It wasn't that long ago that the AMSEC RF6528, and its lack of a fire seal was being discussed.  I had some photos of similar composite safes that had been involved in a fire, but none of an actual AMSEC.  This is a safe that I sold to a customer new.  They called me the other day while the house was still on fire, so in addition to the photos, I know the specific details.

This safe was located in a walk out basement, in a utility room area where lawnmowers and ATVs were parked.  The fire was caused by gasoline fumes ignited by the water heater.  The owner was home at the time, and luckily, him and his family escaped without injury.  The house and everything in it was a total loss.  You can see the top of the safe in the middle of the photo:



The safe has a factory 2 hour rating.  The fire department had a hose on the area that the safe was in to attempt to keep it as cool as possible.  The fire burned for 8 hours, and the safe sat for another 2 hours until they could get a chain around it and drug it out of the smoldering debris with a tractor..  This is what was left of it:



As you can see, there was very minor damage to the contents.  Not bad for a safe designed for 2 hours being exposed to 8 hours worth of heat.  There was a bit of soot inside the safe, along with some minor water intrusion, likely from the fire hose.  All of the important items inside the safe survived.  The envelopes protected their contents from the soot, and all of the paperwork inside was in great shape.  Paper money survived fine.  Some jewelry and coins survived fine.  Some of the plastic containers didn't do so well, and started to deform.  Nothing melted.  Note to those using plastic containers:  Make sure they are microwave safe.  The plastics on those containers require a much higher temperature before they begin to melt.









Overall, in this case I do not think a door seal would have made much of a difference.  The safe was exposed to heat for far longer than it was rated, and still peformed fairly well.  Had the safe only been exposed for 2 hours, I suspect what little damage there was would have been less.

Thank you for sharing.  It's always interesting to see real data points.  What did it take to get the safe open?  Did the fire make it easier or more difficult to open?  Just curious.



I'm glad the people survived.  I hope they had good insurance.

What type of flammable materials were near the safe? Was the safe near concrete or framed walls, or did the first floor fall on it and burn? I'm guessing that is the support beam all twisted there.

The lesson is don't store gas inside.

Thank you for sharing.

Ugh, that sucks for the owners but thanks for sharing the info Frank, we don't get to see too many of these. It definitely looked like things got warm inside but for the duration of the fire, looks like the safe performed as advertised.

The safe was under the stairwell in the middle of the house.  Had it been taller, I suspect the damage would have been much more severe.  This safe, being close to the ground, would have been exposed to lower temperatures than a taller unit would have been.  Since the fire started right next to the safe, it was exposed for the entire duration.

We see a few burned safes each year, mostly in businesses.  It is very rare to have a fire burning in a basement.  Usually we get to pull a very wet, yet unburned safe out.

Great stuff right there. I work for AMSEC. In fact, I designed that safe, and I did the fire testing in that design in 1989.

When did Amsec start to fire line the bottoms of the BF series safes? One I saw several years ago was just a single layer 10 or 12 gauge steel on bottom.

We added the floor insulation in 2009-2010. It's really not necessary, but there was a lot of pressure from competitive selling where they made that an issue. the reality is that the bottom of the safe never sees any real heat in a fire, and unless the safe is on a second floor and the fire goes so long that floor collapses, the endurance ratings have been exceeded considerably by then. In all the testing I have conducted and witnessed, the bottom of the safe is barely damaged, if at all. This is proven in the real world too. We see testimonials of extreme fire exposure and praise for extraordinary contents survival to prove the fact.

Good info.  

For soot and humidity damage from the fireboard, would having guns in a gun sock help protect them?

Welcome to AR15.com!

Glad to have you here!

Hi SafeGuy,

I am the proud owner of multiple AMSEC products including an RF6528, and have a couple of related questions I hope that you could help me with.  I am in fact the troublemaker who started the questioning about lack of door seals on RF (on another forum).

