Do I have the correct wirenut to connect my HOUSE braided aluminum neutral to my NEW OVEN white neutral and green ground? NONE of my NEW OVEN wires are copper, theyre all gray-colored… is this aluminum? ((SOLVED: OVEN wires likely plated copper… but my house was built in 1995 and the city says my HOUSE neutral could very well be aluminum))
Are my house wires too thick for my new oven wires? (I cant remember if the rule is the house wires can be thicker, or the appliance?) (SOLVED: house wire = the thicker the better, thicker than appliances is good; just like pipes: thick wire = good flow, thin = high pressure)
Licensed electrician told me he doesnt need to come out to re-wire the house because its grandfathered, i can just twist the NEW OVEN green and white together with the HOUSE aluminum [ground? or is it neutral?] (SOLVED: ALUMINUM = NEUTRAL)… but he was assuming the oven wires were copper… so he warned me to make sure i have the correct wirenut. I already had the oven installed and couldnt remember if the OVEN wires were copper, turns out theyre not (CORRECTION: they probably ARE, just tin-plated, so i DO need the purple/polaris copper-to-aluminum connector… and anti-oxidizer spray is highly recommended)
The oven is working, I did connect the GREEN & WHITE FROM the NEW OVEN to the BARE ALUMINUM from the HOUSE
HOUSE black is connected to NEW OVEN black
other HOUSE black went to NEW OVEN red
OUT from MY HOUSE WALL: I have BLACK + BLACK + BARE ALUMINIM wires
OUT from MY OLD OVEN: RED + BLACK + WHITE + BARE COPPER
one of the HOUSE BLACK was connected to my OLD OVEN RED (thats hot)
the other HOUSE BLACK was connected to the OLD OVEN BLACK… 2nd hot
the HOUSE BARE ALUMINUM was connected to the OLD OVEN WHITE and COPPER
ALL my NEW OVEN wiring is GRAY(ALUMINUM??) (UPDATE: likely plated copper)
the insulation is WHITE taped to GREEN (NO BARE WIRE) + RED + BLACK
my installation instructions combine several models and configurations, then to make it more confusing they dont always identify which wires they are referring to (house or oven)
I TRIED TO EDIT AND DELETE MY PREVIOUS/SIMILAR QUESTION
Best Answer
Use MAC Block connectors
The wire nut job you have done is a time bomb.
They make special, "purple" wire nuts specifically for aluminum to copper splices, however those too have proven to be a time bomb.
Meanwhile, inside panels, arge aluminum feeder has proven reliable when attached to lugs made of aluminum. (aluminum lugs are the universal donor; they play well with both Al and Cu wire.)*
Our experience is your best bet, AL to anything, is is a "portable" lug connector. These are made in 3 ranges: #10-14 (Alumiconn), #6-18 (MAC Block Connector) and #4 and larger (Polaris).
So MAC Block connectors it is. The MAC block is a funny one: it's only made in 2-void connectors, but it allows up to 4 wires per void, so there'll be no problem fitting a MAC block with braided ground going into one void, and ground+neutral going into the other void.
All colors of MAC block accept aluminum on both sides at once. They offer different colors only for aesthetic reasons. There's no Code requirement for splice color to match phase/neutral color.
That said, I expect your new oven's wires are not aluminum, but rather tinned copper... however my point is, we don't need to care.
Regardless, a 3-wire oven connection is bad news
That installation is a classic one with aluminum SE cable; 2 black hots and a bare NEUTRAL. It is not ground. SE is Service Entrance Cable, and there is no ground wire in service entrances (but there is bare neutral).
The problem is that if there is any trouble with that braided bare neutral wire, the oven's chassis will be energized at hot voltage! If anything next to it is grounded and you touch both, blammo!
It will suffice to retrofit just a ground wire from the oven's receptacle box to the nearest point with a 10 AWG ground wire going back to the panel. That can be a water heater, A/C unit, any non-flexible metal conduit, or the Grounding Electrode (bare wire between panel and your ground rods).
* Yes, that's right... if you deep-drill into the aluminum wiring crisis deep enough, you find out that in the 70s they were attaching aluminum wires to lugs made of copper, and you can figure out the rest... not aluminum's fault...)