Any electricians, got a question

[Dave Sherman]

My 1974 house has aluminum wire. Previous owner was one of those "knows enough to be dangerous" types, and made some "improvements", such as replacing outlets with copper-only outlets, and put in GFCIs, which are also copper-only. Problem is, he just put the aluminum wires directly on the copper-only outlets, which I'm having to fix after we've had a couple of "incidents". Question: Why does it seem like GFCIs that are suitable for aluminum wire don't exist? I mean, I could pigtail them, but there's not a lot of room in the box for the extra connections.

 

[thastinger]

You'll have to use the approved pigtail devices to tie into the alum and use copper on the GFCI outlet. You can change the boxes out to double depth boxes if you need the space. Don't just wire nut copper to alum, there are approved mechanical devices to make the pigtail from.

You can daisy-chain regular outlets off a GFCI. Last I looked at the National Electrical Code book, I don't recall a specific number of outlets, in series, that a GFCI can protect.

 

[55hambone]

I've never seen a GFCI that was approved for use with aluminum wire. Your options would be to install pigtails with wire nuts that are UL listed for aluminum to copper connections or to install a GFCI circuit breaker.