After engaging with AMSEC Inside Sales I purchased 3 six foot lengths of 1503.77.81 (Seal Intumescent Palusol) from my AD.  Inside Sales would never let me speak directly to an engineer but reported that engineering said to install them on the safe body - parallel to the door edge near the corner.  Sales was insistent that Engineering said not to put them on the 1 inch surface parallel to the door face. It seemed strange to me that it would not be installed on the 1 inch surface parallel to the door face, but I thought "if engineering said".  My opinion changed once I attempted installation.   I quickly realized that it would not work as the curvature of the door edge would require the Palusol to expand 10x - 15x to fill the gap at that point.  Thus I placed the Palusol strips 2 inches from the corner so that they would require only a 2x - 4x expansion to contact the door edge - except the bottom cavity.  I don't see any way to fill the void on the bottom from the surface parallel to the edge.  Question - should the strips actually be  installed on the surface parallel to the door face where the door contacts the body?

My second question is are there any risks in sealing this unit too tight.  After placing my Palusol I also obtained some Pemko high temperature SiliconSeal fire door seals for use as cold smoke seals & placed them on the 1 inch surface parallel to the door face.  Will too tight of a seal impact the thermodynamics that make this unit work and turn it into a pressure cooker.  After reading some of your earlier posts I actually removed the bottom seal so the unit could vent more easily.  I figured the smoke intrusion would be the least down low to the ground.

Thanks

PS: why are those door edges curved like that?

In general, yes.  Most of what looks bad in that photo is limited to the exposed surface of the contents.  Everything inside of those envelopes was in pristine condition.  I have noticed the same thing with gun safes that have been in fires.  Guns in socks tend to survive with much less damage than those sitting loose inside the safe.

I'm not sure I see what you mean by parallel to the door face. The strips are parallel to the door face regardless of which surface you mount them, so that doesn't make it clear. Looks like this forum doesn't allow uploaded images. I was going to post a CAD drawing. That pretty much sucks.

I would place seals (if I were to install any) on the faces perpendicular to the front face that surround the door. The door has a taper. It stops against the jamb face when shut. The jamb face is what you look at from the front when the door is open. The correct placement would be sitting flat on the perpendicular face maybe an inch out from the jamb face. A primary Smoke Seal should be behind that intumescent seal.

EDIT.... okay, went and signed up for Photofukkit. Here is the CAD drawing showing the profiles. The red dotted line is the door swing path. You can see why there is a taper.




You probably can't make it tight enough to build pressure, which would allow temperatures to rise. The seals would blow out in a few weak points and relieve any pressure above a couple PSI.



The parts are all formed sheet-metal. Those round edges are the bend sweeps. Again, lighter materials, not bar and plate, better to reduce heat conduction.

So, with the questions answered (sorta) the commentary....

The AMVault safe has scads of concrete in the structure.... WAY more than would be necessary for a good 2-hour fire rating. That is supported by Franks posted fire photos in this thread here on AR15.com. The volume of steam is so great in fact that there is no need for seals. The other phenomena that most don't anticipate is that this safe has a very solid boxed frame around the door. That frame is rigid enough to resist heat distortion (because the inside walls are kept cool). So, guess what..... the door face expands and mostly seals against the walls of the jamb frame.... no kidding. The seal is actually pretty damn good too. But, even if it weren't, the massive volume of steam release could manage the gap (now I need everyone's home address please, I have to send out hit men to maintain secrecy).

So, you don't need seals. If it needed them, we would include them. No harm adding them, but unnecessary.

Can you blame our skepticism as a consumer?  The security industry is chalk full of poor engineering and engineers' efforts thwarted by bean counters.  If you're bored, here are several interesting and humorous examples:

 




 

This guy sure makes it look easy, doesn't he?

Don't be fooled. This clown is not as smart as he thinks. Most of the stuff he shows there is nowhere near as easy as he claims. Moreover, the security of safe locks has advanced decades beyond the old technology he is discussing. All of those things he teaches are dependent on lots of practice. They are skills that don't come naturally. For example, he talks about vibrating locks into the open condition. First, did he forget that we bolt safes down? Second, the vibration technique is 50 years old, and even cheap locks now have holes in them to balance the wheels so they don't "seek" alignment by gravity and vibration. Go try to release the ignition or door lock in your car with an ice cream stick... you will find it is not so easy. Most small combination locks like the suitcase lock have evolved, and they now have "false gates" (notches in the wheel perimeter) that mask the true numbers in the combo. This guy is just talking for the sake of hearing himself and getting praise from uneducated listeners. He's a hack, pure and simple.

