SELL SURPLUS COMMUNICATION AND LOW-VOLTAGE CABLE

This category covers everything that carries signal rather than power, at 300V or less: Cat5e, Cat6 and Cat6A twisted pair, coax for video and broadband, fire alarm cable in FPL, FPLR and FPLP ratings, security and access control cable, speaker cable, thermostat wire and low-voltage control. The group is broad, but the review is consistent: almost every item is judged on its listing and its pair count.

The surplus is structural. A cabling contractor buys 1,000 ft boxes and pulls to a jack; the leftover 300 ft sits until the next job, or never gets used because the next job is Cat6A. A fire alarm upgrade is re-specified from riser to plenum after delivery. An office fit-out is cancelled after the rough-in was staged. None of it is bad material; it is surplus to a job that no longer exists.

What we buy

• Cat5e, Cat6 and Cat6A — four-pair twisted cable in plenum, riser and outdoor ratings, sealed or opened with a known remainder.
• Coax — RG6 and RG11 for video and broadband, RG59 for legacy work, tri- and quad-shield.
• Fire alarm cable — FPL, FPLR and FPLP ratings, two to four conductor, twisted or shielded.
• Security and access control — 22/4, 22/6 and composite constructions for readers, contacts and panels.
• Speaker and audio cable — 16/2 and 14/2 in CL2 and CL3 ratings, plus plenum-rated versions.
• Thermostat and control wire — 18/5, 18/7 and 18/8 bundles, plus shielded control cable for equipment.

How to read a low-voltage box

Low-voltage cable is the easiest category to misidentify: the outside of a box says almost nothing and the jacket print is small. Read rating, pair count and remaining length in that order:

Condition and length

Low-voltage cable degrades through handling rather than age. A sealed box from 2015 is still a sealed box; an opened box carried between six jobs with the tail loose is not. We look at whether the cable still pays off cleanly, whether the print is legible at the end, and whether the box has been crushed or wet.

• Sealed boxes with footage label and rating print intact
• Opened boxes with a measured remainder above 100 ft
• Coax on spools, including partial spools from integrators
• Fire alarm cable in full 1,000 ft boxes from a spec change
• Mixed pallets from a cabling contractor closing a location

Tangled pulls, boxes with no rating print, wet or mud-stained cable and cut scraps under a few dozen feet are normally declined. Cable pulled back out of a ceiling is usually rejected as reusable, because the jacket is abraded and the twists distorted; it can be reviewed as scrap, but describe it as such.

What to photograph

1. The box label or spool tag, so category, rating and footage are legible.
2. The jacket print, close up, showing the rating letters and the pair or conductor count.
3. The opened box, to show how much is left and how well it is wound.
4. The storage location, since a dry shelf and a damp basement are different propositions.
5. The whole lot if several boxes are involved, so the mix can be judged.

Low-voltage stock sits next to these cable families

• Tray cable & PLTC
• Control & instrumentation
• MC & AC cable
• Welding cable & SOOW
• VFD cable
• THHN & THWN-2

Low-voltage surplus in Washington, DC and Maryland

Maryland skews toward larger and more technical sites. Data center and network work in Howard and Frederick counties leaves plenum-rated Cat6A behind when a hall is reconfigured, integrators in Columbia and Annapolis carry partial boxes between jobs, and industrial plants in the Baltimore corridor release shielded control and alarm cable when a line is rebuilt. Because these items are light, they are judged on the label rather than the load, so a clear photo of the box replaces most of the conversation.