'Gotta hand it to Ford...

[SN-60]

I'm wondering if these 'Aluminum Wiring Fans' also feel that the $2.99 aluminum wire jumper cables sold at Value Mart are on par with solid copper jumper cables?

[jnormanh]

Happened upon this via an AARP article. 55 TIMES more dangerous??http://ezinearticles.com/?Electric-C...ous&id=6192254

Your link is to an unknown source quoting an "electrical contractor", qualifications and interests unknown.

You got it from AARP?

Where's the AARP link?

Is this it?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1slibJ52yoc

[8E45E]

I just know if I had the choice of an aluminum Studebaker or a rusty steel one.....
Let see.....where did I put that aluminum Hawk fender.

Don't give Harbit any ideas now!!

Craig

[bezhawk]

I just know if I had the choice of an aluminum Studebaker or a rusty steel one.....
Let see.....where did I put that aluminum Hawk fender.

[DEEPNHOCK]

Good points Mike...
It is so easy to just toss the baby out with the bathwater...
And a three word answer just doesn't cover the whole subject.
I could care less about the preference, and when I have the choice, I will make my choice.
Just interesting to see the attitudes is all....

[hausdok]

Any electrician worth his salt will tell you that copper wiring is superior to aluminum wiring. Very hard to believe anyone would think otherwise!

Well, it depends on what you are using it for. It is superior inside the average home because a home's electrical system is pretty basic and you don't need that much of it; so surface oxidation and weight don't play into it that much. However, an aircraft electrician might tell you something different. He'd probably argue that sizes of #8 and larger are just fine when used with proper components. He'd probably point out that all copper wiring used in aircraft is plated with either tin, silver or nickel, which pushes up it's cost and overall weight. When you're wiring an airliner with thousands of miles of wire and you need to be concerned with trimming as much weight as possible will copper be your best choice for primary load carriers? Maybe in a Cessna but maybe not in a 747?

This is all going too far afield. The only reason I mentioned this was that there was, and still is, a largely unfounded bias against aluminum wiring. Think of it this way. You have to use a certain type of transmission fluid in some brands of automatic transmissions lest you ruin them or they don't perform right. It's exactly the same with the issue of aluminum wiring; use it correctly and there aren't any issues with it.

For the record, I see aluminum service entrance cables in more than 95% of the homes that I inspect. I find aluminum feeders from main to sub panels and from panels to major 240 volt high-amperage-draw devices in probably 70% of all homes I inspect and it's extremely rare to find issues with these related to the fact aluminum wiring is used.

I've also had post 70's houses I've inspected that were wired completely with aluminum wiring - all SEC's, all feeders, all branch and appliance circuitry - with no anti-oxidation paste used and no issues.

I warn people when I find it in homes from the mid-70's and earlier. I know that some electricians were still installing the old alloy wiring for a few years after the new AA-8000 wiring came out; and since there is no way to know who those folks were and how long that persisted I tell folks to get a sample checked by a lab and then either pigtail it, or, if they are so inclined, replace it with copper.

[SN-60]

Many house fires caused by cheapo aluminum wiring!....Copper #1

[hausdok]

DEEPNHOCK says: "It had to do with dissimilar metals at the connection points (switches, connectors, and terminals). Electrolysis between the metals caused corrosion that built up resistance that caused overheating and fires. A very real condition, and caused a lot of fires and destruction."

Absolutely true; but this is where we differ:

"But it was not due to aluminum being an inferior conductor or choice of material. It had to do with an industry set in its way with peripheral components that were not compatible. It has since corrected the situation with education and product improvement."

The issue was the alloy used. If the electrical industry had done a little more testing they might have realized that there was going to be an issue with the old AA1350 series of aluminum wiring conforming to the ASTM B 230. The issues caused by dissimilar metals did not occur overnight; they took years to manifest themselves. Once those issues began to surface, the industry's stop-gap fix was to recommend coating every new aluminum connection with anti-oxidation paste (Something that is unnecessarily done to this day due to the new alloy's resistance to corrosion), use CU/AL marked components and pigtail the old wiring. The industry immediately went to work figuring out why the aluminum wiring was problematic and determined in short order that it was the alloy. They set out immediately to establish a new standard so manufacturers could produce the new alloys. Considering the size of the electric components manufacturing industry, the fact that they'd managed to develop a whole new standard (ASTM B 800) by 1971 and get the standard published, and the new alloy (AA-8000) into production as early as 1973, says something for the rapidity of the industry response to those fires that occurred.

