I am going to purchase a hot wire system for my icf house electrical.  Just wondering which of these two is better overall unit The super groover or the groove jet 300.  I am looking at using it for electrical boxes, as well as the wire runs.  I know I can use other things such as chainsaw, router, etc, but I am looking at the hot wire for now.  Please give me your experiences.

Thanks

You will likely find the hot wire tool to be slow when cutting long wiring channels. Also, you may run into "obstacles" when you try to cut across ICF block joints. The "obstacles" I refer to is the concrete cream that sometimes flows between the ICF block joints. When hardened, you won't cut through that with a hot wire cutter.

Posted By jojo12 on 28 Dec 2012 08:51 PM
I am going to purchase a hot wire system for my icf house electrical.  Just wondering which of these two is better overall unit The super groover or the groove jet 300.  I am looking at using it for electrical boxes, as well as the wire runs.  I know I can use other things such as chainsaw, router, etc, but I am looking at the hot wire for now.  Please give me your experiences.

Thanks

I used the Windlock QC-2 hot knife. As arkie says, I also found it to be aggravatingly slow for cutting electric wire channels. I used mine mostly for cutting out for electrical boxes, cutting channels for plumbing, and for cutting channels for larger electrical wire like the cable for the cooktop. It did a great job for those kinds of cut outs. I used a chain saw for the bulk of the electrical wire channels. The hot knife is really slow when it comes to cutting through webs.

I cut all my channel with the super groover. It is slower, but I didn't like the huge mess with the chainsaw. If you have any bumps from concrete infiltrating the joints, I just ride over them with the hot knife and use a hammer to tap them out after. I liked that you could bend a cutting wire to the exact size and depth you wanted to cut and cut all day long......

Here's a post that mentions an electric BBQ lighter

http://www.greenbuildingtalk.com/Fo...aspx#43933