I am ready to buy some 16 and 18 gauge wire, and have found really good deals on multiple color packages of wire, but the real good prices are for Copper Clad Aluminum stranded wire.
I am not convinced that this would be good to use, as it could heat up, and I have heard that it breaks more easily.
Do any of you have experience with this wire vs all copper stranded wire, and what do you think about it?
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It's fine except for having to go up a size to get the current carrying capacity.
Personally I would completely totally avoid it.
RWL
I was a major appliance and refrigeration tech ,before i retired . I ran into this type of wire often in certain brand of appliances , a lot of failures were due to breakage ,it broke very easily , and i even ran into cases were the wire broke inside the insulation ,an the insulation was fine had to check continuity to find break . My advice buy good wire all copper , saves your self a lot of headaches down the road.
my 2 cents Techman
Just as I thought, I will stay away from it.
Thanks guys.
I had a buddy flee for his life one night because the mobile home he was staying in burnt to the ground due to an electrical fire from the aluminum romex that was used.
RWL posted:I am ready to buy some 16 and 18 gauge wire, and have found really good deals on multiple color packages of wire, but the real good prices are for Copper Clad Aluminum stranded wire.
That's because IMO aluminum wire is crap, plain and simple. Aluminum oxidizes very quickly and aluminum oxide is an insulator. It takes a lot of special care to make aluminum wire work properly and IMO it has no place on a model train. Avoid it like the plague.
I rewired my layout with it a couple of years ago and I have zero problems. There is about 700 feet of 2 conductor 16 ga wire running under the layout.
Take it from an electrician- run away, run away very fast!
My other hobby is high end car stereo, I bought some CCA wire by mistake and found it impossible to solder correctly. It also breaks pretty easily. I will never use it on a project again.
Chris Sheldon
Running away as fast as I can.
The only thing aluminum wire (copper-clad or otherwise) is good for is some cash you might get for it at the metal recycler. 
Paul.
That was the cancer of the 1970's building boom when anyone who could hold a hammer thought they were a carpenter, and every carpenter thought they were a builder and most every builder was a joke. Home prices soared by 8k+/- on a monthly basis. We worked in the finish trades and had to deal with wrong joists, lack of insulation, hundreds of nail pops, crooked doors and windows, wrong sized ducts, lights and outlets on the same circuit, incorrectly placed supply and drain lines and of course aluminum wire.
There was a critical lack of qualified tradesmen back then.
Copper clad requires special terminal adapters which many unlearned folks simply bypass. No, it is not a 100% failure rate nor is it 100% fire incident, but it is totally wrong. We routinely replaced aluminum wire in our remodeling work. Indefensible.
That was aluminum wire. Copper clad aluminum was the fix for using aluminum for the base wire. The copper cladding solved issues with aluminum wire, no corrosion, etc.
Noted points if considering Aluminum wire.
(1.) Conductivity requires two sizes larger wire. #8 gauge copper, would require #6 gauge Aluminum.
(2.) Most Aluminum installation requires the use of oxide inhibitor at termination. Formation of oxide leads to heating, and a failed termination.
(3.) There are compression connectors design to be used with Aluminum to minimize termination problems.
(4.) Splicing Aluminum to copper wire is a big problem. The two metals do not react well together. Special terminations with plated split bolts, to separate the two dis-similar metals are required.
(5.) IMO, for what gets done on a model train layout, stick with copper, IMO. Savings would be minimal Mike CT.
Mike CT posted:Noted points if considering Aluminum wire.
(1.) Conductivity requires two sizes larger wire. #8 gauge copper, would require #6 gauge Aluminum.
(2.) Most Aluminum installation requires the use of oxide inhibitor at termination. Formation of oxide leads to heating, and a failed termination.
(3.) There are compression connectors design to be used with Aluminum to minimize termination problems.
(4.) Splicing Aluminum to copper wire is a big problem. The two metals do not react well together. Special terminations with plated split bolts, to separate the two dis-similar metals are required.
(5.) IMO, for what gets done on a model train layout, stick with copper, IMO. Savings would be minimal
No worries there. I am not going near the CCA wire. I will save money somewhere else, but not there for sure.
I want it safe, and I want it as simple as it can be. It will get complicated enough without adding this to the mix.
Thanks for all of the guidance.
