How would you build a gun (safe) room (think vault door) that is fire resistant? I might build a house and I'm looking for ideas..

I was thinking concrete. With a vault door. Like a walk-in gun safe

nealan said:

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I was thinking concrete. With a vault door. Like a walk-in gun safe

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While I love the idea, that will be pricey! On the other hand, if done right, would make for a great safe room as well for hurricanes/tornadoes.

ICF walls maybe??


Disclaimer.. I know absolutely nothing about construction

You may pay a premium for concrete walls/ceiling vs a framed wall with security mesh/something, but it is what it is. It's concrete. Make it big enough and you have a hell of a storm shelter. Then it boils down to the door that you would put in either assembly. Fire rated/security type door. What kind of access (key/lock, Keypad, biometric) will swing your cost pretty wide.

Fort Knox brand for bank type full sized safe door.

For fire only you can get by with layers of gyp board.

for a safe

I'd do CMU block with rebar and concrete in the holes with a cast in place concrete roof, you need a good foundation for this

really good safe

sandwich the above with a layer of 1/2" steel between the layers.

That's more what I thought as well as far as walls

Build cheap gun safe with Sheetrock layers then take out an insurance policy

mts6175 said:

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I want this guy's trophy room. And his gun vault....

http://www.rasnickhomes.com/projects/872757/dupriest-trophy-room

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Kuereg throws off the whole vibe. meh

FEMA has guidelines/plans for building a reinforced closed (or retrofitting an existing one) to serve as a safe room/shelter for severe weather. Might be a good starting point which could then have fire resistance added via gyp board or other methods.

You have a few options at your disposal:

1. Most expensive is reinforced concrete. Pretty self explanatory, but walls cast in place of concrete with reinforcement. Benefits are strength and the ability to inset electrical into walls prior to casting in place. You can make it as thick as you want for your needs. Your foundation and the rest of the house will need to incorporate this room into the design. Make it big enough that it doubles as a storm shelter and you get double benefit.

2. CMU with reinforced and grouted cells is probably going to be the most economical and get what you are looking for. Will be very strong, not as strong as a good cast in place concrete wall, but not as expensive either. Slightly more complicated with respect to electrical (it can be run in the wall, but not easy and not cheap) and you have to incorporate bond beams for strength at door openings and at regular intervals.

3. Pre-fabricated shelters. They use these things up in Oklahoma and Kansas a lot for tornado shelters, can double as a safe room I would assume. I don't know a whole lot about these, but if they can double as a storm shelter then you are reasonably certain they are going to be secure enough for a safe room.

4. Standard stick frame construction, but you can double up on the stud placing in the walls and use fireproofing insulation and additional layers of sheetrock. Won't be a storm shelter, but will be pretty secure for something like a gun room. Cheapest of the bunch, but least secure.

https://www.ar15.com/forums/Armory/The-Gun-Room-Picture-Thread/46-264729/

Look through this thread. Lots of options for your vault door depending on your budget. Sturdy, Liberty, Amsec, Graffunder etc. The only people I know personally with a vault room built it out of CMU block with a vault door. They also keep their home AV equipment inside, and they designed an escape door in the ceiling into the attic in case someone was ever locked inside on accident. The escape door cannot be opened from the attic, only from inside the safe room.

I researched this quite a bit before I built mine. Rebar set into the slab sticking out a foot where the wall will sit. Concrete block wall with a piece of rebar going down each of the voids. Fill the voids with concrete. Several layers of concrete board for the roof. Vault door, however much you want to spend on it.

Ditto his four options.

If it was mine and my money I'd do CMU walls fully grouted and reinforced and make the ceiling out of cold-formed metal stud framing with expanded metal mesh Tek-screwed to the top of the studs covered by three layers of rated sheetrock then one layer of sheetrock on the underside (ceiling).