Not everything you see on the internet is true....

Thanks SafeGuy

It looks as if I got the Intumescent in the correct location.   The door seal I obtained was not large enough to work in the spot you indicated so I placed it (slightly left of where indicated in your drawing) in the area (small gap) where the door contacts the body.

Thanks again for your assistance.

You are welcome. Always happy to help.

Of course he makes it look easy... he's one of the world's best competitive lock pickers.  You'll notice that he points out he isn't discussing high security locks.  He is discussing crap that is still being sold as security.  Manufacturers in China have no problem faking security for US dollars.  I'm NOT saying that you or your company does this.  
Here is another example of crap being sold as security.  This one led to the death of a 3 year old boy:
Should the safe have been bolted down?  Of course.




Does the average person do this?  No.




Should the safe have been accessible to the officer's children?  No.




Should the children have been able to open the safe by playing with it?  Absolutely not!




Does Stack On warn that children can open their product if it isn't bolted down?  Not a chance.
ETA:  I can't get this link to embed, but here it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48HUctXZUNw



Jump 24 minutes in if you want to see the safe I am referring to.
The most disgusting part of the story: this product is still being produced.  Stack On isn't interested in having the Chinese manufacturer fix the issue.





ETA:  At the end of the video, they show a little boy bypassing an Amsec product the same way (just by playing with it without any tools).  Is Amsec interested in correcting the design of the safe?  
I understand that some of the blame rests on the end user for not bolting the safe down.  The portion of the blame, in my opinion, depends on how prominently the manufacturer warns that bolting the safe down is required, and how responsive the manufacturer is to correcting flawed designs like this one.
 

The type of safe and locking system shown in the DEFCON video is, and has been, a standard mechanism for as long as Asian manufacturers have exported safes into the US marketplace. That's no excuse for the obvious weakness this represents, but we buy it, by the millions, because they are cheap. I first saw safes with this crude and simple mechanism in the late 80's. However, security is no different than any other market. You get what you pay for is in full force. These designs originated in Japan in the 80's, and have proliferated into low-end security containers from every far-eastern producer/exporter nation.

These are my personal thoughts, and not the opinions of the company I work for. I represent my thoughts as my own, and not in any way the policy of said company. I take responsibility for my opinions. If it offends anyone, or you happen to disagree, that is your right, and I respect that.

As the devils advocate, bear with me for a moment. So, ask yourself why, all of the sudden, did the manufacturer become "responsible or liable" for selling a cheap product? These types of safes have been sold by the millions into the US market thru every channel available for over 30 years. What changed? How did we come to find epic fault in this product class overnight? Do you think that this design weakness was never recognized? You would be wrong on that count.

I have an answer for you... it's not the safe that has changed, it's our sue-happy blame-everyone-else for tragedy society. Nobody wants to take responsibility any more, and worse, they want to find someone to penalize when a tragic even happens. This is no different than gun control. The social standards changed, not the guns. Now we, as gun owners, are fighting a similar assault.

Now, the reality check. If a consumer buys a POS door lock that you can force open without tools, and some kid gets kidnapped and killed because the bad guy had easy entry... is the doorknob manufacturer at fault? You can extend this argument to everything we touch. If you hit yourself with a hammer, is it the hammer's fault? If you spill coffee in your lap, is the coffee suppliers fault? If you shoot someone, is it the gun's fault? Where does this end?

If you buy a piece of crap safe, deliberately neglect to bolt it down as clearly recommended in the instructions, and someone breaks into it and uses the contents to commit a crime or cause a tragedy, is it the safe maker's fault? Doesn't the owner have a responsibility to use the product as specified, and hence is liable for the result? What changed our values and skewed our logical thinking?

I am with you, these products are inherently oversold as "Safes", when they are not much more than a fire resistant cabinet. But, there are no regulatory rules that prevent the advertiser from calling it a safe. There are no legal standards by which a product is classified and certified as a safe. If you want change, then do these things to bring about good.

