"Bruce L. Bergman" wrote:

On Wed, 05 Sep 2007 01:27:33 -0700, Gunner Asch wrote:
On Tue, 04 Sep 2007 23:21:46 -0500, zxcvbob wrote:

(there was an experiment that went terribly wrong during the
1970's with using AL wiring for 15 and 20A circuits.)

Indeed. They are still finding them when the house burns to the
ground.

More prevalent in mobile homes than stick-built houses, almost
universally AL wiring in coaches from the late 60's through 80's.

The mobile home industry always uses the rock bottom cheapest way to
build coaches, so they pressed for the code change allowing it. And
didn't stop until forced to by the code changing back because of the
problems, they tried AL-COR "revised" devices that didn't help.

Mobile homes burn a whole lot better. No drywall, all paneling.
Usually the cheap brown phenolic boxes that couldn't enclose a sneeze,
let alone a fire till it goes out on it's own. And cheap Federal
Pacific breakers that won't trip when you need them to.

And as the FD is snuffing out the embers the dummy homeowner goes
"Gee, there was this one outlet circuit that blinked and flickered
every time I ran my electric frying pan - was I supposed to call
someone to check it?"

-- Bruce --

Unfortunate how the lowest quality, least resilient housing tends to
align with the least attentive and proactive occupants...