Darlene Pope, President
dpope@crepartners.com

Overview
Concerns are rising about the growing amount of cables in commercial buildings required to service the ever-increasing demands of IT networks.  More workstations, each with expanding capabilities and increasing bandwidth requirements, are taxing the communications infrastructure.  Communications cabling, which carries important data packets to and from computer networks, is as common in building plenum spaces as duct work.  While most cable selections are based on electrical performance requirements, there are fire-rating factors that are often overlooked beyond what is minimally required.  This fact places each building at a greater fire risk with each new installation of communications cable.  As a result, much discussion in the industry has been focused on the new 2002 National Electric Code (NEC), which calls for the removal of the accessible portion of abandoned cabling.  These concerns are also the thrust behind the genesis of a new cable technology that significantly reduces these fire safety risks.

National Codes and Standards
The communications cable most often used in commercial buildings is called “plenum” cabling.  It is designed for use specifically in hidden spaces within dropped ceilings that handle return airflow – the plenum space. The National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) sets the plenum cable requirements based upon three mandatory attributes: smoke generation, flame spread, and fuel load.  In the early to mid 1970s, several significant fires occurred where cable running in plenum spaces greatly increased the severity of the fire damage (such as One World Trade Center, 1975).  As a result, a consortium of industry partners convened to address cabling types used in this application.  In the early 1980s, the NFPA Committee 90A, responsible primarily for developing standards for the HVAC plenum space, issued primary requirements for all materials “exposed to the air flow” to be non-combustible or “limited combustible.”  

Technically speaking, a limited combustible material is categorized as having a smoke generation index of less than or equal to 50 (as compared to red oak, which has a smoke generation index of 100), a flame spread index of less than 25, and a potential heat (fuel load) of less than 8.1 mega Joules/kilogram.  The fuel load is the heat energy contained in a cable that could be released in the event of a fire.  In the 1980s, while many communications cables were tested, none passed such stringent flame, smoke, and fuel load requirements while also meeting the electrical performance outlined by the National Electrical Code (NEC) and the Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA).  The result of this testing and development was a compromised selection of plenum-rated cable (allowed only as an exception to the original NFPA ruling) based on the best cable construction available at the time – which was combustible in nature and hazardous with respect to smoke generation levels.  Over 25 years later, this selection of combustible cable still represents the plenum cable we know today.  But, times have changed, and the cabling industry is now able to meet NFPA’s original challenge with a new, safer cable for use in plenum spaces — Limited Combustible Cable.
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About Our Sponsor:  The DuPont Company has provided solutions to meet the needs of an ever-changing world for over 200 years, and DuPont™ Teflon® fluoropolymers are used in a wide variety of applications where maximum protection is paramount. One example is the latest innovation from DuPont Communications Cabling Solutions, Limited Combustible data communications technology. For more information on DuPont’s solutions, please contact Stacy Geurin at 302-999-3739.

*Call for Articles / Sponsors*

Do you have a topic you would like to write about for the CRE Partners newsletter?  We are currently soliciting articles and sponsors for our 2004 newsletters.  If you would like to contribute an educational article for publication, or if you are interested in sponsoring an upcoming issue, please contact Darlene Pope, dpope@crepartners.com for more information. 

Upcoming Industry Events
   • Realcomm 2004, June 3-4, San Francisco, CA  www.realcomm.com
   • BOMA International Convention, June 26-29, Toronto, Canada  www.boma.org
   • CREW Annual Convention, October 13-16, Toronto, Canada  www.crewnetwork.org

   NEC Seminar Series -- Tentative Schedule
   • Washington, DC -- February 17, 2004 (completed)
   • Atlanta, GA -- February 25, 2004 (completed)
   • Las Vegas, NV - Summer, 2004
   • New York, NY -- Summer, 2004
   • Dallas/Fort Worth/Houston, TX -- Summer, 2004
   • Orange County, CA -- Fall, 2004
   • Miami, FL -- Fall, 2004
   • Chicago, IL -- Fall, 2004

For more information about the NEC Seminar series, please contact CRE Partners, 703-444-5720.