Thought I'd run this by the infinite wisdom that is the OB. Looking to get a 20-24 gun safe for my home... but I'd like to put it on the 2nd floor. Location would be in a bedroom likely on an exterior wall. The safes I'm looking at range in the 400-500lb range and suffice to say, I won't be able to bolt it to a concrete slab. My initial thinking is to use either 1/4" plate steel or bar... and lag bolt this into the floor joists... and then bolt the safe into that.

This seem like workable solution or is there another option to consider?

TIA

Are you really worried about somebody carrying the safe down the stairs and out of your house?

Mine is upstairs. I'm not to worried about it getting carried off. By the time you add the weight of the safe with 20 guns ... it's a load.

A thief, or really 2+ thieves, would have to bring some sort of appliance dolly to move it. They would have to know going in you had a safe. And they would have to park in your driveway with something to haul it off with.

I just can't imagine your typical smash and grab thieves taking it. Maybe you live in a mansion, but I can't believe high dollar thieves are scouting out my house and planning some elaborate heist.

In a garage is completely different. 1-2 guys could walk it to the back of a pickup, lean it over and slide it in.

But I'd like to hear what others think.

600# safe, 250# of guns & ammo. I don't think anyone will want to carry that down the stairs.

Also, if you put plate up there, it's another 60-80 pounds. You'll start getting a pretty good load on a small area.

Am I worried about it happening? Not necessarily. But the scenario where thieves parked in a driveway for awhile and proceeded to wipe out a house has happened not too far from me. And with a dolly, it wouldn't take a couple of guys more than a couple of minutes to get a 450lb safe downstairs, were it sitting free.

Plus... for $50 or less in materials and a few minutes of time... why not do it? Seems like straightforward enough. I'm just curious if this method of securing it to the floor seems reasonable.

Depending on where you live, I would think that if you have an alarm system, it would negate the need for you to do anything remotely close to bolting it.

If you have an alarm, and use it, the thief has 5-10 mins max in your home and probably won't even risk that. He would grab the TV, Blu Ray, etc. Easy items to carry out.

Most thieves are lazy and unless you have a highly sophisticated one that is specifically going after your safe I doubt they even bother with it.

Don't be on the first floor when the house burns

I think you should check the condition and size of your floor joists first before going any further. You never know what is really there, some guy may have been stingy and used a 2x4 on 24+" centers with 3/8" decking...

Is be way more worried about putting that heavy a load on an upstairs floor assembly that wasn't built for it.

Pretty sure the floor was built for that kind of weight. The footprints of the safes I'm looking at are 20x28".... If the safe weighs 500lbs, that's about 130 lbs/ft2. I'm significantly heavier than that and I've never fallen through the floor. Most residential second floors are built to handle much more weight than this.

My only concern was securing it to the structure but that seems to be unnecessary according to most here.

Another option would be to secure it through the back of the safe into the wall studs

Rogue,

Hope you're not an engineer. The pressure calc you made is not correct, unless all 20"x28" are in contact with the floor. The concentrated pressure in certain areas would be higher than 130 lb/ft^2, the magnitude depending on the build of the safe.

With many safes, you're not bolting it down to prevent it from being stolen.

You're bolting it to prevent it from being knocked over, and broken into more easily.

Well the safes I'm looking at (and I presume most) have completely flat bottoms... so um... yes... all 20x28" would be in contact with the floor, presuming I didn't put anything under it, which seems to be the recommendation here.

And yes, the concentration could vary some over that area, but not signficantly given the units are in square feet. Maybe a few lbs here or there, but nothing signficant... especially considering (again) the flat bottom of the safe would help to distribute any weight variance more equally.

I'm not really looking for a math lesson here, just an opinion on securing the safe.

Edit: Naveronski... bingo. You are correct.

[This message has been edited by RogueAg (edited 1/29/2014 4:05p).]

If it's bolted to the joists, or to a plate that's bolted to the joists, if I want it I'll get it. Five maybe 10 minutes with a reciprocating saw, then go downstairs, load it up on my dolly, and out the door.

