topic Aluminum wiring in Home

Aluminum wiring

granddi — Wed, 22 Jan 2020 23:53:18 GMT

Apparently Aluminum house wiring was used in the early to mid eighties due to the cost of copper. Since aluminum wiring can be a fire hazzard some insurance companies will not insure the house.

Has anyone had any experience rewiring your home to replace aluminum wiring?

Re: Aluminum wiring

queendiva — Thu, 23 Jan 2020 00:00:01 GMT

My previous house was built in 1970. Aluminum wiring, No problem ever with fire hazard. or insurance. I don't know that the subject of the wiring ever came up with homeowner's insurance.. Not a problem with the buyer when I sold, either. Much ado about nothing.

Re: Aluminum wiring

kze — Thu, 23 Jan 2020 02:23:26 GMT

I googled this and the fire hazard is with the connections. Apparently if you replace them with copper, you won't have a problem. Of course, I don't know how accurate this is.

Re: Aluminum wiring

proudlyfromNJ — Thu, 23 Jan 2020 02:38:58 GMT

One of our relatives just bought a house. When the Dad came over to check it out (he is an electrician) he had a fit as it had aluminum wiring. He said they shouldn’t have bought it.

Re: Aluminum wiring

granddi — Thu, 23 Jan 2020 13:37:07 GMT

@proudlyfromNJ wrote:
One of our relatives just bought a house. When the Dad came over to check it out (he is an electrician) he had a fit as it had aluminum wiring. He said they shouldn’t have bought it.

Thank you for all your replies.

We are not happy that this was not disclosed by the seller and not reported by the inspector. I guess let the buyer beware.

If we had known about the older wiring, we would have made a different decision about the purchase. Or reduced the price offer to cover rewiring. We will have a large electrical contractor come out soon to give opinion.