HELP - Electrical / Wiring with new build of home

Of course you need to verify your particular installation with an expert on your particular home.

However, to the best of my knowledge it is very common, normal, acceptable, and of no concern for a home's wiring to be aluminum from the service panel to the meter to the pole.

The BIG safety concern is the internal wiring within the home (from the service panel to the junction boxes and outlets and switches).

Many of these homes internally wired with aluminum throughout have already been retrofitted with copper wiring so it is actually unusual to stumble across a home with 'aluminum' wiring these days.

I found out this tidbit when we purchase a home built in 1960 where the owner listed the wiring as aluminum. It turns out he was specifying the wiring from the pole to the house but I still had the inspector thoroughly check the internal wiring and did a little research myself.

-IMO

Tin plated copper looks like aluminum & is sometimes used, fwiw.
Anyway, aluminum wire at the service entrance to my house, that was landed on properly designed terminals, would not bother me in the least. The small gauge stuff, and connection to terminals that will not allow for creep or are not of the proper material (corrision) is where the cheese gets binding,
If you want to pay extra for copper the builders should give you that option, imo.

Here is the reply from the builder this morning:

"all wiring in the home is copper except the feed from the panel to the breaker box which is aluminum I personally have never done a copper service line because of price I will get you a price for this a.s.a.p. aluminum is our standard included with the house. as for the feed from the street to the outside panel sawnee has a standard service cable which they run aluminum. I am not sure if they will up grade or not."

Please advise if this feed from the panel to the meter is acceptable in aluminum... also, will it affect sonics?

Thanks again

Great post! I'm looking to have a home built and was planning on dedicated circuits for audio. One prospective builder had no problem. This is valuable info.

Based upon my experience in recently installing a new 200A service in our home (yes, I abide by all of the rules and had it inspected multiple times) here is what I have observed:

1: The service to the meter base will be provided by your local power utility company and will almost certainly be an aluminum cable. The utility is responsible for the care and maintainance of this cable up to and including the point at which it attaches to your meter base. IMO, you can view this as being to a great extent outside of your control. Once it is hooked up, you cannot service it without the utility being involved.

2: Albert makes a very good point regarding the service feeder as regards weight if the service entrance is overhead. The comparative weight of copper to aluminum if the feeder is long could be a really BIG issue.

3: FROM the output side of the meter base to the rest of your home is your property and your responsibility, both for installation and compliance, and for maintainance.

4: If if were me, I would insist on copper from this point on. How much cable are you really talking about here. I have what I thought was a really long run from the service panel to a sub panel which was about 75 feet, and we are still not talking about a lot of $ for cable here.

5: At least as important in all of this, IMO, from the point of view of the quality of power as it MAY affect audio, is to ensure (I mean really really ensure) that you have an absolutely top quality grounding system. All of the moving current has to go somewhere, and the cleaner the ground sink, the easier it is to get rid of noise pollutants that may appear on the house service lines.