# Copper pipe used in place of emt?



## Breakfasteatre (Sep 8, 2009)

Was at an apartment building today, we are doing the lighting, fire alarms, exits, surveilance etc and associated conduit.

Was in the electrical room rolling back the wire from the temp panel and all of the existing panels had copper tubing running into all of the different panels.

Building is from the 50s

the bends looked like they were done by hand, like the panels had dreads coming out of them. It looked really bad

Curious if this was common place in the past? What had me curious was that the main disconnect was fairly new and had the most copper pipe running into it


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## cdnelectrician (Mar 14, 2008)

Breakfasteatre said:


> Was at an apartment building today, we are doing the lighting, fire alarms, exits, surveilance etc and associated conduit.
> 
> Was in the electrical room rolling back the wire from the temp panel and all of the existing panels had copper tubing running into all of the different panels.
> 
> ...


Umm that's not copper pipe that's Pyrotenax. They loved that stuff back then haha:thumbup:
Still lots of it being installed for special applications. I ran some 2 weeks ago!


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## MechanicalDVR (Dec 29, 2007)

Copper has always been more costly than steel, so I don't see any good reason to have used copper. I have seen heavy brass pipe used in old homes more than once, never knew why they used it.


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## william1978 (Sep 21, 2008)

Are you sure it wasn't MI cable?


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## Breakfasteatre (Sep 8, 2009)

ahhh

this is exactly what it looked like;










interesting!


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## william1978 (Sep 21, 2008)

Do you have a picture of the inside of the panel?


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## cdnelectrician (Mar 14, 2008)

It's a pain in the a$$ to work with, but it really is such a great product.


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## william1978 (Sep 21, 2008)

cdnelectrician said:


> It's a pain in the a$$ to work with, but it really is such a great product.


 Are you talking about copper or MI?


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## MechanicalDVR (Dec 29, 2007)

cdnelectrician said:


> It's a pain in the a$$ to work with, but it really is such a great product.


 
So what is great about it?


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## cdnelectrician (Mar 14, 2008)

The fire rating, and it is tough as hell. We use it for all emergency power feeds in some hospitals for fire pumps and very critical loads as it has a 2 hour fire rating.

Also popular for explosion proof areas.


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## william1978 (Sep 21, 2008)

cdnelectrician said:


> The fire rating, and it is tough as hell. We use it for all emergency power feeds in some hospitals for fire pumps and very critical loads as it has a 2 hour fire rating.
> 
> Also popular for explosion proof areas.


 They use it for some fire pumps around here, because of the 2-hour rating. Are you talking about MI cable?


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## EBFD6 (Aug 17, 2008)

Breakfasteatre said:


> ahhh
> 
> this is exactly what it looked like;
> 
> ...


That's MI cable, not copper tubing.


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## william1978 (Sep 21, 2008)

EBFD6 said:


> That's MI cable, not copper tubbing.


 I agree.


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## cdnelectrician (Mar 14, 2008)

Yep I am talking about MI cable....we call it Pyrotenax


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## william1978 (Sep 21, 2008)

cdnelectrician said:


> Yep I am talking about MI cable....we call it Pyrotenax


 Ok, we are on the same page.:thumbsup: I have just not ever heard it called that before. Thanks for clearing that up.


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## Breakfasteatre (Sep 8, 2009)

yeah, i searched up MI cable to get that photo. I had mistakenly thought it was copper tubing


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## william1978 (Sep 21, 2008)

Breakfasteatre said:


> yeah, i searched up MI cable to get that photo. I had mistakenly thought it was copper tubing


 Either way it should be a learning experience. I don't know about the others but its not every day you get to work around MI cable.:thumbsup:


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## jbfan (Jan 22, 2007)

william1978 said:


> Either way it should be a learning experience. I don't know about the others but its not every day you get to work around MI cable.:thumbsup:


Some of us have never worked it!


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## cdnelectrician (Mar 14, 2008)

I see a lot of it in hospitals...usually in retrofits. You see a lot of pyro being used for fire alarm devices in larger buildings and for cold leads for heat tracing cables.

You need to be pretty skilled at terminating it, if you mess up you are done for!


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## william1978 (Sep 21, 2008)

jbfan said:


> Some of us have never worked it!


