Trouble Changing the Pool Light

I recently purchased a new light to repalce the old one.  However, I cannot get the wire out.  Whoever installed it must have used an entire tube of silicone and forced it up into the conduit.  is this normal?  how can I get the cable out?  Given the installer didn’t know what they were doing, I think there is a chance of creating a leak if I do get the cable out.  Is there an approved way to splice the cable in the niche?

You can’t splice the cable. You have the same problem many people have. It always seems to be stuck and you feel like it might break if you pull to hard. You may want to see what others have to say before doing anything.

I just helped a neighbor pull out the old 100 foot run of light cord. He had two different pool guys out there and they got the old cord out but couldn’t get the new light cord back in. The sweeps in a run can increase the pull tension by a lot for each sweep. If the ground wire is also in the same conduit it will somehow become stuck around the cord. We had to pull the ground wire out and then pull the new cord in along with the old ground wire. Get some help if it is a long run also get lots of wire lube as well. We ended up using a make shift pulling frame and a come-a-long to get the cord and ground wire through.

Be sure to add a pulling sock to the cord before pulling in the new one if it is any length at all. GOOD LUCK

HaroldB thanks for the great advice.

Also if you watch at the 2:20 Minute Mark of our Video On How to Replace a Pool Light you will see a few tips on how to remove the silicone from the light niche. I have listed this video below.

If I can get the old cable out, do I need to silicone the hole in the niche again?  I don’t know for sure but it seems to me the conduit will rise above the pool level and not be able to leak.  is that correct?

Hi Cat52194,

Try filling the conduit up with water as many times this will help out quite a bit, I have also heard of people using Dawn dish soap in the conduit to help lubricate. You can do this back at the junction box, remove the conduit from the j-box and spray water down the conduit or put dish soap down the conduit.

I used a come-a-long to pull the wire out.  Unfoirtunately, the wire broke!  I tried the come-a-long on the other end and its not budging.  How can get these wires out?

This post helped me so here’s some useful info back.

Short version: I used a pull string and squirted some “Ideal pull lubricant” from Lowes as I pulled the original wire out.

Long version: At first I pulled my original cable out and left the extra ground wire.  It wasn’t easy and I had two feet on the wall using all my weight to pull it on the pool side.  Pulling the new fixture’s cable from the pool to the box we ran into a lot of problems where no force could make it go. A little water sprayed into the conduit from the box side helped.  About halfway the tape on the wire gave way and released.

We used the ground wire to pull the string back to the pool side.  However I squirted a bunch of pull lubricant in on the box side as my helper pooled on the pool side.  It was clear that we couldn’t add lube on the pool side as it would just rinse away.  We then pulled both wires back, staggering them on the pull string so that it wasn’t a big bunch.  (added a knot a foot from the bottom and taped the ground wire onto that.)  I feel this lube made all the difference as the whole thing was easier the second time.  Also keep spraying water into the conduit.