I'd make it a gun safe, document storage, storm shelter-ish, pseudo-safe room. The door would be the trick. True vault doors are very expensive, but you could have a hollow metal frame (heavier gauge than standard) grout filled, and a steel door.

nimrodag99 said:

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For fire only you can get by with layers of gyp board.

for a safe

I'd do CMU block with rebar and concrete in the holes with a cast in place concrete roof, you need a good foundation for this

really good safe

sandwich the above with a layer of 1/2" steel between the layers.

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CMU block was going to be my suggestion as well. Lot less mess in an existing/occupied home during installation. I'd grout fill instead of concrete. easier to work with and is standard.

Unless you have a very thin slab on welded wire mesh, a 4-5" slab with #3's on center each way (probably 18") should be fine.

For the ceiling I would just sandwich a steel plate between a couple layers of drywall. If you're up against the floor above I wouldn't worry about a concrete ceiling.

nimrodag99 said:

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F

I'd do CMU block with rebar and concrete in the holes with a cast in place concrete roof, you need a good foundation for this

really good safe

sandwich the above with a layer of 1/2" steel between the layers.

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All you need to know right here.

TwoMarksHand said:

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You just ruined my productivity for the day

Edit: nvm stupid photobucket killed what was surely and awesome thread. boooo

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Start at the end and work back. Photobucket screwed the earlier pages up. There are some really nice rooms in that thread.

Another option that I didn't think about earlier that is probably a bit cheaper than cast in place concrete, but more expensive than grouted CMU, is pre-cast panels.

Basically a contractor pre-casts the panels flat on the ground and stands them up. Weld plates are cast into the panels and each panel is connected to the floor, ceiling and other panels with fillet welds at the weld plate locations. You could concieveably cast full length angle at corners to have a 100% weld seam versus what amounts to stitch welded connections with caulking at the non welded joints. I'm sure there would be a good reason to do so, but couldnt' tell you what difference it would make structurally.

We use these types of buildings often for stand alone electrical buildings, so they at least meet wind load criteria and are undoubtedly stronger than any stick framed structure.

That sir, was an expensive house......bet you did hate selling it.

Angle of the pictures make it look funny. It's built into a hillside with that lower level as a walk out basement. Much of that ended up backfilled. Still lament having to move and selling that house...

You should spend the money getting a residential sprinkler system and build out a room in the back of your closet. Unless the fire starts in your safe room there's a better than good chance your guns will survive and you get the added benefit of keeping your family as safe as possible should a fire occur.

In case you guys are wondering about their effectiveness this is a summary from the NFPA

Facts about home fire sprinklers

Automatic sprinklers are highly effective and reliable elements of total system designs for fire protection in buildings. According to NFPA's "U.S. Experience with Sprinklers" report:

the civilian death rate was 81 percent lower in homes with fire sprinklers than in homes without them
the average firefighter injury rate was nearly 80 percent lower when fire sprinklers were present during fires

when sprinklers were present, fires were kept to the room of origin 97 percent of the time

the home fire death rate was 90 percent lower when fire sprinklers and hardwired smoke alarms were present. By comparison, this death rate is only 18 percent lower when battery-powered smoke alarms are present but automatic extinguishing systems weren't

Sprinklers don't stop people from stealing stuff or create more space for valuables.


Which was the entire point.

AgLA06 said:

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Sprinklers don't stop people from stealing stuff or create more space for valuables.


Which was the entire point.

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To be fair, the OP did specifically say he wanted something fire resistant. And sprinkler systems have proven to be very effective at keeping fire damage mostly limited to the point of origin. Probably wouldn't want sprinklers IN a gun vault though.

The above is what I did recently. Filled CMU block walls w/ a 13" poured concrete ceiling. Didn't use a gun vault door though. Just a solid steel door (made by the same company I bought my front door from) with multiple locks installed. Also has 2 steel bars that can barricade the doors closed if you're inside during a tornado, etc...Make sure you included supply & return air off your house AC unit for temp/humidty control.