Buying a safe today can be an
adventure, there are decisions to be made before you star shopping, how you make
those decisions will determine how happy you will be with your purchase.
The most important thing you need to
know is what are you trying to protect, and what are you trying to protect it
from.
Many home and business owners are using the
wrong safe for
the risks they are trying to protect against. Many are putting their cash and
valuables into their fire or record safe, many are putting their records into a
burglary safe, and many are putting their computer data into their regular
record/fire or burglary safe.
Understanding how a safe is constructed,
why it is designed and constructed that way, and what risks it is meant to
protect against is critical information for choosing which safe to use.
A fire/record safe is designed to keep the internal temperature below 350
degrees Fahrenheit, paper chars at about 400º, for a minimum period of time
usually expressed in minutes or hours. One of the ways it does this is by
converting trapped moisture to steam as it gets hot. This works very well for
paper records, not so well for items that may be damaged by moisture.
A media safe is designed to keep the internal temperature below either 125 or 72
degrees Fahrenheit depending on the media to be protected. Media safes do not
use a wet fill and do not employ moisture to do their job. You can keep paper
records in a media safe, however media safes are much more expensive than the
typical fire safe.
Fire/record & media safes are made with thin metal or composite enclosures or
skins that contain the fill material, these materials are thin to reduce weight
and reduce heat transfer. These thin materials do not afford, nor are they meant
too, much protection against forceful attack. The locking device on fire/record
or media safes is meant to keep honest people honest.
A burglary safe is designed to protect money and other valuables from theft.
They are built with heavy, thick metal plates or other materials that are meant
to deter attack from tools. You will see many ratings used to describe burglary
safes "B", "C", or "E" rate, TL-15, TL-30, TL-60, TLTRTX-60, are common. The
single letter ratings are old insurance industry ratings and are becoming less
common. The TL ratings are UL® ratings and identify the attack method and the
attack time for the test. TL is for tool resistance and covers most tools that
might be employed in an attack, TR is for torch resistance, TX is for explosives
resistance. Burglary safes generally do not afford any fire protection, there
are some dual rated safes that will afford limited protection against theft and
fire they will be labeled as such and are usually more costly.
The following suggestions would apply to
most home or business situations.
If you are buying a wall safe, you
should be sure of what is on the other side of the wall you are considering,
if the safe is deeper than 4 inches, it will protrude into that space, in this
instance a wall that backs into a closet or cupboard may work well. The other
consideration would be if you plan to hide the safe behind a picture etc., you
would want this to look like a normal place to hang a picture, and the subject
of the picture to belong in the surroundings. Another place to consider for a
wall safe could be a shelf in a closet.
If you are buying an In-Floor safe
which is usually installed in a concrete floor or encased in a concrete block
and then placed on the floor. Your likely options will be a basement, garage
or the lowest level of the home.
If your safe in installed in a
concrete floor anything placed in the safe should be adequately protected from
water. Whenever there if a fire, water will most likely be used to fight it,
in-floor safes are almost never watertight.
Floor safes also do not usually carry
any kind of fire label, testing agencies have no control over the final
installation and therefore cannot certify that it is truly fire resistant. In
reality a properly installed floor safe should be highly fire resistant.
All safes, depending of their size and
what it kept in them can be very heavy, if placed on any above grade floor,
you may want to check with an engineer or building inspector to be sure the
floor where you want to place it can support that amount of weight.
If your safe is designed so it can be
bolted to the floor, doing so would make it much more difficult for a thief to
move it.
In some cases a closet may be a good
spot, it may be difficult to get in place, however a thief would also have a
hard time getting it out.
Electronic safe locks are easier for some
people to open, persons with arthritis, of older people may find it easier to
push buttons than to turn dials.
On the negative side, most service requests
on safe locks involve electronic locks, there is a wide range of these locks
available and many different configurations, the time a safe technician spends
diagnosing and repairing a problem can mount up.
Modern mechanical safe locks work very
well, once you are shown the proper way to operate them, they are very easy to
open. They are also very reliable.
Many older burglary safes are still very
reliable, if the lock is still in good working order an has been serviced by a
qualified safe technician, there should be no problem. If your safe has ever had
a hole drilled in it the UL® labels should be removed. If you plan to use your
antique safe for storage of valuables you should have it inspected by a
qualified safe technician.
Antique, and really any 15-20 year old
record/fire safe would be a different story. The insulating fill material
especially in antique safes will deteriorate with exposure to temperature
extremes and time, you should be very suspect of keeping items you wish to
protect from fire in an older fire safe.
You can locate a qualified safe technician
at
Safe & Vault Technicians
Association (SAVTA)
www.savta.org
Many types of businesses sell safe today,
you could choose form a safe and vault dealer, a professional locksmith who
sells safes, an office supply store, a "big box" hardware store, a department
store, a discount store, even the Internet. Safes are expensive, you don't want
to buy the wrong one. A few things to consider before you decide to shop are:
The safe dealer and the professional
locksmith make part of their living selling and servicing safes, they have the
training and expertise to recommend correct safe for your needs. Buying from a
local dealer assures that you will be able to get competent warranty or service
work quickly.
Would you trust the same person who answers
your plumbing problem to also be an expert on choosing a safe?
Buying on the Internet, may save money up
front, however freight might be an issue, safes are very heavy, how will you
move it off of the truck and into place in your home or business? If it needs
warranty or service work, who is going to do it?
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