Fort Knox Gun Safes Article

[Hambo]

Really cool thread! Could someone build added fire protection around the safe itself if you had enough space? Someone above posted putting the safe in its own room with a steel door. What if your wrapped Sheetrock around the safe in its own room? Possibly build a mini room around the safe with concrete block and then drywall the outside so it doesn’t look weird in your house.

Maybe put a commercial grade fire sprinkler system in that room? Probably big bucks to retrofit an existing house due to plumbing needs for that. Maybe if you had enough dough and were building custom you could have the contractor install fire sprinklers in the whole house? Maybe a block house is less apt to burn than a wooden house?

I dream about someday saving up the scratch for a new house with cool upgrades like this! I keep my mouth shut about guns I own and have a home alarm system so I think fire is a bigger threat to me than theft.

I don’t know much about fires but even if put some custom suppression system in a tiny room around the gun safe, if the rest of the house is burning then that heat would still damage the guns I bet. That’s why I was thinking a block home might be more fire resistant. The furniture and stuff would burn but I don’t think the concrete block would burn. Anyone here know or have ideas on attainable custom ideas that aren’t millions of dollars?

And other than initial cost is there any downsides? I’d hate to burn bacon in the kitchen and have the sprinklers ruin my flat panel television! I think the sprinklers are pretty robust though and only kick in if there’s a very high temperature not just smoke or false alarms.

Sprinklers aren't like the movies. There is a link that melts at a specific temperature which opens that sprinkler head only. Residential systems are costly and main not help your insurance. I thought researched the idea years ago, and insurance companies prefer the low risk of a fire to the higher risk of leaks.

According to my fire marshal friend, the water used by the FD turns to steams and permeates pretty much everything. So your guns may be rusting away even if the safe didn't get touched by fire. This happened to my dad's machinist tools when the business he worked for burned. His work area was small and was barely affected by fire, but his stuff was trashed by the time he could get to it. Like him, you may not have access for some time, as the FD determines when you can re-enter your house.

[Tokarev]

Someone above posted putting the safe in its own room with a steel door. What if your wrapped Sheetrock around the safe in its own room? Possibly build a mini room around the safe with concrete block and then drywall the outside so it doesn’t look weird in your house.

I dream about someday saving up the scratch for a new house with cool upgrades like this! I keep my mouth shut about guns I own and have a home alarm system so I think fire is a bigger threat to me than theft.

I would have a dedicated vault room built. Pretty much all the gun safe companies make vault room doors. These are basically a gun safe door that's set into a frame. Line the room's walls with X series fire board and you'd probably be all set.

https://www.libertysafe.com/safe-vau...fes-ps-13.html

https://www.sturdysafe.com/products/vault-door

https://www.ftknox.com/vaults/vault-room-door-in-swing/

[TGS]

The fireboard would be unnecessary for a vault, as the walls would be poured concrete.

We are hoping to make some change off our current property when Amazon moves in down the road. Depending on the house we are able to buy (or build) further west, a vault is on my list. I'd love to have my guns secured yet on display instead of hidden. A vault also gets more economical when you're looking at real safe/TL-level security for something bigger than a typical business safe used to store cash/documents.

[Tokarev]

One of the guys I used to work for had a vault room built when he had a house built. He had wood framing set close together and double lined the walls with sheet rock. I don't remember the door he used but it was something like one of the reinforced storm doors from Pro Steel. Inside he had shelves on one wall and a set of rifle racks one above the other on the opposite wall. Basically it was a sort of reinforced walk in closet. I always liked his idea. Something like that could probably be easily done as a gun safe storage room or even a gun storage room with no safe. Obviously not as sturdy as a cinder block room in a basement or whatever but still probably pretty secure.

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[TGS]

One of the guys I used to work for had a vault room built when he had a house built. He had wood framing set close together and double lined the walls with sheet rock. I don't remember the door he used but it was something like one of the reinforced storm doors from Pro Steel. Inside he had shelves on one wall and a set of rifle racks one above the other on the opposite wall. Basically it was a sort of reinforced walk in closet. I always liked his idea. Something like that could probably be easily done as a gun safe storage room or even a gun storage room with no safe. Obviously not as sturdy as a cinder block room in a basement or whatever but still probably pretty secure.

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That actually pretty much describes what I have right now, except I'm using a safe inside the room. Multiple layers of security, all that. it has metal framing in the walls that are for the shelving in addition to the wood structure. You'd have to use a saw to cut out the wall or door, or spend some serious time and noise on knocking down the wall to get in.

