If your home was built in the 1960’s-1970’s it was almost certainly done with aluminum wire. Does this mean your house is about to burn down at any moment? Most likely not.

However, because of the type of aluminum wire and electrical devices (like an outlet) used in the 60’s-70’s, there is now indeed a risk of failure from overheating.

When we power our electrical products from an outlet, the draw of electricity causes the aluminum wires attached to that outlet to heat up. When you unplug your device from the outlet, there is no longer a draw of electricity and the aluminum wires cool down. This heating and cooling over time can and will cause those connections to become brittle and eventually fail.

Much like knob and tube wiring, because of this risk of eventual failure, there are insurance providers that will no longer provide coverage to homes that have not had their aluminum wiring updated.

Does this mean you need to remove all the aluminum wiring in your home? No, it does not. While that is certainly an option – usually a home owner and/or an insurance company opt for “Pig-tailing” the devices.

“Pig-tailing” is when an electrician splices a short length of copper wire to the original aluminum wire and then attaches the new copper wire to the existing electrical device. The splicing hardware used by the electrician is designed to accommodate the heating and cooling of the wire at their connection – and eliminates the devices risk of eventual failure from this.