I am buying a condo with some aluminum wiring. The seller is willing to pay $2,500 for an electrician (his quoted price) to cap any outlets or ends with copper. The electrician who is neutral said this will update the home and bring it up to better safety codes etc. Does this information sound accurate?
You should not connect aluminum copper directly together, there are connectors and compounds for this purpose.
yes pigtailing is the proper term. yes it is the best solution for a bad situation. we have personally pigtailed hundreds of homes and have never had any problems. i would feel comfortable with this
Aluminum should be used to you electrical breaker box only then copper from there to any electrical in the house!
It is very common in older homes to have tin coated copper wiring which many people then think they have aluminum wiring. If you have a piece of the older wiring or can turn the breaker off to one of these wires use a screw driver to scrape at the wire on the bare end; if it's tin coated copper you will see the orange/rust color of copper after a few light scrapes, the scaping is nothing agressive. This will determine if you have aluminum or not. Someone else mentioned about a loose connection which if a copper wire aluminum wire are connected together it would very likely fail creating a short. The two different materials expand contract at different rates which creates a bad connection. There is a special crimp process that can be done to join the two but a electrician should definately do this. A lot of the older homes just have two many items all on one breaker. With what you've described I would suggest using a electrician. Additional: If no breakers are tripped off and you do not have power in some areas you might have another panel (sub-panel) somewhere else in the home OR this circuit is hooked up to a GFI outlet somewhere else such as the kitchen, bathroom or garage. I would physically re-check each breaker and then hunt for a GFI outlet and sub-panel.
Sounds accurate to me. The Issue with aluminum wiring in house is the connections at the switches and receptacles. The aluminum expands and contracts causing the connections to loosen over time and this causes an increase in the amp draw on the lines. By transitioning the aluminum wiring to copper wiring it a junction box and taking copper wiring to the switches and receptacles it resolves the issue and removes the risk of failure. I would advise asking the independent electrician to confirm the sizing of the aluminum wiring since it generally requires a larger size then copper. This said I would strongly advise that if you have a building inspections department where you live to give your Electrical inspector a call and ask this question of them. They will also be able to tell you if your state requires this to have a permit and to be inspected after installation. This is a very good thing to make sure happens if in fact they do have one because it helps protect you from faulty installations. You should be able to find out if there is an inspections department in your area by looking under the city or county government in the phone book.
