18/2 Solid Copper Fire Alarm Cable - FPLP Plenum Rated, Red, 1000ft

In an office, school, hospital, or store, the space above the drop ceiling is usually a return-air plenum, and any fire alarm cable that runs through it without conduit has to be plenum rated. This is the light-gauge fire alarm cable for those buildings: two 18 AWG solid bare copper conductors, insulated black and red in low-smoke PVC, under a red low-smoke PVC jacket listed FPLP under NEC Article 760 for power-limited fire alarm circuits in plenums, drop ceilings, and raised floors. 18 AWG is the gauge for initiating device circuits, where the current is small and the run count is large, and for short or lightly loaded notification circuits. It's a standard-grade, unshielded cable, the everyday construction for those circuits on a quiet route; for an addressable panel's signaling line circuit, use a data-grade cable.

FPLP is the top of the fire alarm cable hierarchy: it can go anywhere FPLR or FPL can, plus the air-handling spaces they can't. The red jacket is the fire alarm identification that inspectors and future technicians expect to see. The cable is ETL Listed, RoHS compliant, and made in the USA, and it comes on a 1000 ft wooden spool with sequential footage marks on the jacket.

Features

• FPLP plenum rated. Listed under NEC Article 760 for power-limited fire alarm circuits in return-air plenums, drop ceilings, and raised floors without conduit, and for every riser and general-purpose run below that.
• 18 AWG solid bare copper conductors. The standard gauge for initiating device circuits and for short or lightly loaded notification circuits.
• Low-smoke PVC insulation, black and red. Color-coded conductors for polarity on notification and initiating circuits, with a 0.010 in wall.
• Red low-smoke PVC jacket. Low smoke for the plenum listing, in the standard fire alarm color, so the cable is recognizable in a ceiling space or a junction box years after it's installed.
• Standard grade, unshielded. The everyday construction for initiating and notification circuits, and the easier one to terminate; for an addressable signaling line circuit, use a data-grade cable.
• 300 V, 75 °C. The ratings a power-limited fire alarm circuit calls for.
• 3.63 mm outer diameter. A 0.015 in jacket wall, the slimmest cable in the range for tight backboxes and crowded conduit.
• ETL Listed, RoHS compliant, made in the USA. Also carries the Canadian FT6 plenum flame rating.
• 1000 ft wooden spool. Sequential footage marks on the jacket; put it on a spool stand and it pays out cleanly.

Where It Fits

It suits initiating device circuits to smoke detectors, heat detectors, pull stations, and waterflow switches, short or lightly loaded notification appliance circuits, panel-to-annunciator and panel-to-relay wiring, runs through the plenum ceiling of an office, hotel, hospital, school, or retail floor, device drops from a plenum ceiling to wall-mounted pull stations and strobes, and any power-limited fire alarm run in a building where the ceiling space is an air-handling plenum.

Good to Know

Run the voltage-drop calculation before you put 18 AWG on a notification circuit. An 18 AWG pair is about 13 ohms per 1000 ft round trip, so a circuit drawing 1 A at the far end of a 300 ft run loses about 3.9 V, which is right at the limit most 24 V panels allow, and 1.5 A on the same run loses nearly 6 V; for anything beyond a handful of strobes on a short run, step up to a 16, 14, or 12 AWG cable. On an initiating circuit the current is tiny and the gauge is fine for long runs. This is a standard-grade cable, so for an addressable panel's signaling line circuit use a data-grade cable, which is built to the tolerances those loops specify. Plenum-rated cable is for the air-handling space, not for inside the ductwork itself, which the NEC doesn't allow for any fire alarm cable. If the ceiling isn't a plenum, a riser-rated 18/2 does the same job for less. The cable is listed for fire alarm circuits under Article 760, and the AHJ has the final say on using it for anything else, so if it's going on a security, intercom, or control circuit, check first. Keep fire alarm cable separate from power conductors in raceways and boxes, as the code requires for power-limited circuits. Plenum compounds are stiffer than ordinary PVC, so give it a generous bend radius even though the cable is small. The jacket isn't UV stabilized or rated for wet locations or burial, so an outdoor device should be fed through conduit or from a cable rated for it.

Specifications

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