Using a hydraulic line as conduit?

Asked by bpeoples (2551

) July 30th, 2009

Okay, here’s one for the electrical engineers. I have a permanently installed hydraulic lift where the cylinders are going to be replaced with motors & jacks. The 3” line that’s buried in concrete that feeds the current cylinders would be great to running the power to the new motors.

Is that legal? I don’t have a spec for the hydraulic fluid, so I don’t know how flammable or conductive it might be, but we could look at someone cleaning the pipe out.

Any idea where I should look in the NEC for this sort of information?

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2 Answers

I do not have a copy of the NEC at my fingertips, but my first educated guess, and I am an EE, is that what you’re proposing would indeed not be code-compliant. Since you’ll need an electrician and a building permit to do the wiring anyway, it’s sort of moot.

IchtheosaurusRex (8676

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@IchtheosaurusRex Thanks!

It’s looking like it falls under the same category as running electrical wiring through old gas pipes (which is also forboten). We’re specifiers, and we’re trying to figure out just how much jack hammering is going to be involved.

bpeoples (2551

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