My point is simple. This is a social issue, not a liability issue. Just like gun control, which I am sure you hold dear if you are here on AR-15com..

If it makes you feel any better, we are currently in the process upgrading our low-end safes of this type with improved boltwork and an upgraded lock that will have UL high-security Type 1 listing under UL2058. We have been selling similar low-end products since they were first available in the 80's. I would venture to say we have sold close to 2 million of these cheap containers because you, the consumer, demanded them. We are now yielding to the pressure, and seeing the future in a "changing" society, we are making the first move to step up. We do this with the full understanding that we will give up a substantial part of our market share because of a cost disadvantage. This will be a financial sacrifice, but likely to limit or protect from litigation.

It's a shame that we have lost our way to such a degree that we seek to blame others for our own doing. We drive prices down, which causes quality to be sacrificed, the low price leader wins the business. Then when we consume the cheap product, and use it improperly with neglect, and something bad happens, it's the manufacturers fault. Can you see the decayed morals that brought this thinking about?

These are my personal thoughts, and not the opinions of the company I work for. I represent my thoughts as my own, and not in any way the policy of said company. I take responsibility for my opinions. If it offends anyone, or you happen to disagree, that is your right, and I respect that.

I respect your opinion, and I think we agree with each other more than you realize.





The shocking part for me is that I have used a "safe" with the same mechanism as temporary firearm storage (brought it with me, not bolted down) at a relative's house because I thought it would be more child resistant than a locked plastic gun case or a cheap 16 gauge portable gun tote.  Apparently I was wrong.  Hopefully, you can see how I reached that incorrect conclusion given that I am not an expert in security.  I went with the heavier chunk of metal to lock up the guns.





I have another one w/ the same mechanism that is screwed into the 2x4's in my wall, but I figured I was doing that to prevent smash and grab robbers from taking it with them, not to make it more child resistant.  I recognize that they aren't amazing quality, but I would have never guessed a three year old could get into them in a matter of seconds if they aren't screwed or bolted down to something substantial.





I'm thinking about buying Fort Knox's handgun locker that uses 7 gauge steel and a Simplex lock for my future needs when staying with relatives.  Do you think it offers better portable handgun security than the safes discussed above?  Do you know of a better container for this purpose?

 

First comment here is, thanks for being open minded. I don't want my political and social views to be confused with my contribution here as an experienced engineer in this industry.

Second point, just a logical set of questions... but just how many 3-year old's do you suppose 1) have access to that safe if it were not bolted in place? 2) could manage to move that safe in a position where it would be easy to bounce? 3) would care about getting whatever is in the safe, and most important, 4) can accidentally bounce the front of that safe while setting the handle just so it pops under that solenoid, without binding such that it opens on the first try every time?

Now, think about that carefully with unbiased logic, and try to calculate the odds here. Remember that the process depicted in the video requires several key conditions to be preset for that one-bounce-to-open scenario. What would bring a child to attempt to bounce a safe open? What logic or experience would bring them to think this was a successful method? You would suppose that after some limited number of tries they would give up and lose interest. You do understand that the deck is loaded in the demonstration to make it look insanely easy. This process requires a developed technique. Something that can be taught, incidentally.  We all love to teach our kids unique skills and they show it off to get a laugh. Ever consider that was in play here? The real odds of an infant doing this are pretty big, you must admit.

And on the matter where a child was hurt... did anyone consider the idea that the parent may have inadvertently left the safe open? Or, maybe that toddler watched the parents open the safe enough times that they figured out how to enter the code? There is no proof that the toddler bounced the safe open. That is a HUGE assumption. Might this be another case of blame-someone-else and profit from your pain?

All I am saying is that these things get sensationalized and people believe what they are told without any critical thinking or doubt. With my experience and skills, this process took me several tries before I found the right combination of conditions to result in consistent opening success. Try it for yourself and you will agree if you are honest. I need hard evidence to convince me that this was no more than unfortunate adult negligence, but nobody is willing to accuse a morning parent of such a crime.