You guys that appear really worried about a thief need to remember the guy that REALLY want's it doesn't care about things like broken windows, or new holes where doors or walls used to be.

Bolting that safe to anything but a concrete slab is nothing but an annoyance to the thief that has decided he wants it.

Just going on record to say: I'll be at the South Pole the day you're moving that thing upstairs. So don't call looking for my help.

I had a company install a safe for me that was a lot heavier than yours. He looked at my staircase and said, "The last one I installed upstairs had a stair case like yours. I won't ever do that again."

That was all this company did.....move safes in and out of homes. They had lots of neat little lifts. He said it took them 2-1/2 days in a home nearing completion. Prior to the homeowners moving in thieves broke in and spent apparently a lot of time trying to get into the Fort Knox. As a last resort they pushed it down the stairs. It came to rest half way out the patio door.

As an alternative consideration, you could build a false wall/hidden closet in an existing room instead of the traditional safe. Given some of the previous advice and concerns, it may make sense to hide your guns and stuff rather than deal with getting the safe into place upstairs.

If you could lose 2-3' out of an existing closet or small room it works. I have a friend who is a cop and did this. Turned out very well, hidden in the kitchen pantry.

And if we're going to go so far as worry about someone cutting the floor joist and decking to drop the safe to the first floor, then we should worry about a cutting torch on any safe regardless of what it is secured to. It's a gun safe, not a bank vault.

i would not put it upstairs bc of what was said previously about the house burning.

it will fall, and things inside will get damaged. Worst yet, what if a fireman is in your house when it falls through the ceiling?

Probably the same thing that would happen if a large armoir, chest of drawers or king size bed fell through the floor. I've got 4 bedrooms upstairs all with heavy furniture. I'm not sure a safe provides for any more of a significant risk than those things.

Just for the record, please just take in the spirit of my comments above. We all go to a lot of effort to secure our homes primary entry points; the doors and windows. However the vast majority of us live in wood frame homes with a brick, stucco, or wood/hardi veneer. The walls of our homes are very easy points of entry. A wood/hardi veneer home can be entered in a matter of a minute or less with a chainsaw by a guy that parks a truck out front that says, "Bob's Tree Service." Same goes for stucco and brick with a handheld chop saw. Remember the guys that cut a hole in the side of the gun store walls out on Hwy 21.

Home security is ultimately an illusion we surround ourselves with that works merely due to the laziness of those who would like to do evil. The vast majority of us give thieves at a minimum two four hour windows to have their run of the place (if we come home for lunch), or a solid 9-10 hour window for those that commute. You're not going to stop that thief. The mere presence of your safe will have your average smash and grab meth head looking somewhere else for pawnable items.

Hours worth if time? Do none of you have monitored alarms?

Depending on how/where they enter they well could. Doors and windows are typically the most heavily monitored and the interior has a motion detector that covers a living area and maybe catches a hallway.

As for monitoring... Land line or cellular? One is very easy, the second just needs to get to the control box. Most often located in a bedroom closet.

there was a string of break-ins in south college station last year. They were going into folk's backyards in the middle of the day and breaking the master bath windows. These windows didn't have alarms on them, b/c they are not intended to open. They are large windows made of of glass (or plastic) cubes.

From there, all the had to do was stay out of the living room and take whatever jewelry, electronics, etc that was in the bedroom and bathroom.

Our last pitbull was better than any home security system out there. Unfortunately, he became too protective.

Any home security system worth spending money on has motion detectors, even if in only one room (assuming we all realize that room is one that would be entered during a burglary). Said system also fired off if the box or phone lines are tampered with.

We were broken into over the 4th of July weekend in 2010. We were 3.5 hours away out of town when we got the call. All the guy got was literally a Wii that we had been given for Christmas. He didn't even make it back to the master bedroom because the wailing alarm scared him off. Without that alarm then yes, he literally could have backed a truck up to the garage and loaded the entire contents of our home into it.