What is the deal with aluminum wiring in Pensacola,FL
What is going on with aluminum wiring in Pensacola. I have been told that you cannot insure or sell a house with aluminum wiring. What are the costs to have the aluminum wire replaced?
Aluminum wiring is dangerous. This has caused the insurance companies to stop covering houses with aluminum wiring. You also cannot sell a house with aluminum wiring because the buyer cannot get insurance there for they cannot get a mortgage. If you contact Selectricity we can give you a free estimate to replace your aluminum wiring. In most cases we can rewire the whole house without damaging the walls or ceilings. This will greatly reduce the cost of having your house re-wired.
I would like to weigh the pros and cons from changing to copper wire versus using the alumiconn connectors. First off, if there are any junction boxes in the attic they will be totally ignored. This is where most of the fires start from. Second you still have to remove the box to install a deeper box which is half way to rewiring. Then when you tighten the connectors its smashes the aluminum wire where if you move it back and forth a couple times it breaks off. We have also come across splices in the wall behind the sheetrock with copper to aluminum connections. Again these will never be found and could be a problem. Not to mention the open splices in the attic with out junction boxes that are not seen. Then there are some contractors not even replacing the outlets when they install the connectors. So you still have 40 year old outlets with loose connections. In my professional opinion they are a joke. It is a few hundred dollars more than half the price of rewiring. The only company that will insure you is Citizens insurance. Your premium will be about $800 to $1000 dollars more a year than if you re-wire. So in 5 years you will have paid for a toral re-wire, but yet you still have aluminum wiring. Then let one fire or other claim occur on a house that has had the retrofit. Citizens will then say that they won't accept it and all these homeowners that have spent 3 to 5 thousand to have this done will be out of that money and in the same position they started in. If you are going to live there for more than one year I would say re-wire, its the only permanent fix.