Buying Gun Safes for Home Safety-part 3

Buying Gun Safes for Home Safety

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Fire Resistance

There are something like 380,000 residential fires every year in the US – one every 83 seconds. The temperatures inside a burning house have been estimated at 1200 degrees or more. Under those conditions, a non fire resistant gun safe is nothing more than a big metal oven. The chocolate brownies you enjoy so much were baked at 350 degrees. Imagine what 1200 degrees would do to them.

Never the less, adding fire resistance to your safe is a big decision. First, we have to realize that there is no such thing as a fire proof safe. Even the very best can’t protect its contents from unusually hot fires for long periods of time. Then there is the fact that the additional cost is significant. Fire resistance isn’t cheap. The thick insulation material also reduces the amount of usable space available in the interior of the safe.

However, if you’re going to use your gun safe to also store valuable papers, documents, or other items that could be damaged by fire, obviously fire resistance is something to be considered seriously.

Some safes and lock boxes use concrete as an insulator, and it works just fine for that purpose. However, concrete is really an unsuitable material for an insulator on a gun safe. The fact is that concrete is a fairly porous substance and can trap and hold humidity quite well. You obviously don’t want to subject your guns to an enclosed humid environment for long periods of time. Instead, look for safes that use Underwriters Laboratory (UL) rated fire board as insulation.

So what standard should a fire resistant safe meet? First some facts. Paper chars at 405 degrees. It also gets brittle and therefore unusable before it chars. Consequently, the temperature inside a safe should not rise to more than 350 degrees. It’s also estimated that in urban areas, a fire department will respond to a fire and contain it within 15 to 30 minutes.

OK. So what we want then is a safe where the interior temperature will not rise to more than 350 degrees while being exposed for 30 minutes to a typical 1200 degree house fire.

On the other hand, some safe companies, self certify the fire resistance of their own products. Sometimes, this is accomplished by paper analysis rather than actual testing.

Warranties

Most safes come with a standard materials and workmanship warranty. Some for a certain period of time, and some with a lifetime warranty.

Filed Under: Blog • Gun Safes • Private Security Products • Vault Doors