![\"Aluminum](\"https:\/\/elliottinsuranceservices.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/iStock-528167261-1024x683.jpg\")
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Perhaps you have found your dream home; you made an offer and hired a building inspector.\u00a0 When your building inspector tells you that your dream home has aluminum wiring, you now start a long process to make sure your new home can be insured and is safe.\u00a0 In this article, we will dive into the world of aluminum building wire and the insurance consequences that come with it.<\/p>\n
In North American homes, aluminum wiring was used for the short period between the 1960\u2019s and the mid-1970\u2019s.\u00a0 Aluminum wiring provided cost and weight advantages over the more traditional copper wires and is still in many homes today.<\/p>\n
The Safety Concerns:<\/strong><\/p>\n Aluminum building wire was recognized as having more conductivity than its competitor copper wiring and was available at a cheaper rate.\u00a0 This created a lot of opportunity to trim costs from the builder to the purchaser for the home.\u00a0 The installation methods were exactly the same for aluminum as for copper, just different gauges needed to be used.\u00a0 This allowed builders to quickly adjust to the new building materials.\u00a0 As soon as the new building wire became popular, the issues with aluminum wiring became apparent.\u00a0\u00a0 Once they did more research and testing of the wires, they found that aluminum wires were not as good as copper once out of the science labs.<\/p>\n The Insurance Concerns:<\/strong><\/p>\n With the knowledge that aluminum wiring can easily overheat and possibly cause a fire, insurance companies will classify aluminum wiring in a home to be a greater risk than copper wiring.\u00a0 After reading about how an aluminum wire is more likely to overheat and possibly cause a fire, one can\u2019t blame them.\u00a0 Insurance companies are taking a risk by insuring any home.\u00a0 If your average house insurance was say $1,200 a year and the average home was for example $400,000 to rebuild, you can see why this is a great risk for them to undertake.\u00a0 If a home were to burn completely down, it would take the insurance company longer than your lifespan to recoup the money through premiums.\u00a0 Try it yourself; divide $400,000 by 1,200 and see how many years it would take for the insurance company to make that money back.<\/p>\n The Solutions:<\/strong><\/p>\n Some insurance companies will still write homes with aluminum wiring.\u00a0 In fact, if you have a licenced electrician come and fix the wires at their connection points, your home could be considered safe.\u00a0 The building industry knew that ripping every wire out of a house was not practical or very cost efficient to the homeowners.\u00a0 Electricians today will have the knowledge to replace receptacles, switches, and the connections to these receptacles and electrical panel.<\/p>\n Once a licenced electrician has retrofitted the existing aluminum wire connections, they should be able to provide a certification that the work has been completed.\u00a0 This is the critical part of insuring a home that has aluminum wiring.\u00a0 The insurance companies that will provide insurance for a home with aluminum wiring will require a certification from a licenced electrician to ensure that the home has been brought up to electrical code and modern safety standards.<\/p>\n Insuring a home with aluminum wiring is not impossible, but it will take a few extra steps for the homeowners.\u00a0 Once they received their electrical certification from a licenced electrician, property owners still need to provide the certificate as proof that their home is safe.\u00a0 Your insurance broker or agent will use this certificate to try to obtain insurance for you and your home.\u00a0 If you are having problems insuring your home with aluminum wiring, contact us<\/a> today so we can try to make sure your investment is insured properly.<\/p>\n To learn more about aluminum wiring and other forms of electrical safety, please visit the Electrical Safety Authority<\/a> for further information.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Perhaps you have found your dream home; you made an offer and hired a building inspector.\u00a0 When your building inspector tells you that your dream home has aluminum wiring, you now start a long process to make sure your new home can be insured and is safe.\u00a0 In this article, we will dive into the world of aluminum building wire… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":199,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,2,3],"tags":[157,159,162,158,160,79,161,164,163,165,166],"class_list":["post-198","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","placeholder-for-hentry","category-condominium-insurance","category-home-insurance","category-liability-insurance","tag-aluminum","tag-aluminum-wire","tag-building-inspector","tag-construction","tag-copper-wire","tag-electrical","tag-electrician","tag-fire","tag-inspection","tag-overheat","tag-safety"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/elliottinsuranceservices.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/elliottinsuranceservices.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/elliottinsuranceservices.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elliottinsuranceservices.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elliottinsuranceservices.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=198"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/elliottinsuranceservices.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elliottinsuranceservices.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/199"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/elliottinsuranceservices.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elliottinsuranceservices.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elliottinsuranceservices.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n