On Sat, 13 Aug 2016 13:49:14 -0400, Radey Shouman
I haven't even seen a U.S. house in 40, or more, years :-)
I did check the Electrical code and generally it does refer to fuses
so I guess in some instances they are still legal, but certainly I
would think it justified for an insurance to shield the fools from any
possible contact with danger so I wouldn't find it surprising for a
home box to contain only little plastic handles marked 10, 15 and 20
:-)
>> I've never seen a house wired with aluminum but I would guess the real
>> problem might be in the circuit breakers. A pretty standard size
>> breaker for #12 copper wire would be a 20 amp breaker, which wired
>> with aluminum #12 wire would be about 30% oversize.
>
>I lived in a newly built house with Al wiring in 74-75, and again in an
>apartment building with Al wiring until four years ago. In neither case
>could you tell without actually looking at the wires.
>
>You make it sound as though gangs of rogue electricians, high on black
>market "acid flux", just decided to install some Al wire that fell off a
>truck. In actual fact the wire was manufactured for house wiring, which
>was done according to the code at the time. Larger diameter Al wire was
>required compared to Cu in equivalent service. Initially all worked
>well, but, as Mr. Scheidt says, there was an unforeseen increase in
>wiring connection resistance, sometimes ending in fire.
Of course house wiring was manufactured for house wiring :-) And, as
far as I know it still is. And it is made to exactly the same codes
and standards as copper wire. You can, for example, buy #12 copper
wire and you can buy #12 aluminum wire. And you can also buy aluminum
to copper connectors.
I worked at one Air Base where all the "secondary" wire was aluminum,
made up to any copper connection with the proper aluminum to copper
connectors and there was no more problems with loose connections in
the Aluminum wire than there was with any other wire.
The old wives tale that aluminum, simply because it is aluminum
somehow gets loose and copper simply doesn't seems to be just that.
--
cheers,
John B.