I was looking at purchasing a tall home safe, that will serve double duty for firearms and valuables. (UL30 for safety, and 60 minutes of fire protection at 1800 degrees).

However, I recently learned that a safe of this size and weight (close to 2 tons) can not be transferred into my basement without a ridiculous amount of surgery on my house.

So I am left with a choice:
- Get the safe I had intended to purchase, and anchor it to the concrete slab in my garage.
- Get a lighter, less secure (and/or less fire resistant) model that will go into the basement.

I live in an area that sees temps up near 100 degrees with high humidity, and lows below zero.

Looking for thoughts on which route to take based on:
- Environmental control
- Ease of theft/cracking
- SHTF Scenario
- Other things I'm not even thinking about

Really appreciate the help!

TheKrizzz

2 Tons????  Get a smaller 800-1000# safe (or two) and put them in the basement.  Bolt them to the floor.  Hire a professional moving company to move them in.

Climate in your location?  If it is a humid place, I'd stay the heck away from the garage.

Garage door being open.  Does that make the safe visible to the road? I would not want the local lawn guy seeing that size of a safe then BSing with every other day laborer at Home Depot about it.  Also, if it is in the garage, 2 guys with the right dolly and a lift gate can roll that puppy to their truck and be gone in 4 minutes.

You mention TL30.  Do you REALLY need that level of security?  (I don't need to know. A question for you to reflect on...)

Is your basement finished?  Will this safe be in a mancave? Can you replace your door to mancave with a MURPHY DOOR ?  I'll take a "less than tl30" safe in my home that nobody knows about, than an advertized, sitting in the living room that the fridge/AC/salesman/plumber sees when they walk through.  

What prevents you from getting your desired safe to the basement; Its height or weight?  When I bought my safe, the $300 for the (supposedly background checked) 4 guys to get it where it needs to go was worth it.

Have a home alarm? Make your man cave its own always-armed zone.

How far do you live from home?  Buy a Liberty Safelert Monitoring System and it'll tell you if it is jostled.

Fire protection; No way around it, that is usually your biggest threat.  


Oh yeah, welcome to ARFCOM.  Thank you for posting in a subforum before joining the freakshow known as GD.

Well, might take a bit more than 4 minutes... The pros that moved my safe into my garage took about an hour and had a delivery truck with a crane on it. And its about 4,000lbs.

Most people dont have easy access to lift gates rated for more than 1,000- 2,000lbs at most, and even at that, two guys are not going to shuffle a 4,000 lb safe up onto a lift gate in a couple minutes without getting killed or dismembered.

There is a reason insurance companies rarely require safes that heavy to be bolted down. The reality is very few people have the equipment and knowhow to move something that heavy without getting killed.

Thanks all!  Good info to chew on.  Appreciate it.

Thieves that stole my picnic bench had a crane on their truck. They backed right up to my picnic bench at work with the license plate removed wearing orange vests and navy pseudo construction worker uniforms. They drove away with my picnic bench and we all got to watch it happen on 3 different security cameras. They didn't use the crane of course, but the police officer saw this as an important discovery because it explains manhole covers being stolen for scrap metal.