the panel below was Ty-rapped, and he signed his name with felt marker in the can. yet another proud idiot.

Electure,

Let's see, 107/4 = 27 wires per conduit. That works out to about a 67% fill. If the conduits were 24" or less, 60% would be allowed, so he isn't over as much as I thought he'd be. Must of held his mouth just right & used KY Jelly to get them in there. It's hard to put wires into a 60% fill without some serious bad language.

I've spent a lot of time marking wires & writing on j-box lids. Sometimes, I wonder if it is worth the effort. Marking the wires is especially time consuming & I'm not as religious about it as I should be.

Then, 2 years later, or more, I go back to one of my jobs to do additional work. Then I remember why I bothered to mark the wires.

I once ran across a 40 circuit load center that you had to lean on the cover real hard to get the screws started. There were only 10 circuits in use, any extra wire was just crammed into the enclosure. Owner didn't want to pay me to neaten it up, probably still there to this day.

Tom

I actually was counting the wires as if they were in a box (would that be the correct way?). The EMTs contain only 12-13 wires each, but the wire must be bent up, they're just as tight as can be.
What is the correct way to figure the # of conductors in a gutter where there are splices, anyway??
BTW for anybody that hasn't seen previous discussions, NEC 374-5 limits the # of current carrying conductors in any cross-section of gutter to 30.

it would make for good chat!