Overheard a property manager say 'just hide the cables behind the baseboards'

Was at a 12 unit apartment complex in Arlington yesterday and the property manager told the tenant they could just tuck the coax behind the baseboard trim. I had to explain that's not code and can cause interference or even fire risk if staples hit a wire. Led me to wonder how often you all run into homeowners or managers giving bad advice like that?

2 comments

2 Comments

skyler_adams1mo agoMost Upvoted

Wait, hiding coax behind baseboards is somehow less sketchy than just running it along the floor like a normal person? I guess property managers think code is just a suggestion box they can ignore if it saves ten minutes of work. Next they'll be telling tenants to just plug their space heaters into a power strip with a chewed up cord and call it a day.

jamie_taylor1mo ago

Oh man, your comment hit way too close to home. My buddy rented a place where the property manager literally stapled an ethernet cable along the top of the baseboard like it was some kind of arts and crafts project. The staples were so close together it looked like a staple gun had a seizure and just went to town. A few months later the cable got pinched somehow and the internet kept dropping every time someone walked past that spot. He called them to fix it and they just put more staples over the damaged part and told him to "keep traffic away from that corner." Like that's a normal thing to say about a living room. Idk how these people sleep at night.