Shop Vac to pull rope

I have always used a baggie tied on a roll of mason twine to pull with a vac. Duct tape the vac for a good seal and have the string on one of those hand wheels. Use it to pull the 1/4 inch rope.

grandpa said:

ha ha....rookies....ol grampa uses a balloon....blow it up to the size that fits, tie it on to the line on ur fishing rod and blow away,,when done the line reels up and your done so quickly ya gots time to go fishing....bah ha hha.....

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love that idea gradpa. Will definetly have to try that next time. Thanks for the tip.:drinkup

We always use a plastic grocery bag when we mandrel sewer lines

You can use a thin plastic bag, like from the grocery store for a, we call them "rats" in the trade. Heavy plastic won't work. A sandwitch bag for smaller pipes. Tie the jet string to the bag in a way that it cioses the bag with a little air traped insde the bag. It will resemble a slightly flat balloon or ghost. the bag can't have any holes in it infront of the string, and it doesn't need to fit tight in the pipe. cram a rag or piece of plastic around the vacum hose to seal suction side, and turn the rat loose. If things are right, it will go 350' in 10 - 20 seconds. thats why we call em rats, their fast. Then tie whatever size rope to the string and pull it in. You are gonna need 5hp vac with 2" - 2 1/2" hose . Take the filter out. Good luck

I like to build a little boat just small enough to fit in the line, then tie a string to the back of it, put it in the line, fill a bunch of five gallon buckets with water and start pouring. hehehe. Last winter we built a shopping mall, our site lighting subcontractor didn't tape the ends of his conduits when he stubbed up for light pole bases. It rained, they filled with water and froze we had to use the compressor on one of our service trucks to blow the ice out, but it was cool to watch!

The replies seem to be pretty much evenly divided between pushers and pullers.
Has anyone pushed with one and had another on the other end pulling. Walla a push-pull.
:>)

davidd said:

The replies seem to be pretty much evenly divided between pushers and pullers.
Has anyone pushed with one and had another on the other end pulling. Walla a push-pull.
:>)

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Yes. When you have a problem with the raceway(pipe)obstruction, mud in pipe, pipe came loose at coupling and misaligned, crushed, etc.


I prefer the vacum because when blowing if something is in the pipe the jet string will just bunch up in the pipe, like backlash on a open face rod & reel and it makes a rats nest. Its a real mess.

We were doing some conduit install using HDD and we ended up getting mud in the pipe. We used our vac. That sucked out the pipe and the string. It was a 4" hose though.