You said that "It has since corrected the situation with education and product improvement." Well, to a point I agree - there has been product improvement since then but education still lags behind. The quote from the electrician in post #165 is a good example - either he is pretty ignorant of facts or he's just twisting the facts a little bit to get himself lots of new work re-wiring homes with copper wiring - much of which will be completely unnecessary if those are homes built using AA-8000 aluminum.

One of the co-owners of the webzine I started back in 2002 is Douglas Hansen. Douglas is a well-known electrical engineer and previous home inspector who has sat on many NEC code writing panels. He has made his living for the past couple of decades travelling around the country training municipal inspectors and home inspectors about changes to the electrical code, new electrical technologies and hot topics such as aluminum wiring. Here's Douglas' response to someone's question a while back about a requirement in one of the home inspection SOPs for inspectors to report all solid conductor aluminum branch circuits as an issue:

Quote from Douglas Hansen in response to query about whether aluminum wiring is safe today: "ASHI's current SOP requires the reporting of "solid conductor aluminum branch circuit wiring." That is a mistake, since solid conductor AWG aluminum wire is manufactured today with the AA 8000 series alloy and is perfectly fine.

A more important distinction than solid/stranded is the type of alloy, and whether it is the older AA-1350 type conforming to ASTM B 230, or the post-1971 AA-8000 series conforming to ASTM B 800. Even if the date of the system is uncertain, there are ways to tell if a sample of the wire can be extracted for field testing.

There is a lot to the issue of aluminum wire, and I think that much of the existing published material has oversimplified the issue."

The publication you've linked in post #166 is an example of the oversimplification that Douglas speaks about and it shows how some government agencies sometimes take a shotgun approach irrespective of fact when they create those handy pamphlets they hand out. The quotes below are from a discussion between an inspector and Douglas wherein the questioner asks specifically about that pamphlet.

Questioner: "This is what is in the CPSC PDF that anyone can download - AluminumWiringFixes.pdf - "However, CO/ALR wiring devices have failed in laboratory tests when connected to aluminum wire typical of that installed in existing homes. The test conditions simulated actual use conditions; no overstress type of testing was used. Further, CO/ALR connectors are not available for all parts of the wiring system (e.g., for the permanently wired appliances and ceiling mounted light fixtures). In the opinion of CPSC staff, CO/ALR devices must be considered, at best, an incomplete repair.

Recommendations on Temporary Repairs
AL/CU twist-on connector pigtails or CO/ALR devices may be used as an emergency, temporary repair for a failed aluminum termination."

Douglas' response: "Electrical components are tested and listed by "Nationally Recognized Testing Laboratories" (NRTLs). The most prominent NRTL is UL. NRTLs do not arbitrarily choose the manner in which components are tested. They are tested to published standards. For receptacles, the standard is ANSI/UL 498, and for snap switches it is ANSI/UL 20.

CPSC is not a nationally recognized testing laboratory. The engineer who provided the bulk of "their" research on aluminum is not an electrical engineer. The test protocols which were followed for whatever research led to this CPSC statement have not been published, and there is no reason to imagine they were conducted in accordance with the procedures of the published standards.

Per the NEC and the standards above, snap switches, and receptacles rated 20 amps or less, must be rated CO/ALR when directly connected by aluminum conductors. Other types of receptacles may be connected by pigtailing copper and using a suitable connector between the different materials.

If you examine a CO/ALR receptacle or switch, you will see that the underside of the terminal screw head has a saw-tooth pattern designed to bite into the conductor and increase the area of surface contact between the materials. Of course they must also be applied at their proper torque setting (20 inch pounds)."

