Safe Room Ideas?

[gr8smiles]

My wife and I have a contract on a home. It's a downsize one-level ranch that will be our last home...(maybe I've said that before...lol). Built in 1952, we will be doing some remodeling.

The garage has been converted to a bedroom/bonus room. I'll put my safes in there for now, but we plan on building a garage. My question....has anyone built a room and used one of the 'safe' doors? Where did you find plans? Ideas?

The lot is flat so it wouldn't be a basement. It would be in the garage addition. Poured concrete walls? Block walls filled with rebar and concrete? Approximate cost? Lots of questions. Any one here a contractor that has done such a thing? Pics?

Thanks

[Danger Rane]

PM sent.

[peejman]

Depends on what you intend to put inside it, for what reason, and how long you expect to be in there.  

There's several pre-fab storm shelters available.  http://familysafeshelters.com/

Otherwise a small room with filled and rebarred block walls with a structural metal frame for a vault door shouldn't be all that difficult or expensive. 

[runco]

I am interested in this thread. 

I think building the room, ceiling and door is the easy part (materials), but how to apply HVAC to control the humidity along with my comfort and at the same time making sure the room is fireproof fox X amount of minutes/hours is my concern.   This here is exactly what I want:

[Wingshooter]

31 minutes ago, runco said:

I am interested in this thread. 

I think building the room, ceiling and door is the easy part (materials), but how to apply HVAC to control the humidity along with my comfort and at the same time making sure the room is fireproof fox X amount of minutes/hours is my concern.   This here is exactly what I want:

This is what I want as well! We are going to build a house soon. It will sit on a hill in some woods. We will have a full basement with 9-10' basement walls, and I want a room like that! The fireproofing will be the tricky part. I also want it to have a steel/concrete ceiling and double as a storm shelter.

[peejman]

If you intend for it to be a storm shelter/panic room, think through the idea of using a vault door with a fancy lock. As you'd expect, they're not terribly conducive to quick open/close under stress. 

[TNWNGR]

2 hours ago, peejman said:

If you intend for it to be a storm shelter/panic room, think through the idea of using a vault door with a fancy lock. As you'd expect, they're not terribly conducive to quick open/close under stress. 

I agree not to mention a vault door stands out like a sore thumb from a security perspective. I'd go with a really good security door designed for a safe room/storm shelter that doesn't look like a security door. http://www.gssdoors.com/safe-room-doors.html

Then inside the room I'd go with a good grade of gun cabinet for firearms security. Fireproof safes really aren't fireproof nor are they burglar proof, a side angle grinder will easily cut through the sides. Set your room up to be difficult enough to break into that it slows a burglar down to much. Invest in top grade alarm systems with remote monitoring. Also be prepared to spend a fair bit of money.

[Sam1]

There was a safe room in the basement when we moved in; cinderblock sides, poured on the floor and ceiling, but had two regular doors.  Was going to seal one up and put a vault door on the other, but steel frame and security doors were cheaper and (in my opinion) just as effective in this situation since the good stuff is still in a safe anyways.

Estimate for the one vault door and install was going to be $4000, then additional costs to block off the other.  Two solid steel security doors with a 90 minute fire & smoke rating installed was $1700.

Edited December 29, 2016 by Sam1

[otnman]

There was a safe room in the basement when we moved in; cinderblock sides, poured on the floor and ceiling, but had two regular doors.  Was going to seal one up and put a vault door on the other, but steel frame and security doors were cheaper and (in my opinion) just as effective in this situation since the good stuff is still in a safe anyways.
Estimate for the one vault door and install was going to be $4000, then additional costs to block off the other.  Two solid steel security doors with a 90 minute fire & smoke rating installed was $1700.

You got a great deal with that being installed. But, I doubt they are solid steel. But they are a 90 minute rated door. And most doors like I suspect you have are the same construction as a door rated 3 hours. Just a matter of labeling. The only thing I might do different is go with a temperature rise rated door. They are a couple hundred dollars more, but tested to insure the nonfire side of the room raises no more than 250 degrees in 30 minutes (pending wall construction).

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[Hershmeister]

Been researching this myself- here is what i learned:

There are three main vault door options:

Browning and Fort Knox both make one, and you can also get a custom one from Smith Security Safes. The latter is the wider of the three and most customizable from dimensions to thickness to types of security features.

Things to consider in a safe room:

Make sure door swings in!

Plan for hvac and think about running a drain into the room in case you want to run a dehumidifier. Also plan for electric and think about lighting plans.


If the room is all concrete then i wouldn't be too worried about fireproofness [emoji106]


Ask yourself - is the room just for storage or is it a "safe / panic room". If the latter you will want to think about ways to communicate with the outside world, possibly have a hidden escape route out of it?

Hope this helped!

[TNWNGR]

https://www.vaultprousa.com/modular-storm-shelters.htm

Out of curiosity I did some net surfing on this topic again and found the above link which offers an expensively appealing solution to a preexisting home. I'm still of a mixed mind about the actual fireproof ability of any gun safe, safe room or vault. There's a lot more going on in a structure fire then just the fire itself and I've seen the contents of some very expensive fireproof gun safes after a structure fire. If I were going this route I'd probably look into the added expense of a good fire suppression system.  

