Safe installation on slab foundation with laminate flooring.

[10-Ring]

My wife and I just purchased a house and will be moving soon.  I've never had a house before with a slab foundation but I do have experience with concrete anchors.  Anchoring the safe to the slab it self is not a problem the problem lies in what to do about the flooring material.  The room that the safe is going in currently has carpet but we are planning on ripping up the carpet and installing laminate.  Should I set the safe directly on the concrete and lay the flooring around the safe or set the safe on top of the laminate.  My concern is that we are only planning on living in this house for about 2 years and then moving on.  It seems that either way I do it I will have to redo the flooring in that room when we move. 

 

Another idea that has crossed my mind is to figure out where the holes need to go and use a hole saw to cut holes in the laminate for the bolts to pass through.  I'm thinking when it's time to move I could possibly glue the cutouts back into the holes and it would be minimally noticeable.  Thoughts?

[gjohnsoniv]

Seems like cutting out the laminate holes would be a good idea, that would probably leave the least noticeable change in the floor.

[Raoul]

Seems like cutting out the laminate holes would be a good idea, that would probably leave the least noticeable change in the floor.

 

I agree. The safe will definitely compress the floating flooring and will most probably cause a problem. That's my guess anyway.

[MacGyver]

Use a good drill to get clean holes and backfill later with a good epoxy based wood filler.  That and a little bit of matching stain from a touchup pen should have you in good shape when you move.

[BryanP]

No matter what you do it's going to be noticeable when you're done.  The suggestions above are probably the best.  Honestly, if you're only going to be in the house two years then I'd probably just anchor it to the wall studs instead.  Not as secure, but you can fix that where it's not noticeable at all. 

[2.ooohhh]

If the flooring is susceptable to color change with exposure to UV you may endup with a lighter or darker square that may never match regardless of the small filled spots. <ask me how I know.  :pleased:

[peejman]

How heavy is the safe?  200lbs or 800lbs?

 

I wouldn't sit the safe directly on the concrete, you'll need some sort of moisture barrier to (help) prevent the steel from rusting.  If it's heavy, I also wouldn't sit the safe directly on the laminate as it'll slowly crush the flooring and leave a depression.  As 2oh said, if there's windows in the room, the floor won't fade under the safe and will leave a noticeable color change. 

 

Can you just leave the carpet and replace the floor just prior to moving out?

[10-Ring]

The carpet throughout the house is filthy, I just can't tolerate it.  The safe weighs about 700 lbs.  My experience with laminate is limited, I know just enough to be dangerous.  I'm also thinking about just starting at the opposite side of the room so I could just go back and redo the last 3 feet when I'm ready to move, I'm thinking that it wouldn't be more than 3 rows that I would have to redo.  Unfortunately, the room the safe is going in is a front facing extra bedroom, it has double windows looking out at the street so these will have to be covered 100% of the time so as the safe is not visible from the street, therefore fade shouldn't be a problem.

[Guest Lester Weevils]

Is the slab first floor or below-ground (basement)?

 

A good strategy for many kinds of flooring is to buy extra to keep on hand in case part of the flooring gets damaged, so you can rip out the damaged pieces and replace with new. Along the same lines, if you have a couple of boxes of extra, whether you install flooring under the safe or not, just fill in the missing or damaged pieces after you move out.

 

The pergo type laminate fits together like tinker toys. Wood or fiberboard laminate can be picky to install for below-ground. Well, solid wood as well. You can read various documents on preparing such a floor so the stuff doesn't get warped or otherwise ruined.

 

Something that is real easy to install, looks as good as pergo-type laminates to my eye, and has about the same wear characteristics as pergo-type laminates, is resilient vinyl planks. All are "water resistent" and some are "water proof" and as long as the surface is relatively flat you don't have to go to extreme trouble leveling the sub-floor. As long as there won't be flooding or standing moisture underneath to encourage mold growth, it is good to go in some places that would warp or powder out pergo.