The questioner then asks: "Serious question, are all new receptacles rated CO/ALR??? or can you actually see it on there? I didn't think the 39 cent receptacles were CO/ALR, just the $2 ones."

Douglas' response: "They are a specialty item, and probably cost more the $2 these days. I doubt they sell them in home improvement centers. I've only seen them in electrical supply houses. You can see the letters on the yoke and they are also embossed on the back."

That brings us to your comment: "But there is always a segment of consumers that will reject newer technologies...just because. And those people will wrap past history around their opinion, and cherry pick the replies. Not surprising when manufacturers want to keep the cookie cutters running without expensive updates and upgrades. Remember the X-cars?"

I agree about that segment of the population - they seem to have been well represented in this thread; but I think in the case of aluminum wiring CPSC's scare the hell out of 'em document and myth have persuaded consumers not to take advantage of a good product that manufacturers were quick to produce. Notice how the CPSC pamphlet doesn't specify a cutoff date? CPSC knows that AA8000 wiring is safer but they'd rather scare the hell out of everyone that has aluminum wiring in a home built between the mid-70's and now than explain that the later wiring is safe.

Most of the arguments against aluminum presented above are pretty easily refuted by looking objectively at the ubiquitous use of aluminum alloys in past and present cars and aircraft. Ford is going to use it in trucks? Well, why not, we've used aluminum-bodied vehicles in the US Army for decades. The HMMWV's we use have steel chassis with an aluminum body that seems to hold up just fine to the rigors of hard off-road use. What is Ford's solution - Steel Chassis with aluminum body? Sounds like it'll work to me.

[DEEPNHOCK]

Good point, Bob...
And I wasn't impugning...
Just verbalizing that an open mind can learn a lot of things....
I know several professional electricians, and a couple of very well respected electrical engineers (that are worth their salt).
An engineer would never completely rule out one material, when used properly, and in the right application. Unless engineering ruled it out.
An engineer would never believe what anyone thinks otherwise... They would prove it, or disprove it, through engineering.
Just an opinion...

Again, let's not jump to conclusions and put words into anybody's mouth. I saw an article and added it to the discussion for those who care. That's all I did.

[SN-60]

Any electrician worth his salt will tell you that copper wiring is superior to aluminum wiring. Very hard to believe anyone would think otherwise!

[jnormanh]

I'm not sure using aluminum wire is legal here, excepting for the feed from the pole.

Aluminum wire for houses caused some problems and got a bad rep because the wrong sort of connectors were used. I spent a lifetime in the metal finishing industry where we used aluminum buss bars at 5000-10,000 amps. Properly connected,there was no problem.

[Bob Andrews]

Again...
Let's not cherry pick the facts....
Get it from the source, and note that they, the Consumer Product and Safety Commission, are talking about connections at the outlets..... (and it also says '1 or more')
Sure, there were issues, but saying all aluminum is dangerous is ludicrous.

http://www.cpsc.gov//PageFiles/118856/516.pdf

(copy)
A national survey conducted by Franklin
Research Institute for CPSC showed that homes built before 1972, and wired with
aluminum, are 55 times more likely to have one or more wire connections at outlets

Again, let's not jump to conclusions and put words into anybody's mouth. I saw an article and added it to the discussion for those who care. That's all I did.

[DEEPNHOCK]

Again...
Let's not cherry pick the facts....
Get it from the source, and note that they, the Consumer Product and Safety Commission, are talking about connections at the outlets..... (and it also says '1 or more')
Sure, there were issues, but saying all aluminum is dangerous is ludicrous.

http://www.cpsc.gov//PageFiles/118856/516.pdf

(copy)
A national survey conducted by Franklin
Research Institute for CPSC showed that homes built before 1972, and wired with
aluminum, are 55 times more likely to have one or more wire connections at outlets

Happened upon this via an AARP article. 55 TIMES more dangerous??http://ezinearticles.com/?Electric-C...ous&id=6192254

[Bob Andrews]

Happened upon this via an AARP article. 55 TIMES more dangerous??http://ezinearticles.com/?Electric-C...ous&id=6192254

[hank63]

And some transformers are built with aluminium in the coils (in lieu of electrical grade copper). /H