Why is this considered a fire risk? Isn’t the circuit, and outlet all protected by an amp-limited breaker? Is it the splitter that can’t handle the loads?
Yeah, pretty much. Generally the breaker will trip before the romex in the walls overheats, but if you plug in an electrical bottleneck that isn’t rated to what the breaker is it can fail and start a fire without the breaker ever being the wiser. An example is those ass multi-outlet extension cables made with lamp wire, some of those only do 10 amps or less before the wire starts glowing red hot.
Pretty much, especially when you chain together splitters that don’t have their own protection built in. Also in older or unmaintained places you can’t always rely on the breaker. Used to be a joke that you could just replace a breaker fuse with a stack of pennies and be good to go, and electricians have found tons of places where idiot cheapskates took it at face value.
Basically, when setting a whole lot of the inside of your walls on fire all at once is the ultimate risk, you don’t want to ever rely on only one (or even two) failsafe(s). Especially if you don’t know what the failsafes actually are and when they were last tested between your shit and where power enters the building.
Why is this considered a fire risk? Isn’t the circuit, and outlet all protected by an amp-limited breaker? Is it the splitter that can’t handle the loads?
Yeah, pretty much. Generally the breaker will trip before the romex in the walls overheats, but if you plug in an electrical bottleneck that isn’t rated to what the breaker is it can fail and start a fire without the breaker ever being the wiser. An example is those ass multi-outlet extension cables made with lamp wire, some of those only do 10 amps or less before the wire starts glowing red hot.
Pretty much, especially when you chain together splitters that don’t have their own protection built in. Also in older or unmaintained places you can’t always rely on the breaker. Used to be a joke that you could just replace a breaker fuse with a stack of pennies and be good to go, and electricians have found tons of places where idiot cheapskates took it at face value.
Basically, when setting a whole lot of the inside of your walls on fire all at once is the ultimate risk, you don’t want to ever rely on only one (or even two) failsafe(s). Especially if you don’t know what the failsafes actually are and when they were last tested between your shit and where power enters the building.