Kopex / flexicon for this job.....your thoughts

Stocksie · Feb 11, 2013

I've got to price for some alterations to a room in a commercial building that has been an electronics lab.

It's new use has a simlilar vein but they want the room looking more "slick" , all cabling flushed in and dado trunking.
Problem being the existing is in singles and plastic pipe surface and some of it screeded into floor ( just under the surface ).

I need to mechanically protect the cables as they won't be in any safe zones.

I was thinking of cutting the conduit back as far as I'm able, then female adaptor then metal kopex into a chase of about 15mm ready for it to be dot n dabbed.

I'm guessing kopex wont offer mech protection ?

Any other sugestions ?

I have a conduit bender , and although I've not toucehd it in a good while I was pretty handy at it once I find my sea legs on it. But where I have to cut the plactic back to the bends and shapes that need to be made for it to sit in a chase just arent really do-able.

What dya think ?

KAS1 · Feb 11, 2013

Do you normally do all the pricing?

telectrix · Feb 11, 2013

don't forget that if you go from plastic to metal containment, you'll neeed to earth it all.that'll be a ballache.

grantr37 · Feb 12, 2013

Stocksie said:
I've got to price for some alterations to a room in a commercial building that has been an electronics lab.

It's new use has a simlilar vein but they want the room looking more "slick" , all cabling flushed in and dado trunking.
Problem being the existing is in singles and plastic pipe surface and some of it screeded into floor ( just under the surface ).

I need to mechanically protect the cables as they won't be in any safe zones.

I was thinking of cutting the conduit back as far as I'm able, then female adaptor then metal kopex into a chase of about 15mm ready for it to be dot n dabbed.

I'm guessing kopex wont offer mech protection ?

Any other sugestions ?

I have a conduit bender , and although I've not toucehd it in a good while I was pretty handy at it once I find my sea legs on it. But where I have to cut the plactic back to the bends and shapes that need to be made for it to sit in a chase just arent really do-able.

What dya think ?

when you say dot and dab do you mean the whole wall is getting plasterboard put onto it? I would look at getting a few preformed factory made bends for the conduit and think about putting a short vertical length of Dado from the floor up to the first horizontal Dado with 25mm or 32mm metal conduit in it....then fit that one out with RCD units and maybe 2 double sockets.....put the rest out both directions via 25mm metal conduit going to conduit end boxes bushed into the back of the plastic Dado's into small metal enclosures with singles through them exiting the enclosure sides via grommets or 20mm stuffing glands to keep the singles from the metal edges and onwards to the sockets, earth the small metal enclosure inside the plastic Dado at both ends of each length of conduit which will give the metal conduit a good earth...
you will want to put in 25mm plastic conduit between the Dado's as well as they will ask you for data points on them too, even if you just leave a length of CAT5 or CAT6 data cable sticking out and let somebody else connect them up etc....

maybe look at using single sockets and double sockets in various orientations along the dado rails and asking what desks will be where in terms of how many sockets they want in....

Sockets with a neon indicator are popular for dado as they can look round the room and see what's still on at the wall...

put the odd 220V sticker neatly here and there on the dado and sticker the RCD's as to which dado rail/side of the room they supply...

maybe offer to PAT test their appliances/kit when the work is complete...

if you have a rough layout (length and width of the room) and how many benches/desks are in there then I can look around in different catalogues and on the internet and put some links to tidy looking Dado and fittings onto here then I will search for the best deal on prices and PM you where to look...
would the lab be a computer repair clean and tidy type of a location or a soldering irons getting prodded about packets of components all over the benches type of set up?