 

http://www.homedepot.com/h_d1/N-5yc1vZbzjz/h_d2/Navigation?catalogId=10053&langId=-1&storeId=10051

 

That trafficmaster allure is pretty good stuff. I just finished flooring the little old basement apartment in my house with the stuff on slab that is at or slightly below ground. It went down easy and looks the same as equivalent pergo I've installed in a couple of small sections on the main floor. It feels good underfoot. Some comes with 15 to 25 year limited warranties, and some of the commercial-grade stuff has lifetime warranty when installed residential. The color layers and wear layers of the resilient flooring is the same technology as on the pressed-board laminate, and should be equally wear-resistent as pressed-board laminate. Both kinds of products have a printed layer on the substrate, then transparent wear layers. They both look terrible if you do manage to scratch up the top layer. Good to use furniture protectors religiously on both kinds of floors. Gotta keep em swept clean of grit, or walking on grit will sand off the surface quick enough.

 

Just sayin, that resilient  planking would be childs play to replace a random damaged piece, or fill-in a gap after you move out. Just take a heat gun to the glue strips to remove the bad pieces, and glue in the new pieces. Its not glued to the floor, floats "glued to itself" similar to laminate. But it would be easier to replace a piece of resilient planking in the middle of a floor, compared to replacing a couple of planks of laminate in the middle of a floor.

[TSprint1]

^This. We have some friends, in Fairbanks of all places, that used this vinyl planking from Home Depot throughout their house and it really looks good and has held up well.  With all of the moving and shaking their house does during tremors, breakup, change of seasons, etc it has been impressive.  If I had an area I might need to replace relatively soon I would not hesitate to use it as it goes down really easy and is economical to boot.

[mmirob]

I would not cut into the floor or drill into the wall if I were certain of a move in two years.  Roll the dice and insure your firearms and get alarm monitoring for $10 a month.  Worried about UV sun, get some window shades or curtains.  You don't want your safe exposed to outside on lookers anyway.  Ask the police when the last time someone steals the whole gunsafe!  Ask the safe guys here.  It rarely happens.  That is why they are called safes.  If your gunsafe is stolen you have been the mark of professionals.  If they want it that badly they'll rip out your walls and floor anchors too.

Save yourself the headache, roll that baby in there, and sleep soundly that most two bit house thieves are looking for jewelry hidden in your underwear drawer and want out of there in under 10 mins.

[10-Ring]

Here we are almost 2 months after my initial post and I have another problem related to the mounting of this safe.  We are moved into the house and I have installed engineered wood flooring in all of the bedrooms.  I had the idea of putting the safe in our bedrooms walk in closet and flooring around it.  Well, I got the safe in the closet and realized that it's just not going to work in there as there is not enough room to access the safe comfortably.  What I'm wanting to do now is move it back into the bedroom, however I am worried about setting a 700 pound safe on a floating floor.  Anyone have experience with floating floors that can give me some advice?  Only other option at this point is to put it in the garage which I really don't want to do because of the extreme temps out there, plus I just like my guns to be in the house.

[peejman]

Here we are almost 2 months after my initial post and I have another problem related to the mounting of this safe.  We are moved into the house and I have installed engineered wood flooring in all of the bedrooms.  I had the idea of putting the safe in our bedrooms walk in closet and flooring around it.  Well, I got the safe in the closet and realized that it's just not going to work in there as there is not enough room to access the safe comfortably.  What I'm wanting to do now is move it back into the bedroom, however I am worried about setting a 700 pound safe on a floating floor.  Anyone have experience with floating floors that can give me some advice?  Only other option at this point is to put it in the garage which I really don't want to do because of the extreme temps out there, plus I just like my guns to be in the house.

 

 

You'll need a fairly large bearing plate between the safe and the floor to distribute the load.  The feet will crush the floor otherwise.  3 ft square is the minimum I'd recommend, 4 ft square would be better.  I'd use 3/4" plywood or MDF board. 