[runco]

Having gone through my parents house fire myself when I was 19 where the kitchen was a total loss, here is what I remember:  Smoke/soot gets on everything even in non fire related damaged rooms and things; The smell lingers for a long time on everything, one of the closets till this day has that smell (weird).    Not sure the situation, but a few years ago some of you may remember that vendor at the Knoxville gun show who had several hundred guns for sale that had been in a fire damaged store, I remember walking by and smelling that same smell that my parents house had weeks after the fire.  Its just a smoky/sooty smell.

My backwoods reasoning tells me, a true fireproof room will have to be isolated from any air whatsoever from reaching the room from the rest of the structure.  The room itself will have to be highly insulated, fire/heat insulated from the sides, roof, and possible the floor depending upon the location.  TNWNGR makes a good point about a fire suppression system, assume either Halon system for the whole house which setups another new risk for its occupants, or just an old fashioned sprinkler system. 

My conclusion, I am about 1-2 years away from converting my attached garage into a man cave, and I plan to build a gun room in there large enough like the picture I posted above.  The door, I like those non-discreet doors, but to me, it does not matter.  Practical, but effective.  Regarding fire proof, I live in the country, so at best I am 15-20 minutes away from the nearest fire station.  So I am going to study how to protect the room for at least 30 min from high heat, smoke, and soot along with an independent HVAC to control the humidity.

[Sam1]

10 hours ago, otnman said:

You got a great deal with that being installed. But, I doubt they are solid steel. But they are a 90 minute rated door. And most doors like I suspect you have are the same construction as a door rated 3 hours. Just a matter of labeling. The only thing I might do different is go with a temperature rise rated door. They are a couple hundred dollars more, but tested to insure the nonfire side of the room raises no more than 250 degrees in 30 minutes (pending wall construction).

Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk
 

Sorry, the door is not "solid steel" I meant it was all steel; the frame and door.

[otnman]

Sorry, the door is not "solid steel" I meant it was all steel; the frame and door.

No problem, just wanted to make sure people were not looking for a solid door. We have people come in here all the time looking for 1 and insist they are made.

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[Sam1]

8 hours ago, Hershmeister said:

Ask yourself - is the room just for storage or is it a "safe / panic room". If the latter you will want to think about ways to communicate with the outside world, possibly have a hidden escape route out of it?

Hope this helped!

That's another reason I wanted to leave the two original openings to mine.  If one of those doors gets stuck and there's only one exit... You're *******.  There's no possibility of getting out of that thing

[peejman]

1 hour ago, Sam1 said:

That's another reason I wanted to leave the two original openings to mine.  If one of those doors gets stuck and there's only one exit... You're *******.  There's no possibility of getting out of that thing

Building & fire safety codes typically require at least 2 exits for any "occupied" space.  Two doors, door + window, etc.  Doors should also have "panic hardware" that bypasses the lock from the inside.  You could avoid that by classifying the room as a closet, but I don't know all the details of that.  

[MacGyver]

I have a friend who lost a house in a tornado a couple of years ago.  They had 8 seconds from the time it started looking bad until the house dropped on top of them.  If you're using it as a life safety option, the use case is really different than a gun room.

Ventilation/Conditioning and backup power will be critical to either.  Both will likely also serve elsewhere in the house in the event of weather related events.

Were it me, any room I use for life safety will have an alternative exit.  It may be secured from the inside, but they're not going to find me buried in there when they finally get around to excavating the wreckage of my house.

[Wingshooter]

Since we'll be doing a new construction, the thought has crossed my mind about burying a shipping container perpendicular to a basement wall and making it accessable from the basement and a hatch to the outside as well. Would serve as a root cellar/storm shelter/somewhat-secret storage room that is not under the house but is under the ground. If it was easily accessable from the basement, it would be more inviting to actually use during a weather event.

I haven't put a lot of thought into the details, but it has crossed my mind.

[Sam1]

4 hours ago, Wingshooter said:

Since we'll be doing a new construction, the thought has crossed my mind about burying a shipping container perpendicular to a basement wall and making it accessable from the basement and a hatch to the outside as well. Would serve as a root cellar/storm shelter/somewhat-secret storage room that is not under the house but is under the ground. If it was easily accessable from the basement, it would be more inviting to actually use during a weather event.

I haven't put a lot of thought into the details, but it has crossed my mind.

I would rethink that carefully, have read around on the interwebs that shipping containers should never be used as underground shelters because the roofs aren't designed to support the weight.

[bud]

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Edited April 26, 2017 by bud

[Raoul]

I've about decided that if it truly hits the fan, I'm just gonna go down swingin. Hiding just doesn't sound appetizing and I'm old anyway.

[Hershmeister]

I wouldn't trust a shipping container to be waterproof

[Randall53]

Nor bullet proof, I would imagine, depending on what's being shot at it. 

Edited December 30, 2016 by Randall53

[Raoul]

1 hour ago, Hershmeister said:

I wouldn't trust a shipping container to be waterproof

They are not.

[Raoul]

22 minutes ago, Randall53 said:

Nor bullet proof, I would imagine, depending on what's being shot at it. 

Definitely not bullet proof.