1. Tie mule tape on the right size fish headz pulling sock with a piece of mule tape.
2. Place cable reels on a stand.
3. Fish it through.
4. Inset pull buddies or rollers at the first box/conduit.
5. Pull through.
Steps 2 and 4 are NOT optional when pulling alone. If you do it right you can completely eliminate someone to feed cable in. Also things like pull buddies can often be used to skip a separate pull with boxes you are just feeding through.
Alternatively if you have say a rope rigged up or a remote control for a puller of some kind you can play the part of feeder and run the pull remotely. On short pulls often I can do both.
I don&#;t use anything larger than a Pullzall which has a 1,000 pound limit except on vertical pulls up. I try to do those down. You will damage if not break most cables at pounds or less. If you can&#;t pull it with a Pullzall you are in serious danger of damaging the cable anyway and since you can buy one for the price of an average power tool instead of the price of a used car, it&#;s affordable and does the same thing a multi thousand dollar tugger does plus it can be used as a hoist for all kinds of things. If the Pullzall stops then it signals you to stop the pull and start looking for what went wrong.
The big trick with ANY pull is preparing ahead of time. I&#;m guilty myself of just going straight to fishing the conduit and then using a second man to feed the wire. But there are lots of issues:
1. When you just flip the cable off the end of the spool instead of properly unrolling it you put a twist in the cable. This has a tendency to twist at every bend and causes cables to jump over each other and jam up. Even a piece of half inch conduit through the rungs of a step ladder is better. There are very cheap reels out there. You don&#;t need those huge expensive cable racks. Mine is just two stands that accept 1/2&#; or 3/4&#; conduit and a couple compression fittings to keep the conduits from falling off. Everything is under $100.
2. The cable WILL find every sharp edge or corner to catch on. Rollers or nylon guides prevent this even with the most diligent feed man, I bought these on a whim and now the biggest trouble is having enough.
3. Cable lube is necessary on long runs or big cable. But if you just squeeze a huge glob down the conduit it will mostly do the job. It&#;s not strictly necessary to slime up every last foot.
4. If the conduit is too small jams will happen especially when trying to add more cables to an existing run. But also if it is too larger the cables can lay flat and twist around each other causing jams. Also generally speaking length of a pull is not nearly as critical as every bend or corner. It takes very little force to pull cable hundreds of feet horizontally especially with enough lube and rollers in tray or on poles. But have you ever exceeded 360 degrees of bends? If in doubt Greenlee has a free pulling app that is well worth it especially with the price.
5. A field bend in a conduit pulls far easier than a factory fabricated elbow even if it&#;s a long radius type. Every LB you can eliminate (360 degree limit!!) saves time, money, and pulls easier.
6. Pulling socks or clips of some kind are not absolutely necessary but wish I bought them sooner. They pretty much eliminate tying knots and taping. The big advantages are your pulling &#;head&#; will be smaller and smoother so it has much less chance of jamming and there is no sticky mess to clean off the fish or wasted tape and cable ends cut off or to take apart. It is much faster to hitch and unhitch everything.
7. Do NOT pull all the slack out of a pull box in a multiple box pull. I&#;ve tried taping and other methods but the best I&#;ve found is pull as much slack as you can manage without snarls at the first box, then use a roller or pull buddy and pull to the next box. Keep repeating until you get the whole pull. I have not yet found an easier way. If you have just 3 boxes though you can set up in the middle, do one pull to one end, then unspool cable and pull to the other end.
8. I&#;ll mention this but I try to avoid wasting time doing it. Some guys unreel all the cables first and manually bundle everything first before pulling. It&#;s a lot of taping and work, it can avoid snags in some situations such as oversize conduit and multi box pulls but the tape snags at the first pull and sometimes on threaded fittings. It always seems to be a mixed bag for me.
9. Along the same lines is pulling jet line or Mike tape first. The only reason to do this is if you might damage the fish. If you are running a tugger bigger than a Pullzall then pull s rope first. But I&#;ve had zero problems with fiberglass fish. Old steel fish are another matter.
None of this should be a surprise. The major difference is that everything I&#;m suggesting makes a 2 man pull more efficient and less likely to jam or damage something. The best pull is the man on the fish (or running a tugger) pulls with almost no effort and the feed man does nothing other than squirt some lube. So when pulling Aline there is nobody feeding so that job has to go away completely or you will be running your tail off.
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