ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade General Discussion Area When would you choose Al over Cu for an install?

As I said, if Al was indeed inherently dangerous, Europe east of the Berlin Wall wouldn't be standing any more. It#s definitely more difficult to install and maintain than copper and therefore dangerous in the hand of DIYers but that's about it.

Proper push-in terminals completely take the issue of deformation under screw heads out of the equation, that's one advantage of current continental European wiring methods and accessories. Screw terminals are essentially extinct in domestic wiring and have been for some 15 or 20 years. Hager introduced push-in neutral and earth bars 5 years ago and I haven't heard of any issues with them and Wago makes push-in connectors for conductors up to 6 mm2 and 40 A.

I've never had a problem at all with aluminium wiring, it's used for larger loads here like sub-mains and the like.
And provided you use the correct crimp connectors and the right crimp tool, there should never be an issue with them.

Half the problem I believe is when aluminium conductors get terminated under screws and in tunnel terminals, which is not what should be happening.
Because aluminium is such a ductile metal, the individual strands will "flow" away from the tensioning force on the screw that terminates it.

Any aluminium conductor should be terminated in the proper Al/Cu crimp connector with either a fork or an eyelet on it before terminating it where it needs to be connected.

I assume you mean these for "tunnel terminals"

That is the standard "lug" here and they seem to work fine.
Our problems were with binding screw terminals and that was really when the screws were steel. Brass screws work fairly well in the CO ALr devices

If they aren't some sort of a shear-bolt design, with them Allen head stubs, no that's not what I'm referring to.