PEX-A sleeve
or2025
| Posted in General Questions on
I’ll be using a 1” PEX-A as my water main. I’d like to put it in a PVC conduit sleeve to protect it and give the option of pulling to replace it in the future incase the need arrives. One configuration would be a run 90’ of conduit from water meter though the basement retaining wall side with two 90 degree long sweeps. Would it be possible to push/pull this PEX though either a 2” or 3” schedule 40 electrical conduit?
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Replies
or2025,
I recently replaced my old polyb waterlines with pex, and was thanking my younger self for having run them through a conduit. Changed the job from very involved and disruptive one to a quick fix.
3'" will make it lot easier than 2". It will be fine going around one 90 sweep, two might be difficult. Are both sweeps on the outside of the wall?
Yes all these sweeps would be outside the wall. Once it enters the house I wouldn't be as concerned about sleeving it.
I could also do two 45s and a single 90 sweep. I'm guessing that would be easier to feed through.
or025,
I've only worked with 3/4" pex. I don't know how much more rigid the 1" would be in that situation. Definitely worth doing though.
1" PEX is pretty stiff, but should still work. The thing that helps you here is that PEX is *very* strong in tensile strength. You could pull it with hand labor, or use a "chugger", which is what electricians use to pull long runs of heavy cable. A chugger can easily pull with enough force to break/damage things though, so be careful if going that route.
You may need to water seal the conduit on the inside of your foundation wall to keep out water. An "entry seal" gland is perfect for this, and is what we often use for a similar application in the telecom world:
https://www.roxtec.com/us/knowledge-library/sealing-solutions/conduit-applications/
Another trick from the telecom world: try running a bit of water in the conduit and then pulling in the pipe. Poly pipe in a poly (or PVC) duct will often get enough lubrication from water alone to make the pull a lot easier, and water is super duper easy to clean up! If you need more lubrication than water provides, try Ideal's Aqual-Gel.
One more suggestion: try running an HDPE conduit instead of PVC. HDPE can be one piece (no splices), and you can form it into wide sweeps without much difficulty. For a simple conduit like this placed in an open trench, you could use SDR13.5 (thinner wall than schedule 40, and a bit cheaper). HDPE is slicker than PVC, so it's easier to pull stuff in it. You can also get HDPE duct with grooves molded into the interior to cut down on friction, which also makes it easier to pull stuff in. The only downside might be finding someone to sell you a "short" piece of only 90 feet or so. I would try utility contractors, and directional drilling companies, many of those companies will also sell "pipe", and 90 feet is leftover material for them, so they might let you have a run of around that length for cheap or even free!
BTW, do NOT use yellow or red HDPE for your water line. Yellow is reserved exclusively for gas lines. Red is usually power. Try to get blue, otherwise black. Gray and white are other options. Orange is usually telecommunications.
Bill
Bill,
Smooth wall HDPE duct sounds like it would be the easiest. You wouldn't need sweeps to change direction. No idea what the price is though.
You're probably around $1.50-$2/foot for 3" SDR13.5 HDPE duct if you can find someone to cut short pieces. Most vendors want to sell full reels of the stuff. I would try Graybar as a possible source for cut pieces, Graybar is a national distributor, and you will want their *telecom* division, not the *electrical* division for this stuff.
Local directional drilling contractors may have scrap pieces that they'd let go much cheaper though. ~90 feet is pretty useless for utility contractors.
BTW, you do *NOT* want the "corrugated" type HDPE duct for underground use!
Bill
This HDPE conduit sounds really promising. I'm going to make some calls in the hunt for some tomorrow. Thanks for the idea Bill.