You can cut the light off and use a 2x3 piece of wood about 3 feet longer then the length from the wire to the coping. Now put a heavy duty screw eye into the cut end of the board. Thread the wire through it bringing the board flush to the wall where the wire exits. Grab a visegrip pliers and clamp the wire just in front of the screw eye. Use the board as leverage to advance the wire maximum you're able and then do it again and again till you are done or the wire get easier.
OK, I built the contraption and it worked! A few inches at a time, it was slow and painful, but we finally got the whole wire out with our string still attached to it. Phew! Total length of string is about 120 ft, so I'll need to purchase the 150 ft version as replacement.
One thing I noticed is that it was extremely difficult to pull. I was expecting that after 10-20 ft of wire pulled out, things would start easing up and I could pull by hand, but no, I still needed to use the tool for almost the whole length of pull. At some point near the end I stopped using the vise grip pliers and was able to just hold the wire with one of my hands while pulling on the plank as lever, but I could never really just "pull it by hand" directly.
Two other things I noticed:
1) The first 80-100 ft of wire I pulled seemed "twisted", i.e. as if someone had spun the wire in the conduit somehow. You can tell the difference in the attached picture: the top part is from the area near the light itself, while the bottom wire is towards the transformer/equipment. Is there a technique that consists of spinning a wire into conduit to make it reach the other end? What happened here?
2) only the last few 6-10 feet of wire seemed to have some lubricant on them - as it became slippery once I got to that point. Given the location of the pool equipment, I suspect most of the conduit is actually flooded with water, and perhaps that dissolved the lube with time.
Now that I have my pull string on the other end, I'm going to pull through this long conduit from the equipment side and will need all the help I can use. Are there any particular techniques I should use given the long run, with possibly many bends? (I can't tell, this was built before I bought the house)
Should I flush the conduit clean with air/water/lube before starting the process? I read in another post on here that some folks were pushing liquid dawn to help remove a stuck wire. Does it make sense to install the new wire in?
I imagine that I'll want to use some lube, perhaps lots of it? What's a good lube that will work well in the flooded conduit?
Any hints/tips for that challenge?
Thank you so much everyone, you saved my bacon!
