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From what I have been told, Aluminum is not bad, as long as it is kept up. Our Instructor at school told us the company he used to work for has the contract to keep up Turner Field here in Atlanta. Apparently all the wiring was "donated" and it is all aluminum.

They get to go in and do routine maintenance on it and they rarely have problems with it.

Good luck trying to convince the public. I have a pretty hard time just with electricians, let alone Joe Avarage Homeowner. And then there is those websites where they cook a purple wirenut with a blow torch in order to scare everybody........

I am in the minority opinion but I think all the aluminum wired houses that were going to burn down, already did. Virtually every horror story you see or read is 30 years old in spite of the fact that there are still millions of aluminum homes out there since 1970. This appears to be as much a workmanship problem as a materials problem. Aluminum is a lot less forgiving than copper and screwing with it seems to increase the danger. One question I would like to see answered is how many of these problems were caused by "Harry Homeowner" in there?
Certainly the owners of an aluminum house should be more vigilent, keep fresh batteries in the smoke detectors and should call an electrician at the first sign of trouble but they shouldn't be shivvering in fear.
The Alcan guys make a pretty good case that those 1970s problems were fixed with the new alloy, different metals in the binding screws and the fact that most lugs are aluminum in the first place. They have tests that say aluminum wire in an aluminum lug is actually better than copper wire. They weren't actually selling us 12-10 ga stuff (although the samples looked like uninsulated 10) but they were certainly saying 8 and up was a fine material.
I also reminded myself these guys are aluminum salesmen. What did we expect them to say. The Carlon guy puts on a good show too, when he is selling Smurf tube.

[This message has been edited by gfretwell (edited 05-06-2006).]

"And then there is those websites where they cook a purple wirenut with a blow torch in order to scare everybody........"

Oh, that is intresting , might be, we can add the purple nuts we found, on dishwashers, and attic fans, to the pic's file, some were cooked so bad you could just about identify it, we have a large amount of al wired homes in this area, the problems usually are, where they add circuits, or connect the al to the copper, the al installations, if left alone, would not have many problems, but over the years, they have added circuit extensions, changed recept's and switches, also light fixtures, homeowners love to remove that piece of fiber glass, so the wiring can cook.
The al was used the last time copper prices took off, if your not in an area where you have a large number of homes wired with al, then you may not see the hazzards it creates.

[This message has been edited by LK (edited 05-06-2006).]

Ok LK, thats fair as long as I get to submit pictures of cooked other types of wirenuts I have found on copper connections. I am not endorsing aluminum wire made before the alloy, I just don't buy into all that websites stuff. If you do thats fine also. One bad thing I will say for aluminum is get some salt spray on it and it won't last very long, alloy or no alloy. So near the ocean I use no-alox.(the non burning kind).

[Message edited by Webmaster for Political content]
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As for using aluminum instead of copper for common branch circuits: forget it. They ARE abused -- count on it.

Aluminum is a hands down winner when ever it is assured that ONLY able and careful will touch it -- or extend its loads.

Otherwise, it has been shown that the average man will burn himself down. Only copper is so forgiving as to suffer homeowner DIY and leave anything standing.

The fantastic forgiveness of copper is assumed by all laymen to extend to aluminum. It is NOT so.

Even at todays prices, copper is still a bargain for homeowners and more. It's premium price offsets the idiocy factor of 'self-help' making it still the only way to go.

BTW, there is no shortage of copper: just cheap copper from old mines.

It is the maddening leaps in price that are driving contractors nuts. This will settle down pretty soon. It's down right amazing how demand fades when prices tripple.



[This message has been edited by Webmaster (edited 05-07-2006).]

Tesla how about some facts or references for the electrical portions of your opinion?

Bob

"Ok LK, thats fair as long as I get to submit pictures of cooked other types of wirenuts I have found on copper connections."

Your right, it's the connecton be it copper or Al, both have problems, what we have found is the purple nut, just dosem't cut it, so far i have not seen many cu to al connections made up with a 3m connector fail, My thought is the connection was not made up correct on these failures.

Even with copper prices rising, I doubt there will be any cost savings with aluminum considering the increased costs of ALR and CO/ALR receptacles, switches, and even wire nuts.

I too believe aluminum wire fears are way overblown, though I have to admit it would ALL be ripped out if it were in *my* house. If the service entrance conductors were aluminum, something normally I wouldn't have any choice over, I'd be lobbying the POCO until that stuff was gone too.

Joe

292 a thousand this morning for 12/2