ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade General Discussion Area Aluminum Wiring

"Aluminum wiring , if it was installed properly, is fine"

I don't agree. There are many problems with aluminum wiring installed prior to 1973 or 4, even where it was correctly installed. The alloy used at that time was different, and there was too much difference in the temperature expansion of the conductor and the device termination screws. After that date, the alloy was changed and the CO/ALR devices had aluminum screws and back plates to limit the problems caused by different thermal expansion rates.
Don

Nope, most definitely not!!! The screws only give a very small contact surface and will loosen by time, just like device screws. Besides, choc blocks don't provide any corrosion protection. I've once in my electrical career seen alum wire in Austria, and it was spliced using choc blocks. To this day I keep one of the crisp choc blocks on my desk as reminder!
In Germany, mainly Eastern Germany where alum wiring is a big issue they onlly allow crimp splices or purple wire nuts, it's basically the only application for wire nuts there.
So my conclusion: Never use choc blocks for alum wiring! Otherwise I love them!!!

Thanks, Tex, for the info!

Except that the thread is indexed under the last posting, which was 11-14-2004..
I'll make it easier.. here's the link..

Bathroom Electric

Thank you< Techie...I am somewhat in the stone age....my first TV is less than three years old!

As a side note I'd like to mention the fact most German electricians have a deep mistrust against screw connections since they say screws will always loosen as the wire flattens, even copper, worse tinned stranded copper. Most of them only accept spring-pressure connectors like Wago as they say those connectors adjust the pressure to the wire. It seems like the internal construction of those connectors is substantially better than that of the evil US backstabbed receptacles.

Do you think that an AFCI ckt. breaker installed where the AL originates from would help? This may catch the arcing in time and trip the ckt?
Then if the AFCI breaker trips, it's time to gut the AL that's on that ckt. And or the whole house.

The last two jobs I have been on we pulled in parallel runs of aluminum cable in #3/0, 250kcmil, and 500kcmil sizes for 600/347Y distribution feeders.

My family owns a 31-suite apartment building (1973 contruction) wired entirely in aluminum. Over 15+ years, I have yet to encounter a burnt-out device. This fact is known to the mortgage and insurance co. It matters not to them.

#3/0, 250kcmil, and 500kcmil sizes, are not the problem, many contractors use larger size alum, with good results, the smaller gauges 10 and 12 are the cables of concern, we have had homes here with alum for 30 years plus, without a problem, they are usually homes, that have not had any changes made to the existing system, and fixture or recpt replacements have not been done.

[This message has been edited by LK (edited 07-01-2005).]

My two prior homes were both wired with Al wiring.

The first, an upper-end home, was purchased directly from the prior homeowner when the renters vacated which turned out to be an advantage in the respect that they didn't bother to paint, especially around the outlets that had fried. This gave us the 'heads up' that we needed to pay close attention to the Al wiring issues. We were advised (by whom I have no idea) that the solution was fairly easy; replace any burnt components, add Cu to Al connectors on those that seem 'prone' to frying and tighten all the rest. We, harry homeowner, did as advised. We also had an FBN (fly-by-night) guy add a three-way switch at a split-level hallway juncture, just as you say is likely to happen. When we sold, through a realtor, it all passed 'inspection' and sold nicely.

Second home was a tract home (minus a husband by then), and the home inspector pointed out to me that the Al wiring looked pretty nice due to the fact that the developer in the late '60's had 3 electricians. One of them did an A+ job and the other two did A jobs, my house got the A+ guy and the inspector said since the electrical stuff looked good, felt tight and showed no evidence of frying, he'd suggest leaving it alone save one outlet that didn't work at all. For that, he said have the realtor (who owned the home, by the way) pay for the fix. As advised, I pushed that one back to the realtor who said she'd send 'her guy' over to fix it. 'Her guy', as I've described here much earlier, was also FBN-ing around his day-job w/ a licensed electrician and had to schedule his FBN-ing around his community service & DWI jail time. I really, really would've been more than happy to invest my profits from the sale of the first to re-wire the whole house but was deterred from going that route by the home inspector - a lesson learned.

As a homeowner, I think people ARE resistant to hear that the 'fix' might entail stripping out and replacing the entire electrical infrastructure at significant cost. However, I don't think that the average homeowner really understands the risk issues, namely the likelihood that the risk is present and how large any problem could get very quickly should the system overheat or overload. (Hope I said that right.) If, somehow, there could be a way to relay the details of how important PREVENTION is vs. having to deal with a real crisis and introduce the probability into the discussion, it may actually land on hearing ears.

As a result, I hate Al wiring and am loathe to ever have to face that possibility in another home. It's too much to have to worry over when you put your head on the pillow and hope that you'll be able to avert disaster for yourself and 3 children.