@Qelix I
AM an electrical engineer, and I can confirm that's basically what's going on; it's also compounded by thinner cables having a smaller surface area to dissipate heat... And if a cable is buried inside a wall or potting material, that insulates it and makes it even harder to dissipate heat. In the end,
heat dissipation is what drives things: the cable will heat up until either the cable fails and melting/burning insulation causes a short, or the heat generated equals heat dissipated (more heat is dissipated the bigger the difference between the cable temp and ambient temp, all other things being equal).
What
I want to know is: what kinda shady, fly-by-night operation installs a circuit like that at the ass-end of nowhere without a circuit breaker, to mitigate the exact same issues discussed in this chapter?
@xSauriaNx Current. For example, you will find that many circuits in residential housing are 15 amp (the amp, short for "ampere" is the unit for electrical current) circuits. More than that, and your breaker pops.