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Had to pick between running conduit or MC cable in a warehouse last week | Electricians - The Community Guide

Had to pick between running conduit or MC cable in a warehouse last week

The foreman wanted MC for speed but the specs called for rigid conduit near the dock doors. I went with conduit because of impact risk and it took me two extra days to bend and hang everything. Has anyone else dealt with this kind of callout where speed loses to durability?

2 comments

2 Comments

fiona1302mo ago

My last warehouse job at the old Rexall distribution center by the rail yard had the same exact fight. The dock doors were on the south wall where the forklift traffic was nonstop, and the specs wanted rigid there too. I ended up running 3/4 inch galvanized rigid on a uni-strut rack about 12 feet up, and it took me and a helper four full days for that one section. The foreman kept pushing for MC every morning, but I just kept saying I'd rather spend the extra time now than explain to the safety guy why we had sparky cable getting mashed by pallets. By the time we finished the rough-in and the inspector walked through, he just nodded and moved on, no red tags at all. Sometimes you just have to dig your heels in and let them be mad for a few days, because the paperwork for a failed inspection takes way longer than bending pipe.

emmajackson2mo ago

Oh man that is rough. I think people forget that the cost of fixing something later is way higher than doing it right the first time. I've seen fork trucks clip a dock door frame so hard it bent a schedule 40 pipe into a pretzel, so I can only imagine what MC cable would look like after that. Plus code is code for a reason, the inspector would have flagged that MC near the dock doors on the final walkthrough and you'd be ripping it all out anyway. The foreman might have cheered for speed but he'd be screaming when you had to redo everything plus eat the material cost. You probably saved the crew from a massive headache down the road even if it sucked in the moment.