[Guest Lester Weevils]

You'll need a fairly large bearing plate between the safe and the floor to distribute the load.  The feet will crush the floor otherwise.  3 ft square is the minimum I'd recommend, 4 ft square would be better.  I'd use 3/4" plywood or MDF board. 

 

When I was researching the resilient vinyl flooring for the basement apartment, the specs included load data per square inch or square foot. So most likely the engineered wood material also has load data that could be referenced, to figure what size bearing plate would be necessary?

[MarkInNashville]

MDF would be good for this project. You can bevel the edges so you don't stub a toe on it, too!

Edited April 25, 2013 by MarkInNashville

[10-Ring]

After doing a good bit of research I have found that the safe has a claimed weight of 570 pounds, which was lighter than what I formally recalled.  I figure fully loaded with all of the stuff I keep in there we are in the neighborhood of 700 pounds.  The safe has a foot print of 24"x40"  I figure that I wouldn't think twice about setting a 200+ pound dresser on the floor, but there you would likely have all of the weight distributed between 4 small legs so the psi would be much higher than what I am dealing with now.  From what I have read though it is not a good idea to bolt the safe to the floor because the whole idea of a floating floor is that it just sits on the subfloor unattached and bolting it down will cause the floor to buckle.  Geez this has really turned into a headache.

[peejman]

When I was researching the resilient vinyl flooring for the basement apartment, the specs included load data per square inch or square foot. So most likely the engineered wood material also has load data that could be referenced, to figure what size bearing plate would be necessary?

 

 

Typical residential wood (sub)floor construction is rated for 50 lb/sqft static load.  There's criteria for things like "indention resistance" and "spring back" that you can find for various floor coverings (laminate, vinyl, tile, etc.).  I assumed the safe had 4 relatively small feet that would sink in quite readily.  If that's not the case, it's easy enough to do the math and figure out the contact area.  However, based on 24" x 40" and 700 lbs, even if the whole bottom of the safe sits flat on the floor, it still exceeds the floor's load rating by about 2x. 

 

 

 

After doing a good bit of research I have found that the safe has a claimed weight of 570 pounds, which was lighter than what I formally recalled.  I figure fully loaded with all of the stuff I keep in there we are in the neighborhood of 700 pounds.  The safe has a foot print of 24"x40"  I figure that I wouldn't think twice about setting a 200+ pound dresser on the floor, but there you would likely have all of the weight distributed between 4 small legs so the psi would be much higher than what I am dealing with now.  From what I have read though it is not a good idea to bolt the safe to the floor because the whole idea of a floating floor is that it just sits on the subfloor unattached and bolting it down will cause the floor to buckle.  Geez this has really turned into a headache.

 

 

Yes, bolting it down over a floating floor is a bad idea.  The floor has to be able to expand/contract with temperature.  My house has floating laminate and it moves up to 1/2" across a 30 ft span winter to summer.  Hence overlap requirements for the toe molding (and the toe molding is nailed to the baseboard, not the floor).  I'd hope that sitting on a bearing plate wouldn't "pin down" the floor and still allow it to move as needed.  Otherwise, the garage is still an option.  I'd put a piece of wood under it with a vapor barrier between the wood and concrete. 

[Guest Lester Weevils]

Typical residential wood (sub)floor construction is rated for 50 lb/sqft static load.  There's criteria for things like "indention resistance" and "spring back" that you can find for various floor coverings (laminate, vinyl, tile, etc.).  I assumed the safe had 4 relatively small feet that would sink in quite readily.  If that's not the case, it's easy enough to do the math and figure out the contact area.  However, based on 24" x 40" and 700 lbs, even if the whole bottom of the safe sits flat on the floor, it still exceeds the floor's load rating by about 2x. 

 

Great points. I was thinking about the "indention resistance" type of spec to keep from damaging the engineered flooring, but if the safe exceeds the actual subfloor rating then it wouldn't be helpful.