Hickey experiences with 1" IMC

It may require a vey long handle to bend 1" that sharply.

The conduit will want to collapse and/or kink, so packing it solid with sand and capping it at both ends before bending is likely necessary.

Joe

The HVAC people make some flexible plastic tube mandrels, idea being to insert the mandrel so it prevents kinks.

The factories that make the conduit/tubing often have a lot of it left around and even as waste material.

Yeah, a colleague sent me a one word reply: "Don't" <frown>

EMT is "do-able" at 1 inch. The effort required for IMC would probably be more than I'm willing to invest -- without a hydraulic bender to fall back on.

I will explore other -- less obvious -- options.

Probably one can simply buy pre-bent conners and screw them together.

Joe

I looked at that -- even going so far as to use ells. But, it ends up looking like something pieced together and bulky/chunky.

IMC with a really tight bend radius would have fit the bill nicely.

I can try EMT with a Hickey instead of a bender and see how that fares... Paint to make it "look pretty"

Yes. May still need to fill with packed sand and plug the ends solid to bend without kinks and wrinkles.

Joe

See:

I may look at some thermoplastics to get a "pretty" bend and fill them with a resin (?) to gain added strength.

I've a fair bit of experience with EMT (up to an inch) and IMC (half inch).

But, with those, I have usually been looking for a channel for a cable; appearances only had to be "standard of workmanship". So, a saddle didn't have to be perfectly symmetrical, a Hickey could leave chew marks, etc.

And, most times, you could just use a bender (because you WANTED/needed the gentle arc for cable pulls).

I *just* want this to "look nice" -- EMT looks like crap and rigid (while great looking) is just way to hard to handle! It's just "a bent pipe" (no wires inside)

PVC is too flimsy (though maybe if I *fill* it to get extra strength and stability...)

Last year, I did some work on my house that involved replacing some rat damaged old Romex wiring under the house. To save labor, we used aluminum MC (metal clad) cable:

I initially wanted to use EMT. Because I was paying by the hour for the work, I determined that MC cable was cheaper than EMT. Ignoring my prep work and cleanup, it took 3 workers only about 6 hrs to complete the job. EMT would have taken twice as long or more. EMT would have looked much nicer, but I didn't want to pay for good looks. Another nice thing about using flex cable. If I make a mistake and need to move the conduit, it's much easier with flex than with anything that requires a pipe bender to move.

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How many people would see it "under the house"?

I'm not using it as "wire carrying conduit" but, rather, as "metal pipe". And, even the "metal" aspect is negotiable.

I want to make a support member and it is easier to bend pipe than square stock or angle. And, where visible, pipe *looks* nicer.

None. That's why I don't care about appearances. However, that doesn't mean that I installed the MC cable with long drooping spans, sloppy routing, and knots to take up slack. NEC requires the cable be supported every 4 ft when exposed to potential damage and every 6 ft when hidden behind a wall. Also, the cable needs to be supported at least 18 inches from a termination point. I bought too many hangers, so I used a smaller spacing, which also looks nicer.

Sorry. I wrongly assumed you were using electrical conduit for its originally intended purpose. I find it rather difficult to discuss the selection of such things without knowing what you plan to do with it.

You want the pipe to support the weight of something yet be flexible enough to be deformed by an electricians conduit bender. Unless whatever you're supporting is fairly light, using EMT conduit, which can be fairly easily bent, seems to be a little risky.

I made that mistake in the 1960's. My father owned a lingerie factory in Smog Angeles. I was volunteered to build and install some 10ft garment hangers that were suspended from the ceiling. I used 3/4" EMT conduit, because we had some left over from another project and it was easy to bend the ends (to prevent the hangers and garments from sliding off the end of the conduit). It worked well for light weight garments, but the pipe bent when someone decided to hang some heavy garments. I had to take it down, straighten the EMT, add additional chain hangers, and put every back up. Larger EMT might have worked, but adding more support points was easier.

Which is why I highlighted my comment to Ed in the reply to which you responded.

No, a Hickey. Both because it is intended for heavier materials and because it can make tighter bends than a bender.

Hence increasing the diameter to 1" AND opting for IMC instead of EMT. Even using a bender, 1" EMT is considerably more difficult than on 1/2" EMT. And, moving to IMC is that much more, again, than EMT (rule of thumb: IMC is harder to bend than EMT of the next higher trade size). IMC also affords the possibility of threading the ends (something you couldn't do with EMT owing to the wall thinness).

You were also using the conduit to support weight along its length so have to encounter more potential load. I only need to support

Neighbor hacked together a canopy (?) with 1/2" EMT. I told her it was a bad idea -- that's a large "sail" for the wind to operate on. Of course, our March-April winds made a tangled mess of it (along with the wooden eaves to which it had been fastened).

Not sure I want to know what heavy lingerie would be like.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

The skimpier they are, the more they cost.

It's not what you're thinking. The company, Chic Parisienne sold mostly lingerie under the Tosca Lingerie and Lady Irene labels. Not much is left of the company, but I found this online:

I vaguely recall being able to hang about 120 garments on each 10 ft length of EMT. My guess(tm) is about 0.25 lbs per garment including hanger and plastic cover. That's 30 lbs, somewhat evenly distributed on a 3/4" EMT pipe supported near the ends. Yet, after a few weeks, almost every pipe was sagging in the middle. I wouldn't expect 30 lbs to bend the pipes, but it did. Maybe someone was doing chin-ups on the pipe. If I get ambitious, I'll try to simulate this at home.