Aluminum Wiring Repair in Portland, OR & the Metro Area

Warm cover plates, flicker and loose, overheating connections fixed at every box, so no aluminum is left under a screw terminal. We do this work across Portland, Gresham, Tigard, and surrounding communities.

For roughly 1965 to 1973, builders ran aluminum instead of copper for ordinary branch circuits — the lighting and outlet circuits in a house. Aluminum expands and contracts more than copper as it warms and cools, so screw terminals on outlets and switches slowly loosen, and the exposed metal oxidizes. A loose, oxidized connection resists current, heats up, and can char the device or the box behind it. The cable in the walls is rarely the problem; the ends are.

Aluminum wiring repair happens at those ends; the trade calls it remediation. At every outlet, switch, fixture and junction box we join a short copper pigtail to the aluminum conductor with a connector listed for aluminum-to-copper use, then land the copper on the device. Where a device stays directly on aluminum, it must be one rated CO/ALR. Every box in the house gets opened, because an untouched connection is the one that fails. We label the panel when we finish so the next electrician knows what was done and where.

Some owners replace the aluminum entirely instead, which is a whole-house rewire. That is the right call when the house also has too few circuits, ungrounded outlets, or a panel due for replacement. The repair keeps the walls closed; a rewire opens them, so the state of your plaster or drywall is part of the decision. A few boxes opened at the first visit show which route the house needs, and the written estimate spells it out.