I have a contractor I do work for who needs a price on runing (3) 4" plastic conduit for electric, telephone and cable tv underground (3' deep) about 300' in one trench a straight run from one utility pole to another. Normally I price pipe install by the liner foot in this case do you charge by the foot x 3 or fiqure your time & material plus markup? Also just woundering what you guys would get a liner foot installed I know a union contractor told me to charge 18-20$ or non union 10-12$ i was thinking 10$
Your only digging one trench right? Not really fair to charge for 3. I would charge for the initial trench and then figure the material and extra time to lay the other two pipes.
I think Jesse's suggestion is reasonable. Not that it was part of the question, but any time I'm running that sort of stuff in together like that, I try and be sure the electric is on the bottom. My logic is that, on the day somebody comes along and rips into it with their backhoe, they find the non-life threatening conduits first. (Ya never know--I might be the guy who rips it out too!) :eek2
Id meet in the middle at 15, but thats just me. If you have to run the conduit, which i think your doing, I hope you have a toaster.
a toaster?
I believe the "toaster" heats the conduit so it may be bent around curves.
That's what I'd have guessed too. We bent one once by sticking it over the exhaust pipe of the dump truck and letting the exhaust run through it and heat it up for a while. (The truck was sitting and idling, by the way...)
i use a torpedo heater for bending conduit - on the bigger sizes, i set a jackstand or 2 about 12-18" in front of the heater and keep the conduit turning to get it evenly hot...wear welding gloves. you have to squeeze the hot area sometimes till it cools so it doesn't flatten out. it's pretty fast once you get the hang of it.
I shcould not have any problems with that there are 300' straight runs, I will get pebent sweeps for the ends to go up to the pole
Correct sorry about my sparky lingo But it IS a great tool to heat up a Taylor Ham Egg and Cheese!
The whole point it to get plenty of ideas out in the open. Otherwise most threads would only have one or two replies. When some does a search a year from now on conduit installs, not only will they get prices but how to info as well. May serve them if they have less experience. No one was questioning your experience or telling you how to do it, just giving their experiences and how they do things.
I split out the hijacked protion of this thread into the Safety Forum. But related to the original question here, Dwan Hall had posted: "I use to get $6.00 a foot for 2" and another $1.00 for each aditional inch, plus 1/2 more for each aditional piece of pipe. price has gone up a bit though. @ my old pricing your 300' of 3X4" conduit would be $20.00 per foot or $6000.00 plus equipment delivery."
I did not intend to be rooud so I appligize if someone took it the wrong way.
I don't think any apology is needed. What BRL did was to "split" the thread. It's one of the things moderators can do to keep the discussions organized. He kept the posts that were in reply to your original question in this thread, and moved the posts about where to place the warning tape to a new thread in the Saftey Forum called " Marking Conduit Trenches During Installation ". Certainly, if anyone has anything further to add to the question of how to price the work, they should feel welcome to add to this discussion.