18/6 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 six-conductor shielded plenum cable for the busier devices on a security or access control system in those buildings: six 18 AWG stranded bare copper conductors, each a different color, under an overall aluminum foil shield 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. Six conductors means three circuits in one pull: a card reader with power, a data pair, and an LED or tamper line; a keypad with power, a bus pair, and a tamper; an intercom station with power, audio, and a door-release pair. The shield is for the data and audio conductors in that bundle: a reader pair or a keypad bus that has to share a ceiling space with lighting ballasts, VFDs, and HVAC motors picks up less noise under foil than it would bare. 18 AWG is heavy enough to carry the power leg a long way, and the 7-strand conductors bend around a ceiling and land in a terminal block more easily than solid wire.

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 on a 1000 ft wooden spool 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.
• Six 18 AWG stranded bare copper conductors. Three circuits in one pull, with about half the loop resistance of 22 AWG, on 7-strand conductors that bend around a ceiling and seat in a terminal block without fighting.
• Overall aluminum foil shield. 100% coverage against induced noise from ballasts, VFDs, and HVAC equipment sharing the ceiling space, for the reader and keypad data conductors in the bundle.
• Six distinct colors. Black, red, white, green, brown, and blue, so every circuit is identifiable at both ends without a meter.
• Low-smoke PVC insulation and jacket. The low-smoke compounds a plenum listing requires, with a 0.018 in jacket wall over the shield.
• 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.
• 5.82 mm outer diameter. Sized to fit standard low-voltage fittings and connectors.
• ETL Listed, RoHS compliant, made in the USA.
• 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 card readers and keypads on access control doors that need power, a data pair, and an LED or tamper line, security keypads and touchscreens on a panel bus with a tamper loop, intercom and entry-phone stations with power, audio, and door release, motion detectors and glass-break sensors with power, alarm, and tamper routed through a ceiling full of ballasts and HVAC equipment, home runs between a security panel and a floor's zone expander or reader controller, power-limited fire alarm circuits that call for a shielded stranded multi-conductor cable, and any multi-circuit low-voltage run through a plenum ceiling in an office, school, hospital, hotel, or store where the route is electrically noisy.

Good to Know

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. Check the reader or panel manufacturer's wiring guide before you pull, since Wiegand and RS-485 runs have maximum lengths at 18 AWG and some specify a twisted pair rather than the untwisted conductors in a multi-conductor cable, and a foil shield adds capacitance that can shorten the rated run on a high-speed bus. Run the voltage-drop calculation on the pair that carries power: an 18 AWG pair is about 13 ohms per 1000 ft round trip, so a 12 V reader drawing 200 mA at 300 ft loses about 0.8 V, and a 12 V strike drawing 0.5 A at 200 ft loses about 1.3 V; keep a strike or maglock off the same cable as a reader if you can, and if you can't, put the data pair farthest from the power pair, since the shield helps against noise from outside the cable but does nothing about crosstalk inside it. 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. Stranded 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, the shielded 18/6 riser does the same job for less, and if the ceiling space is quiet, an unshielded plenum cable terminates faster. 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 reader or keypad should be fed through conduit or from a cable rated for it.

Specifications

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