I have 375 amp service (or was it 350?) anyway the wires from the pole
xformer to the house are buried and are aluminum. They feed side by side
200 amp panels, each with a main breaker. I have never touched their
connection to the main breakers. This setup has been in place for over
15 years. I can kill the main breakers one at a time and use an allen
wrench with a "cheater" for increased torque to make sure the clamping
force is good and plenty but I suspect I'll find the connection to be tight.
Sub panels off these 2 each 200 amp panels feed healthy arc welders,
table saws, kilowatt linear, etc and other man toys with no problems.
No dimming or blinking lights. I'll trport back if the 15 + year
connections have loosened any.
(Why 2 ea 200 amp panels instead of a single 400? A good 400 cost then
$1200-$1500 so 2 ea good 200's was a comparative bargain, saving several
hundred dollars.)
Patrick NJ5G
On 2/24/2020 7:46 AM, Rob Atkinson wrote:
I have a few problems with this wire. My experience with aluminum is
that it is not worth the trouble integrating it into the rest of the
antenna system when it comes to bonding it to other metals. I
appreciate the light weight and lower cost but aluminum has another
undesirable property: It cold flows so clamps on it eventually come
loose and then you have resistance and heat. This is why aluminum
house wire which was tried in the 1960s came to a quick end--too many
cold flows, heat and fires. I hope it isn't coming back for that
purpose.
I have my 200 amp service drop to my home using aluminum. I don't
like it but I can't make the power company use copper. Every few
years I check the lugs on the main breaker to make sure they are still
tight. This is one area where an IR camera would come in handy. It
WILL cold flow eventually and you'll know it when your lights flicker
or dim briefly when a big load like A/C comes on.
I was dismayed to see that QST ran an article by some sort of RF
expert on how to construct open wire feedline using aluminum AWG 8 or
maybe it was 6, stranded wire. Ridiculous overkill for ham power, and
he spliced line sections together using what appeared to be steel
clamps. Those clamps will lose their grip in a few years and he'll
have problems, besides the use of steel for RF. None of this came up
in the article. Then there was the line Z due to the spacing and
diameter of AWG 8 cable but that's outside the focus here.
73
Rob
K5UJ
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