RFI - Vault Doors

[Odin Bravo One]

Looks like my statement of "I'll never buy another gun safe" is coming to fruition. The proposed new Casa De Sean has the ability to build a walk-in.

Who has one? What vault door did you use? Why?

[DamonL]

Look for a GSA approved Class 5 vault door with a Sargent and Greenleaf x-07 lock. The room should be made of 6 inch poured concrete with reinforced rebar 6 inches on center. Or you could line the room with 1/4 inch steel plate with a continuous weld. I think this is what is used for real gun vaults.

https://www.navfac.navy.mil/navfac_worldwide/specialty_centers/exwc/products_and_services/capital_improvements/dod_lock/SecurityHardware/Vault_Doors/VaultDoor_Order.html

[Odin Bravo One]

Appreciate the input, but I have a limited budget, and have to work with the existing structure. A vault like that just is not in the budget.

[SeriousStudent]

I'll talk to my nephew. He's a locksmith who sells a lot of large safes and RSC's, along with vault doors here in Dallas. I'll try and see if I can get a set of price ranges and evals as well.

I do know from chats with him that he is a big fan of Amsec and another maker, I'll find out which one.

[fatdog]

Okay after a house fire in 2007 we had to build a new house and my wise wife understood if she gave me the ultimate man cave, a walk in gun safe, she could get anything else in the new house she wanted. My kitchen as enough stainless steel to build the Queen Mary, our countertops in the entire house consist of enough high end granite to re-tombstone Elmwood Cemetary up in Birmingham, ten gazzillion complex fascets on the roof and dormers, but I digress.

The walk in safe is a concrete room, the house itself is on a rebar reinformced slab, the room is a 10' x 20' that was the size of what would have been a garage bay. It has a rebar cage for walls which was framed and 12" concrete walls poured, with a rebar reinforced 10" concrete cap, also poured and two doors. We finished the interior with drywall, lighting, outlets, and installed four 4" airconditioning vents. The room also serves as our tornado shelter (the only time my wife will come in). As my contractor said of the thing when he finished it, "this room will still be here when Jesus returns".

I digress, for the two doors I evaluated all the vault door options, and instead chose a pair of large 36" steel 5 layer industrial doors with a handle and deadlbolt strike and interior hinges (4 hinge points total). The frames were set before the concrete pour so it is pretty useless to attach the door frame or walls or ceiling with anything but a jackhammer or ordinance.

To secure the doors, probably the weak point, I chose a simplex lock door handle like the one they use on computer rooms, it does have a key override, and for the deadbolt I got a Japanese "precision made" combination deadbolt similar to the simplex type lock. The standard simplex lock as a complex 3 sequence combination with a button before the handle turns. The Jap deadbolt has a simple handle and a 4 digit sequence combination but no key override. The combinations are different for the two locks but identical on each door. You must open both locks on the door to enter. Inside the gun vault/man cave I also have a cheap stack on safe inside a cabinet with a simple barrel bolt which is reserved for the NFA items. (defeat 3 locks and two steel doors to get to the NFA stuff).

I am very happy with the set up and would do the same thing again. I have no illusion that a crew with a torch and 20 minutes to spare could not cut through, but less than that, I have very serious doubts about your window of opportunity. These industrial 5 layer steel sheet doors swing easily, were 1/4 the cost of the vault doors, but are not going to be easy to punch. There are ADT sensor strikes and an independent zone on the two doors that I keep armed while we are away.

The ultimate man cave, the ultimate walk in gun safe, I win, the game is over, but the rest of you have to wish me luck living and working long enough to pay off the mortgage on this stainless steel kitchen and miles of granite countertop, but I still think I won....

Good luck on your project! I hope yours give you as much peace of mind and enjoyment as mine has!

[fatdog]

16007160081600916010

[DamonL]

Now that is a true vault. I think you have room for a few more guns. :)

Another possibility is a reinforced room in the basement. If the basement has poured concrete or cinder block walls, and a slab floor, you could pick a corner. You then build the interior walls with cinder block. The cinder block can be reinforced with rebar and concrete down the middle if you want. The ceiling would need to be reinforced. Maybe a lattice of rebar connected to the walls could work. The spacing should be tight. Again 6 to 10 inch on center.

[Poconnor]

Someday I will have my man cave/bunker/bat cave!!!!