After putting on the ANSI Grade 1 lock, I thought "hmmm, I should've put a cypher lock on here." That would prevent running out on errands and forgetting to lock the door, and also just make it more convenient to get in and out.

[TQP]

If you're counting on your safe for fire protection, storing ammo or other flammables in it is counterproductive. Also, if you're trying to protect media ( DVDs, HDDs, etc) from fire you will want a media rated safe, not count on your gun safe. Media is more fragile, so the standards are higher ( they have to stay cooler than regular safes for the same rating).

If you put the safe in it's own room, with an exterior type steel door (Typically 1 hour fire rated) and either use the thicker drywall that would be on, say, your attached garage ( code requires a 1 hour rating for the wall between the garage and the living space), or just put a 2nd layer of drywall over what's already there, that should give us plenty of time to get there and put the fire out before it gets into that room from elsewhere in the house.

It'd be extremely unusual for us to keep you out of your house for more than a few hours after a fire. The exceptions would be if arson is suspected, or if the building is so badly damaged that it's structurally unsound. Even in those cases, we'll help you retrieve valuables, unless the building is so badly damaged that it isn't safe for us to be in there.

What I'd be more concerned about post-fire is if the safe is in the basement, it may be sitting in a foot of water by the time we're done. Safes aren't waterproof, but some of the door seals are supposed to be watertight once they get hot and expand. That of course doesn't help you if the fire is upstairs and the basement never gets hot. I don't know enough about electronic locks to even guess what getting 'rained on' for an extended period would do to one.

Of course, if your house burned so badly that we left you with a foot of water in your basement, rust on your guns is probably fairly low on your priority list. Likewise if the building is too damaged to enter.

(I swear I got this to post this morning. I was wondering why no one commented!)

[TGS]

If you're counting on your safe for fire protection, storing ammo or other flammables in it is counterproductive. Also, if you're trying to protect media ( DVDs, HDDs, etc) from fire you will want a media rated safe, not count on your gun safe. Media is more fragile, so the standards are higher ( they have to stay cooler than regular safes for the same rating).

If you put the safe in it's own room, with an exterior type steel door (Typically 1 hour fire rated) and either use the thicker drywall that would be on, say, your attached garage ( code requires a 1 hour rating for the wall between the garage and the living space), or just put a 2nd layer of drywall over what's already there, that should give us plenty of time to get there and put the fire out before it gets into that room from elsewhere in the house.

That's interesting about the exterior door, I didn't even think about that fire rating. I used an exterior steel door for the gun room, and the safe is against a drywalled foundation on the 3rd side and a dry-walled brick fire-wall on the 4th side, and the floor is cement. I looked at the manufacturer's website and it's listed as 90 minutes with a steel frame, and 20 minutes with a wood frame. Do you typically see that reflected in real life?

What about the fire coming in through the ceiling? My gun/gear room has a drywalled ceiling.

I've thought about the flooding part, but if the palusol door seals don't expand I'm pretty sure all of my guns will be okay for the 8 hours or so it would probably take me to recover them. I imagine there would likely be some staining on the butts of the wood stocks from the caustic shit in the water, but that can be mitigated with careful refinishing. It's also a better option than having the safe on an upper level and falling through the floor during a fire....

Thanks for the insight!

[TQP]

Fire ratings are not unlike safe ratings, it's more of a way to compare between different rated things, and real fires are like real burglars and don't follow the test protocol.

Your ceiling is probably not going to come in unless the floor above collapses, which brings us back to one of those 'your safe is probably not the top of your priority list' size fires. The drywall itself may fall, from water coming through the floor above, but that just makes a mess.

Fire protection is like burglar protection, it's all about buying time for the fire to be detected and taken care of.

[Tokarev]

Fire protection is like burglar protection, it's all about buying time for the fire to be detected and taken care of.

Have you seen many gun safes in house fires? If so, how well do the contents survive, generally speaking?

I may have mentioned this already but a former boss of my wife's had a house fire. He had a run of the mill Winchester safe. I don't remember the size but it wasn't anything too big or fancy. He probably got it from Tractor Supply or some other hardware store. It did not fare well at all.

Again, I don't know the specs on his safe but would guess it was typical of the budget import stuff. Probably 30-45 minutes at 1200° or something like that.





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[spinmove_]

So, just playing Devil’s Advocate, why should I invest in a big and heavy ass safe like a Fort Knox vs something like the one linked below? It sounds like the fire protection is generally dubious at best and, if one is so determined and motivated, can still cut into it and steal your wares.

https://www.secureitgunstorage.com/p...model-52-plus/


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