When in doubt, rip it out ! I would not touch aluminum wire, copper clad or not, with a ten foot pole. I recall buying some back in the '70s because the price of copper went through the roof. Fortunately, I purchased very little copper clad aluminum wire and have since replaced it.
As has been pointed out, if you are not educated in it's use, it can be a hazard down the road.
Your spending thousands of dollars on your trains and layout. Why cheap out when it comes to wire. Never aluminum clad wire in any instance.
Subjects like this come up every so often to save very little, remember lamp oil for smoke fluid.
Dave
I echo David 1,stay away from it.
Mikey
IMO, copper coated aluminum wire is junk. I know the stuff I got didn't solder nearly as well as real copper wire, don't know if all of it is that bad. However, I see no reason for the small increment in price not to have copper wire.
Beware of Chinese supply on eBay, lots of that is the copper coated aluminum, read carefully.
gunrunnerjohn posted:IMO, copper coated aluminum wire is junk. I know the stuff I got didn't solder nearly as well as real copper wire, don't know if all of it is that bad. However, I see no reason for the small increment in price not to have copper wire.
Beware of Chinese supply on eBay, lots of that is the copper coated aluminum, read carefully.
Hay John,
Nice to hear from you. I am absolutely not going with that CCA wire. I will go somewhere like allelectric, or someplace, and order good copper stranded wire.
BTW, Steve at Ross Custome Switches recommends 18 awg for switch runs, and 16 awg for track power runs. I will not be using a buss wire. Instead, I will be using terminal blocks and more of a star pattern. I will also be using terminal blocks at each switch machine and remote actuator, so that they will be a bit easier to replace, should the need arise.
Do you agree with his recommendations? It seems reasonable to me.
I am considering 12 gauge from the transformers to the terminal blocks. Is that overkill?
I bought the CCA wire on accident and wired half the layout with it before I realized but hey, its all crimp connections and its been in for 2 years and I have had no issues with it. Im not running high voltage through it so it doenst matter and Im not going to spend antoher 100 hours rewiring the layout unless there are issues
And last but not least.....ALCO tried aluminum wire in the century series diesels...the results were not good...they wound up retro fitting them...don't use it !!
joe krasko posted:And last but not least.....ALCO tried aluminum wire in the century series diesels...the results were not good...they wound up retro fitting them...don't use it !!
The early GE locomotives, like U25B, also had aluminum cabling, with equally disastrous results.
RWL posted:BTW, Steve at Ross Custome Switches recommends 18 awg for switch runs, and 16 awg for track power runs. I will not be using a buss wire. Instead, I will be using terminal blocks and more of a star pattern. I will also be using terminal blocks at each switch machine and remote actuator, so that they will be a bit easier to replace, should the need arise.Do you agree with his recommendations? It seems reasonable to me.
I am considering 12 gauge from the transformers to the terminal blocks. Is that overkill?
I'd personally go for #14 for track power if it's going any distance, and #12 isn't really overkill, just a bit better. As far as switch runs, it depends on the power the switch machine draws. If you're using something tortoise switch motors, #24 is plenty, they only draw about 20ma max. If you're using something higher power, then stepping up in size is probably warranted, but #18 seems a bit of overkill for most switch machines.
I totally agree with GRJ's recommendations. I use 22-gauge for DZ1000 switch motors since the draw is in milliamps. If you're unfortunate enough to use NJL motors, I'd use 18; they are power hogs--several amps.
gunrunnerjohn posted:RWL posted:BTW, Steve at Ross Custome Switches recommends 18 awg for switch runs, and 16 awg for track power runs. I will not be using a buss wire. Instead, I will be using terminal blocks and more of a star pattern. I will also be using terminal blocks at each switch machine and remote actuator, so that they will be a bit easier to replace, should the need arise.Do you agree with his recommendations? It seems reasonable to me.
I am considering 12 gauge from the transformers to the terminal blocks. Is that overkill?
I'd personally go for #14 for track power if it's going any distance, and #12 isn't really overkill, just a bit better.
The 12 Ga was for the wires going directly from the transformers to the terminal strips. There would be 16 gauge going out from there to all of the track connections.
As for the switch machines, I will be using DZ-1000's installed by Steve at Ross.