[GJM]

16014

[TGS]

What the fuck.

That is awesome. Both Fatdog and GJM.

Now I've got some more goals to work towards in life....

[Gray222]

https://cdn.meme.am/cache/instances/folder823/500x/76750823/you-cant-if-you-dont-no-one-came-take-your-guns-if-they-dont-know-where-they-are.jpg

Make the door look like a bookcase or something.

[fatdog]

...cinder block walls, and a slab floor, you could pick a corner. You then build the interior walls with cinder block. The cinder block can be reinforced with rebar and concrete down the middle if you want. The ceiling would need to be reinforced.

My cave inspired several close friends to go down that exact route you describe it is has worked very well, rebar inside the cinderblock then pour the openings from the top, industrial doors like mine or vault doors, for the cap one guy framed up a 3/4" plywood roof supported by 2x4's within the enclosure, then put down a 1/4" steel plate layer and screwed it to the first plywood layer, then used a second 3/4" plywood layer on top of that to roof his enclosure with a sort of laminate if you will. It is going to take some serious work to cut a hole in the roof or pound through the sides of that thing, and the construction of it was not that expensive relatively speaking, he was able to do it inside his existing basement garage....he later bricked up the exterior of the cynderblock enclosure, mostly for cosmetic purposes since it is at the edge of his pool table/entertainment area. He moved his old Ft. Knox safe inside it to use as his NFA safe within a safe.

[Odin Bravo One]

Thanks for the info dump Fat Dog. Very much like I have mine envisioned. The tricky part for me is the door. I'll need to use existing structure, so I may be limited on weight. Still, I am confident it will be at least as secure as my safe is now, and will also wire the home security system to include both the garage door access, and the vault door. Hanging the dry wall and reinforcing the wall without concrete will also be a challenge, but I am confident I'll be able to not only store, but also be able to display my firearms, precious metals, plaques and pictures (I love me wall shit) from my military and LE career, decorative swords and ninja shit, while still having space to store my enormous ammunition supply, as well as having my workbench, reloading benches, and room for a guest to relax on a love seat and watch TV/Shoot the breeze while I'm working.

Being able to open the garage door access, to test fire and confirm zero's will also be a nice perk.

I'll keep everyone posted as things develop. With pics. Hopefully this move will allow me more time to be a better and more active member of the board again.

Don't stop the information flow, I'm definitely still in need of door details; price, weight, #of (https://pistol-forum.com/usertag.php?do=list&action=hash&hash=of) active/passive bolts, dimensions, etc. I prefer a Biometric entry system, so that is a plus on any suggested doors.

The members of PF.com, and broad range of expertise is always amazing.

Thanks again for all of the input.

[farscott]

I do not have a lot to add, but locks is one place where I have some competence. I learned the hard way that the old-fashioned combination locks, while slow and frustrating, are the most reliable after more than one hundred years of development. All of the electronic locks, no matter the UI, use stepper motors and plastic gears that interface with a piece of metal that allows/stops bolt movement. Then you add the normal moisture issue inside a safe combined with lowest bidder, non-coated electronics (PCBAs), and contamination failures taking out the electronics become a concern. Net result is failure of the actual locking mechanism, mostly in the locked state. A check with a local safe tech verified that he drills more safes with electronic locks than with combo locks.

Even some of the Sargent & Greenleaf combination locks have too much plastic in them.

[txdpd]

I helped cut two holes (which was really stupid) in the door of a safe room/vault door at a dope house, so that a chain could be run through the door and then a heavy duty wrecker pulled the whole thing out of the wall.

Locksmith couldn't get it open. Fire department's jaws of life didn't work. Got lucky that from the alley it was a straight line from a back window the to the vault door.

Not sure any of us have a real need to be concerned with a someone using a 50 ton wrecker to break in, but I would watch the angle some idiot can't run a line from a pickup to the vault door and demolish a good portion of the house in the process of trying to pull off the door. I've seen $100k plus in damage at stores where thieves have destroyed the building while trying to pull anchored ATMs and safes.

[fatdog]

FWIW, my deadbolt on the doors

https://www.gokeyless.com/product/lockey-m210-keyless-deadbolt/?gclid=Cj0KEQjwioHIBRCes6nP56Ti1IsBEiQAxxb5GwiBWtF DYVDAyxVe5yhnlxlNL4p_K7s5RjnqznDMsSoaAsEo8P8HAQ

My door handles

https://www.gokeyless.com/product/simplex-5000-combination-door-lock/

I have been really happy with both, but a part of me imagines a guy with an 18lb sledge making mincemeat of them and getting in….

