The phone company (Qwest) installed the phone line. There was already a conduit under the road, from the Qwest junction box to the corner of my land, with a twine through it as a pull line.
The technician attached the pull line to his spool of wire, and hauled it through. Then he put a TELCO demarc box on the post with the power, and wired everything up. Great.
He didn't have the good manners to pull a new string through the conduit along with the wire. Ack! How are we supposed to pull a second line when we develop the other parcel? Or replace the wire if it turns out to be faulty? Or run Ethernet to my neighbor's house across the street?
I read online that a conduit will get full of water and mud over time, making it hard to put a new pull line through in the future. I decided to fix the problem right away.
At the hardware store I bought two spools of nylon string, a small bucket with lid, and the best duct tape they had (Gorilla, extra wide). I loaded the shop vac in the back of the truck, the kids in the front, and headed out to the land.
I put the shop vac in the work pit at the power pole. I taped the hose on to the conduit, as tightly as I could. The wire coming out meant an imperfect fit, but I hoped it would be good enough. The other end of the hose went on the exhaust port of the shop vac. I had a kid turn it on while I watched the other end, to see how much debris would come flying out. There was none, and a good strong breeze. That's a good sign, as it means a good seal on the conduit and no blockages.
I tied the twine to a plastic bag, and stuffed it in the conduit. Then I moved the shop vac hose to the suction port. The twine went on a stick, held by a kid, so it could spin freely. I turned on the shop vac. It groaned for a few seconds, and then the noise changed. I looked inside and there was my bag. Awesome. It was even clean!
I had originally planned on leaving the spool of twine in the plastic bucket, with the lid on, and burying it. This way it would be clean and available when someone digs there in the future. But I thought, "what if the phone company technician who uses this in the future decides to cut it first?" Yelling at him won't put the string back in.
I decided on a different approach. I cut the line, and tied a loop in it. I took the two spools of twine and passed the ends through the loop. I had one kid hold the ends, and one kid hold each spool, propped on a pen to spin freely. The loop acts like a pully. I hauled on the other end. When it came out we now had 4 lines in the conduit.
I tied the ends on to the now-empty cardboard tube from the first twine, and put it in the bucket, and dropped that in the hole for later.
The other ends I tied on to a metal bracket on the power post. These will stick out of the ground, making them obvious to the next person.
I had a bit of string left on the spool. My neighbor is building a house and has a conduit to the same TELCO box, with a string in it. I didn't want her to suffer the same way I did, so I tied my string to hers. This way, when they pull the wire, they will (hopefully) pull a new string along with it.
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