Matt Makens posted:I bought the CCA wire on accident and wired half the layout with it before I realized but hey, its all crimp connections and its been in for 2 years and I have had no issues with it. Im not running high voltage through it so it doenst matter and Im not going to spend antoher 100 hours rewiring the layout unless there are issues
Most or all of the negative examples in the above posts are about all aluminum wire, not copper clad aluminum stranded wire. There are disadvantages with all aluminum, but they are meant to be fixed with the copper cladding.
The solder issue is interesting. I wonder if the copper cladding is getting burned off with the somewhat high temperature in the soldering.
At any rate, crimping is the way to use CCA, and given that, I cannot think of any deal breaker reason not to use it as long as the gauge is adjusted for the increased resistance on a long run. The crimp should encompass the wire well to avoid the issue of cold flowing of the aluminum in the CCA wire.
BTW, I am also reminded of a thread some time ago (might have been Dale M.) when the wire gauge issue was addressed. The standard wire gauge tables are for allowable voltage drop for 100 feet with 120 vac circuits. A drop of 5 vac in a hundred feet on a 120 vac circuit at max current is somewhat reasonable. However we use 18 vac circuits and a 5 vac drop is not acceptable. So we cannot rely on the standard wire gauge tables for our wiring. We should instead look at the resistance per foot, and do the calculation current times resistance of the length of the run equals the voltage drop to see if the gauge is ample. Just sayin'.
I wired my whole layout with CCA speaker wire without knowing it, I only looked at it carefully after I read a couple posts here about it. Never had a problem of any type, the wire I bought solders just fine. However, I have no doubt that there is lots of wire out there that is "copper-colored aluminum" rather than copper-clad aluminum.
One point to consider with aluminum wire, whether it's copper clad or not. Most if not all services into our homes is aluminum wire. The electric companies run it from the pole to the connection point on our houses. From there an electrical contractor runs an aluminum service cable down to the meter and the into the panel.
Copper service cables would be very expensive, particularly if there is a long run from the pole to the house, as in my case, about 150 feet. The other thing is weight. One hundred and fifty feet of copper service cable can be quite heavy.
These are the only places where aluminum wire is safely used. There are special connectors for the connection to the electric companies wires and also in the panel where the service cable is connected. These locations do not heat and cool as do connections to individual circuit breakers, so the cable will not loosen over time.
I pulled out the alum service cable when I installed a new 200 amp service. There is just something right about using all copper, the cost differential was not worth the compromise IMO. We run our copper wire scraps to the scrap yard when ever a bucket is full. Makes for a nice dinner out. They will not accept wire with any alum.
Dan, I apologize, my earlier post was not clear. there was a tremendous qualified labor shortage in the booming 70's and everyone who could hold a hammer thought they were a carpenter. A real carpenter can be a joy to behold.
I would not use it if you gave it to me. My hose was all al wire I took it all out & used copper
Ken M
Yeah, I’m not too worried. It’s all dual wire 16 ga and I’m running PH180s at 10 amps so it’ll be fine. I get a nominal voltage drop of about 1.7 volts at the furthest point from the transformers. People on here are all super alarmists. It won’t hurt nothin. I wish it was all copper cuz that’s what I had before the rewire but it’s not and I’ll get over it. My DCS signal is 10s everywhere on the layout and legacy works great.
Tom Tee posted:I pulled out the alum service cable when I installed a new 200 amp service. There is just something right about using all copper, the cost differential was not worth the compromise IMO. We run our copper wire scraps to the scrap yard when ever a bucket is full. Makes for a nice dinner out. They will not accept wire with any alum.
Dan, I apologize, my earlier post was not clear. there was a tremendous qualified labor shortage in the booming 70's and everyone who could hold a hammer thought they were a carpenter. A real carpenter can be a joy to behold.
Thanks, much appreciated.
Note that I never said CCA wire or in fact aluminum wire was bad, just that it's not nearly as good as all copper for wiring a train platform, at least IMO. In virtually all houses built in the last 30-40 years, anything bigger than around #10 wire is aluminum, in the last four houses I've owned, all the high current wiring was aluminum, no problems at all with it.
John, you’re resoonses are always based on information and education. Not wild assumptions or baseless conjecture
I agree, Matt. GRJ is a very sound citizen of the forum.
I checked prices just for grins and 500 ft of copper 14 ga two conductor is about $200. 500ft of 14 ga CCA is about $50.
I purchased a house back in the 70s and the wire was aluminum, WHAT CRAP!
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