 Hopefully one day you will get a chance to work with it.:thumbsup:


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## RIVETER (Sep 26, 2009)

*Copper conduit*

I have used it's sister/brother... clad in aluminum.Very labor saving but as said about MI cable sometimes hard fit into the terminator connectors. Do not use pulleys for long pulls. The flattening of the circumference makes it impossible to get into connectors.


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## cdnelectrician (Mar 14, 2008)

RIVETER said:


> I have used it's sister/brother... clad in aluminum.Very labor saving but as said about MI cable sometimes hard fit into the terminator connectors. Do not use pulleys for long pulls. The flattening of the circumference makes it impossible to get into connectors.


Seen that stuff before...do they still make it? I know Pyrotenax makes stainless steel MI cable. Can you imagine working with that stuff?

I used to work in a plant where everything was in MI cable. It was probably installed in the 50's. I should have taken pics, those guys did some NICE work with it. It looked like it came from a factory.


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## RIVETER (Sep 26, 2009)

*copper conduit*



cdnelectrician said:


> Seen that stuff before...do they still make it? I know Pyrotenax makes stainless steel MI cable. Can you imagine working with that stuff?
> 
> I used to work in a plant where everything was in MI cable. It was probably installed in the 50's. I should have taken pics, those guys did some NICE work with it. It looked like it came from a factory.


 I would have to think that it is still used but I don't know for sure. the AL cable was really great where you have a lot of cables in a pipe rack. You could make it into hand made concentric bends and get three to four times as many feeds in a pipe rack as with conduit.


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## cdnelectrician (Mar 14, 2008)

Anyone remember a cable that had an aluminum sheath but inside of it was a single TW75 conductor? Also have seen this sort of cable but with multiple conductors. You could score it with a knife and break it open. Not often I have run into it but it is out there.


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## RIVETER (Sep 26, 2009)

*sopper conduit*



cdnelectrician said:


> Anyone remember a cable that had an aluminum sheath but inside of it was a single TW75 conductor? Also have seen this sort of cable but with multiple conductors. You could score it with a knife and break it open. Not often I have run into it but it is out there.


That could have been what I was referring to. It's been a long time since using it. We used it extensively in paint factories, ink manufacturers, and chem. plants.We made early errors in pulling in the longer runs thru wire reels. It didn't take long to realize to slip 15 or 20 feet of it thru the reel without stressing and stationing a man at every reel to make sure that that footage of cable remained ROUND so it would go through the connector at the panel.


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## cdnelectrician (Mar 14, 2008)

The stuff I was talking about was terminated with an L-16 (AC90 connector). There may have been a proper connector for it, but whenever I have come across it, they had just used an L-16.


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## RIVETER (Sep 26, 2009)

*copper conduit*



cdnelectrician said:


> The stuff I was talking about was terminated with an L-16 (AC90 connector). There may have been a proper connector for it, but whenever I have come across it, they had just used an L-16.


Wow, been a long time but I seem to remember a connector labeled ALSJ, and it was, I think supposed to be named after the guy who developed it.


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## nolabama (Oct 3, 2007)

never used MI - btw has anyone seen MDShrunk lately - he on vacation?


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## macmikeman (Jan 23, 2007)

I've torn plenty of it out doing retrofit jobs. I do not like it much myself.


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## te12co2w (Jun 3, 2007)

MI= mineral insulated. I worked at a powerhouse where they used a lot of MI. Mostly for heat trace, but also in some explosion proof and corrosive areas. It is difficult to deal with. Not too bad if you can just lay it along a pipe, but when you have to wrap valves and fittings it takes some work. All the stuff we used was pre-made to length, so if we used up too much wrapping the fittings, then we could be short at the end and have to start over. Alot of places we had to wire two runs together and sometimes the connections were in series, not the standard parallel. New guys who didn't know that could have problems with the breakers tripping. We used stainless worm drive hose clamps to attach to pipes.


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## sparky105 (Sep 29, 2009)

Hydro plants, hospital emergency curcuits and class 1 div 1 Like refineries very popular places for MI 

But now we use this crap called " life line"in the hospitals and I can tell you some horror stories about pulling it.:no:


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## william1978 (Sep 21, 2008)

nolabama said:


> never used MI - btw has anyone seen MDShrunk lately - he on vacation?


 I was thinking the samething. It seems like he hasn't posted in awhile.


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