miamicanes
Active Member
Is it ever legal under NEC to run power wires through BLUE (not orange) ENT conduit ("smurf tube") that's dedicated to that use (ie, NOT shared with low-voltage wires)? I spent a really frustrating hour at Home Depot this afternoon trying to buy conduit to use for power wiring. Frustrating, because every single conduit option I explored required at least one thing they didn't have in stock:
* 1/2" nonmetallic waterproof conduit? Only available in 25' and 250' rolls. Great... lots of waste, or way more than I'll need for the next 10 years worth of home improvement projects.
* 1/2" flexible metallic conduit? Same story... 25' and 250' only.
* 14/3 armored MC cable? You must be joking. They only have 14/2 and 12/3... but it's illegal to use 12/3 if the upstream wiring is only AWG14.
* 14/4 (14-2-2) Romex (different cable run than above)? Yeah, right. Then I woke up...
The only thing they DID have in abundance was 3/4" blue ENT conduit ("smurf tube"), and the connectors for it.
Assuming it's legal to use, I'd love to just use the Smurf tube. It's easy to cut, ridiculously easy to mate (no razor-sharp spirals to worry about), and it seems to be the ONE conduit option that Home Depot (and Lowe's, for that matter) seems to actually stock in useful quantities. The fact that someone found it necessary to explicitly define ORANGE ENT conduit as being for "low voltage wiring" logically suggests that blue ENT conduit could theoretically be used for high-voltage wiring, but I've never actually seen anything in writing that says so. Plus, it seems like even under the most pessimistic scenario possible, it would still be a net improvement over Romex and offer at least a tiny bit of extra protection against cuts/nails/drilling.
So... is it just outright taboo to even THINK about using smurf tube for high-voltage wires? Or is it possibly OK, as long as there are ONLY high-voltage wires running inside?
* 1/2" nonmetallic waterproof conduit? Only available in 25' and 250' rolls. Great... lots of waste, or way more than I'll need for the next 10 years worth of home improvement projects.
* 1/2" flexible metallic conduit? Same story... 25' and 250' only.
* 14/3 armored MC cable? You must be joking. They only have 14/2 and 12/3... but it's illegal to use 12/3 if the upstream wiring is only AWG14.
* 14/4 (14-2-2) Romex (different cable run than above)? Yeah, right. Then I woke up...
The only thing they DID have in abundance was 3/4" blue ENT conduit ("smurf tube"), and the connectors for it.
Assuming it's legal to use, I'd love to just use the Smurf tube. It's easy to cut, ridiculously easy to mate (no razor-sharp spirals to worry about), and it seems to be the ONE conduit option that Home Depot (and Lowe's, for that matter) seems to actually stock in useful quantities. The fact that someone found it necessary to explicitly define ORANGE ENT conduit as being for "low voltage wiring" logically suggests that blue ENT conduit could theoretically be used for high-voltage wiring, but I've never actually seen anything in writing that says so. Plus, it seems like even under the most pessimistic scenario possible, it would still be a net improvement over Romex and offer at least a tiny bit of extra protection against cuts/nails/drilling.
So... is it just outright taboo to even THINK about using smurf tube for high-voltage wires? Or is it possibly OK, as long as there are ONLY high-voltage wires running inside?