I chose them because I distrust all electronic locks of all types and I felt that this needed to be set up so we could enter in complete darkness if necessary, just by touch, without keys. At the end of the day it is our primary tornado shelter and we live in an area with a lot of bad tornado activity. In the walls I set up two static equalization pipes before we poured them, and the tornado consideration is what dictated two doors in the room.

At the time we built it 2007-2008 there were a lot of FEMA grants for home tornado shelters in our part of the world, and we did manage to get a few bucks subsidy because it met their standards at the time and passed their inspector's on site approval as a residential tornado shelter. As I recall the inspector was more than impressed with it.

[rsa-otc]

My cave inspired several close friends to go down that exact route you describe it is has worked very well, rebar inside the cinderblock then pour the openings from the top, industrial doors like mine or vault doors, for the cap one guy framed up a 3/4" plywood roof supported by 2x4's within the enclosure, then put down a 1/4" steel plate layer and screwed it to the first plywood layer, then used a second 3/4" plywood layer on top of that to roof his enclosure with a sort of laminate if you will. It is going to take some serious work to cut a hole in the roof or pound through the sides of that thing, and the construction of it was not that expensive relatively speaking, he was able to do it inside his existing basement garage....he later bricked up the exterior of the cynderblock enclosure, mostly for cosmetic purposes since it is at the edge of his pool table/entertainment area. He moved his old Ft. Knox safe inside it to use as his NFA safe within a safe.

If you choose to go the steel plywood steel route use 3/4 FIREPROOF plywood. Hard to burn through, the steel screws up wood saw blades and the plywood gums up the steel cutting blades. It is my understanding that this combo has an actual UL rating like level one of two.

[AlwaysLearning]

A check with a local safe tech verified that he drills more safes with electronic locks than with combo locks.

Even some of the Sargent & Greenleaf combination locks have too much plastic in them.

I talked with a locksmith from a high end firm that installs a lot of safes and he said the same thing. His company had a lot of call to drill electronic safes where the battery died in the lock. Since you can't change it from the outside, no choice but to drill. He recommended 100% mechanical locks as well.

[DamonL]

My cave inspired several close friends to go down that exact route you describe it is has worked very well, rebar inside the cinderblock then pour the openings from the top, industrial doors like mine or vault doors, for the cap one guy framed up a 3/4" plywood roof supported by 2x4's within the enclosure, then put down a 1/4" steel plate layer and screwed it to the first plywood layer, then used a second 3/4" plywood layer on top of that to roof his enclosure with a sort of laminate if you will. It is going to take some serious work to cut a hole in the roof or pound through the sides of that thing, and the construction of it was not that expensive relatively speaking, he was able to do it inside his existing basement garage....he later bricked up the exterior of the cynderblock enclosure, mostly for cosmetic purposes since it is at the edge of his pool table/entertainment area. He moved his old Ft. Knox safe inside it to use as his NFA safe within a safe.

If the block is reinforced with rebar, you can put a 90 degree bend at the top with the rebar pointing toward the center of the room. The steel plate roof can be welded to the rebar to hold it in place.

Wood frame or furring strips can be used over cinder block to hang drywall. If you use 2x4's to support the steel plate ceiling, as fat dog describes, you might be able to use them to attach drywall to.

[DamonL]

I helped cut two holes (which was really stupid) in the door of a safe room/vault door at a dope house, so that a chain could be run through the door and then a heavy duty wrecker pulled the whole thing out of the wall.

Locksmith couldn't get it open. Fire department's jaws of life didn't work. Got lucky that from the alley it was a straight line from a back window the to the vault door.

Not sure any of us have a real need to be concerned with a someone using a 50 ton wrecker to break in, but I would watch the angle some idiot can't run a line from a pickup to the vault door and demolish a good portion of the house in the process of trying to pull off the door. I've seen $100k plus in damage at stores where thieves have destroyed the building while trying to pull anchored ATMs and safes.

If your vault is in a garage, this could be an issue. I was going to suggest an industrial door like fat dog and adding a "crackhouse" metal security gate, but I would be worried you could pop a garage door pretty easy and do this.