Electrical conduits are an important part of many electrical systems. There are specific situations in which you may be legally required to use conduits inside or outside a building. Even in situations where they’re not legally required, they can still be extremely useful.
What’s an Electrical Conduit?
An electrical conduit is a metallic or plastic tube or pipe that’s designed to house electrical wiring inside a building as well as in outside electrical applications. Conduits are often frequently used for things like data cables. Rigid or flexible conduits are installed along or inside walls, floors, and ceilings to create a “raceway” or path for electrical wiring to run through. Once the conduits are in place, it’s easy for electricians to pull or fish wiring through the pipes and run them to wherever they need to go when installing or making changes to the building’s electrical system.
Reasons Electrical Conduits Are Used
Electrical conduits are primarily used for safety reasons. All of the wiring within a conduit is shielded and protected to ensure it can’t get damaged by anything like a falling object or when putting a nail or screw through a wall. Using conduits is especially important when you have exposed wiring within a building, such as along the concrete foundation wall in a basement or almost anywhere in a garage. Just running bare wires in this type of situation instead of encasing them in a conduit would be extremely dangerous. That’s because the wires could easily get damaged and start producing sparks, potentially leading to a fire. Conduits are also used for aesthetic reasons when you can’t hide wiring within a wall, floor, or ceiling, as they make everything look cleaner.
Electrical wiring is also extremely prone to overheating when it’s overloaded, which is when the current flowing through the wires is higher than what they can safely handle. Overheating is a major fire hazard since it can cause the insulation or sheathing that houses the internal copper wires to melt. This can then result in the copper wires being exposed and potentially touching one another. If bare copper wires touch, they’ll also send off sparks as a result of the electrical current arcing between them. This is obviously a concern since the sparks can easily set various building materials on fire. This is another reason why running the wires through conduits is extremely beneficial and makes an electrical system safer. If the wiring does ever spark, the sparks will be safely contained within the conduit to prevent anything from catching fire.
Another reason conduits improve electrical safety is that they prevent wiring from potentially being exposed to water. That’s why they’re used whenever you have any exposed wiring outside, in a damp location, or in many other situations where the wires could potentially be exposed to water. When installing conduits, the individual pieces of pipe are joined together with threaded fittings. That means the entire conduit is fully waterproof so that there’s no chance of moisture getting inside. The concern when wiring gets wet is that the water can conduct the electricity into other objects nearby, potentially resulting in someone getting seriously shocked or electrocuted.
Conduits are used any time you need to encase electrical wires in concrete. For instance, the wires that feed the light poles in a parking lot are run underground and then up through a piece of conduit within the concrete base of the pole. You should always use a short piece of conduit if you need to run a new wire through something like an existing concrete wall. If not, the wires can end up getting damaged as a result of them rubbing on the concrete.
Are Electrical Conduits Necessary?
In terms of whether electrical conduits are entirely necessary, it depends on location as well as what type of building you’re talking about. The National Electric Code (NEC) usually requires all the wiring in many types of commercial buildings to be housed inside conduits. The one exception is if you’re using metal-armored wiring since this also protects the wires from being damaged. Conduits usually aren’t required for residential electrical systems, but there are a few places around the country where the local electrical code does require them for new houses.
The NEC also requires that any underground wiring on a residential property is run through either PVC or metal conduit or that you use a type of waterproof wiring known as direct burial wire. One advantage of using metal conduits for underground wiring is that it usually means you aren’t required to bury the wires as deep. This is useful if the property has overly rocky soil since it means less digging is required, making the installation much easier and the job go much more quickly. The other benefit of using conduit for underground wiring is shielding the wires from damage. You don’t need to worry about accidentally hitting the wires if you need to do any digging in the area. It also ensures the wiring shouldn’t get damaged if large roots start growing and intruding into the area or if the soil around the wires shifts or settles.
While you usually have the choice of whether or not to use conduit when building a new home or performing a major renovation, opting to do so can provide some great benefits. It will make the electrical installation more expensive since you need to pay for additional materials and it takes extra time for the electricians to run all the conduit. Nonetheless, it will help to make your electrical system safer by greatly reducing the risk of the wires getting damaged or causing a fire due to overheating.
Another major benefit is that all the conduits make it much easier to make changes or upgrades to your electrical system as well as perform certain repairs. Let’s say you decide at some point you want to upgrade from your standard TV to a full home theater system. In this case, you’d often need to install an additional circuit that just supplies power to the new system. Since you likely already have a conduit running behind the wall in the same area, the electricians can usually just pull the wiring for the new circuit through that same conduit. That means they won’t have to cut out nearly as much sheetrock as they potentially would if you didn’t have the conduit.
Most experts recommend completely rewiring a house’s electrical system every 25 to 30 years. When this time comes, the entire project will be far easier and take less time if you have all of your wiring running inside conduits.
Using conduits can also increase the value of a home. This is partly because they improve electrical safety and also because they again make doing any future electrical work easier. The improved safety is also why most homeowners insurance companies offer lower premiums if most or all of the wires in a house are inside conduits.
If you need any electrical services in the St. Louis or Kansas City metro area, Potts Electric is the company you should turn to. We’re a family-owned business that’s dedicated to providing safe and effective electrical solutions and prompt, reliable service. Whether you’re facing a major rewiring project or you need any electrical repairs or installations, you can count on our team to expertly manage everything from start to finish. You can also turn to us after hours if you find yourself suddenly facing an electrical emergency. To make sure your electrical needs are handled correctly, contact Potts Electric today.
