14/4 AWG Plenum Security Alarm Cable - CMP/CL3P Rated, Shielded, 1000ft White

In an office, school, hospital, or store, the space above the drop ceiling is usually a return-air plenum, and any low-voltage cable that runs through it without conduit has to be plenum rated. This is the heavy four-conductor shielded plenum cable for the devices on a security or fire alarm system that draw real current at the far end of a long ceiling run: four 14 AWG stranded bare copper conductors, black, red, white, and green, under an overall aluminum foil shield with a drain wire and a white low-smoke PVC jacket that carries the plenum listings. It's rated CL3P under NEC Article 725 for Class 3 power-limited circuits (and by the code's substitution rules for Class 2 as well), CMP under Article 800 for communications, and FPLP under Article 760 for power-limited fire alarm circuits. 14 AWG has about a third of 18 AWG's loop resistance, so it's the gauge for a maglock and its door contact at the end of a corridor, a bank of horn-strobes on one notification circuit with a sync pair, a 24 V power supply feeding a floor's worth of readers, or a gate or door operator with its control pair; the shield keeps the control or data pair quiet past the ballasts, VFDs, and HVAC motors in the ceiling. The conductors are 19-strand rather than 7, which makes a 14 AWG cable bend around a ceiling and land in a terminal block more easily than a stiffer construction would.

CL3P and CMP cover return-air plenums, drop ceilings, and raised floors, and every riser and general-purpose run below that. The cable is ETL Listed, RoHS compliant, and made in the USA, and it comes in a 1000 ft pull box with sequential footage marks on the jacket.

Features

• Plenum rated three ways. CL3P under NEC Article 725, CMP under Article 800, and FPLP under Article 760, so it's listed for return-air plenums, drop ceilings, and raised floors on security, control, communications, and fire alarm circuits alike, and for every riser and general-purpose run below that; the CL3P listing covers Class 2 circuits under the code's substitution rules.
• Four 14 AWG stranded bare copper conductors. Power plus a control or data pair, with about a third of 18 AWG's loop resistance, for maglocks, notification circuits, operators, and power-supply runs that would sag on a lighter gauge, on 19-strand conductors that bend around a ceiling and seat in a terminal block without fighting.
• Overall aluminum foil shield with drain wire. 100% coverage against induced noise from ballasts, VFDs, and HVAC equipment sharing the ceiling space, for the control and data conductors in the bundle, with a drain wire to land at the panel.
• Black, red, white, and green. The standard four-conductor coding, so the power pair and the signal pair are identifiable at both ends without a meter.
• Low-smoke PVC insulation and jacket. A 0.012 in insulation wall on each conductor and a 0.018 in jacket over the shield, both the low-smoke compounds a plenum listing requires.
• White jacket. Reads as general-purpose low-voltage in a ceiling or a tray, and stays distinct from red fire alarm and blue data cable.
• 300 V, 75 °C. The ratings a Class 2, Class 3, or power-limited fire alarm circuit calls for.
• 6.71 mm outer diameter. Sized to fit standard low-voltage fittings and connectors; plan the backbox for it.
• ETL Listed, RoHS compliant, made in the USA. Also carries the Canadian FT6 plenum flame rating.
• 1000 ft pull box. Sequential footage marks on the jacket; pays out from the box without a spool stand, and the box stacks in a van.

Where It Fits

It suits maglocks and electric strikes with a door contact or request-to-exit on the second pair at the end of a long plenum run, fire alarm notification circuits feeding a line of horn-strobes with a sync pair, 24 V power from a supply to a floor's readers, keypads, and auxiliary devices, door and gate operators with power and a control pair, 24 V damper and valve actuators with power and control, 70 V paging speaker lines with a priority or mute pair, and any four-conductor low-voltage run through a plenum ceiling in an office, school, hospital, hotel, or store where the load is heavier than 18 AWG is comfortable with and the route is electrically noisy.

Good to Know

Run the voltage-drop calculation on the pair that carries power. A 14 AWG pair is about 5 ohms per 1000 ft round trip, so a 12 V maglock drawing 0.5 A at 500 ft loses about 1.3 V, and a 24 V notification circuit drawing 2 A at 300 ft loses about 3 V; size a maglock run on its holding current and the supply's low-battery voltage, not just nominal, and on a fire alarm notification circuit the panel's own voltage-drop worksheet governs and the AHJ will want to see it. Ground the shield's drain at the panel or controller end only and tape it back at the device end; a shield grounded at both ends becomes a loop that picks up the noise it was meant to reject. When the cable carries both power and signal, put the signal on the pair farthest from the power pair; the shield helps against noise from outside the cable but does nothing about crosstalk inside it. Check the controller manufacturer's wiring guide before you pull, since some data circuits specify a twisted pair and a foil shield adds capacitance on a long run. Keep the circuits in their classes: Class 2 and Class 3 circuits can share this cable, but a Class 1 circuit can't, a fire alarm circuit can't share a cable with a security circuit, and the NEC requires power-limited wiring to stay separated from power conductors in raceways and boxes. Nineteen-strand conductors want a ferrule or a proper fold-back before they go under a screw terminal; a stray strand is the short that takes a zone into trouble. Plenum-rated cable is for the air-handling space, not for inside the ductwork itself. If the ceiling isn't a plenum, a riser cable does the same job for less, and if the load is light, the shielded 18/4 or 18/6 plenum is slimmer and cheaper. Plenum compounds are stiffer than ordinary PVC, so give a cable this size a generous bend radius and plan the backbox before you pull. The jacket isn't UV stabilized or rated for wet locations or burial, so an outdoor operator or horn-strobe should be fed through conduit or from a cable rated for it.

Specifications

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