On Sun, 28 Mar 2010 23:55:16 -0500, Don Foreman
wrote:

My neighbor is re-doing his electrical service feed because he wants
to increase capacity to 200 amps. As part of that, he wants to
re-route the outdoor conduit from meter to relocated mast. We found
that his roof pitch is 5 in 12 or 22.62 degrees. He wondered if I
could bend 2" pipe. The short answer is "not well".

I got to thinking about elbows. It's fairly obvious that any arbitrary
angle can be achieved in a given plane with four 90-deg elbows. We
wondered what could be done with 45 deg elbows. I played with Alibre
for a while. Turns out four 45's can't get it done ... but three 45's
can! They go a bit out of plane but not a lot and the two runs can be
coplanar as in up against the house. I was even able to get the
various rotation angles, as if such a thing might need to be
fabricated and welded a priori. I just did that to see if I could, and
how hard it might be to do with Alibre.

Three 30's, like the familiar 3-section flue elbows, might work even
better but I don't know that 30 deg elbows are available in 2". I
don't know that 45's are either, but it seems likely.


If I'm reading the first part of this post correctly this "pipe" is a
part of the 'service entry' system. The NEC and local codes have some
very hard and fast requirements for the material used and the
installation of same. PLEASE check with a local electrician, or your
electrical inspector, for his advice before material is 'cut', 'bent',
_'welded'_, etc. (most codes frown on PVC for service entry use)

Bending Rigid Metal Conduit is just like bending Galvanized Metal
Pipe. Any electrical shop or pipe shop should be able to do the
bending for you.

Bob (used-to-was electrician)
rgentry at oz dot net