Lastly, when I signed on here I promised not to denigrate my competitors products. So, I won't offer my opinion on the box you reference. I will say, without checking to see myself,  that you should choose a container that has passed the CalDOJ testing. That testing (which I wrote the draft standard for in 1998 as an industry consultant) assure you of a measure of security that was specifically designed to address child safety. Heavy materials alone do not make safe... look past the primary selling points and make sure it's a complete package.

I appreciate the open, honest discussion, and I do understand your points above regarding probability of a tragedy with the safes discussed..  



The Fort Knox box "exceeds California DOJ specifications".  I'm guessing this doesn't guarantee that it will pass DOJ testing, right?



Returning back to the subject of this thread, I noticed that smaller, non-firearm oriented BF series safes carry a UL fire rating, but the larger rifle sized BF series safes do not.  Was this decision based on saving UL testing fees?  Is there a difference in the material used for fire protection?



 

I will tell you one thing about this industry that is a known... When someone advertises "better than..." and they don't have the listing that they are claiming to surpass, you must ask yourself why they didn't get the listing. Reference back to the other discussion... are you making a responsible decision when you have no assurance the claims are true? There a a lot of CaDOJ certified  boxes out there, not just the ones we sell. Do yourself a favor and shop around if that model you are referring to is not on the list.

You can check the particular models of safes from any given manufacturer HERE. If the safe does not have an UL RSC rating, or higher, it must appear on this list to be leagally sold in the Peoples Republic of Kalifornia. It is required that every model is individually listed. If a model is not listed, it has not passed the testing.

~~~
On the BF Security Safes (smaller safes with UL RSC and UL Class 350 - 1 hour fire ratings. There are a few differences. Although the general construction is almost identical, the walls of the BF Security Safes is nearly an inch thicker than the BF Gunsafe line. Also, the BF Security safes use a different, much more dense fill mix. The Gunsafe industry is very weight conscious, so we had to develop a lighter fill design for the gunsafes. As it is, we are heavier than any other product in the class. We get heat from all of our dealers and distributors constantly because this makes shipping costs higher and most dealers are not equipped to move heavy safes. Unfortunately, the consumer doesn't always dictate what they get. In this instance, the sellers of gunsafes get the say-so because they are the ones buying the product. It's a shame, but that's the deal. So, the BF Gunsafe walls are not as thick, and the fill is not holding as much water, and hence we have a lower degree of steam barrier and fire resistance.

Now, this is the part that needs to be understood...

Fire Ratings in the Gunsafe industry are not on the same planet with genuine UL Ratings. Without getting into a lot of detail, I have been testing fire safes for 25 years at UL and other placed, both for ratings and investigation. Suffice it to say that there is a HUGE difference. I would say, with complete confidence, that the BEST fire rating claimed by some of our friends in the industry would not pass a 1-huour test at UL. In fact, I'd probably take bets on them not making a 30-minute test. Maybe later I can tell you about fire testing at UL. It is incredible. To get a UL Fire listing is extraordinarily difficult. We have many.

 

That is not true. In UL Fire Ratings, the UL72 Standard is the rule book. UL72 allows a manufacturer to list a safe that is the tested size, down to 50% of the cubic capacity of the tested model. So, if I test and list a safe that has a 6 cubic foot internal volume, I am allowed to make any size smaller that that, down to 1/2 of the internal volume. Those sizes do have to appear in the inspection procedure, so all sized planned for production have to be detailed in the Follow Up Services Inspection Manual. The listing does not allow sizes larger than the tested model.

One of the things that is not widely known is that the larger a safe is, the harder it is to pass a given test. Gunsafes are very large, compared to the regular small fire safes that you find with 1 and 2 hour UL ratings. In fact, if you look around, there are not many large safes with UL Fire Ratings that are manufactured today.. It's a really difficult thing to achieve. The larger the safe, the more prone it is to failure from heat distortion, mechanical failure, seal breach and insulation integrity. It's also a much greater surface area to protect. So, wall thickness on Gunsafe sizes UL rated 1-hour safe would probably need to be 5-6 inches thick, and require a "good, high density" poured fill barrier. They would be very heavy, and not feature a lot of capacity for their footprint. On shorter safes, like our largest UL Class 350 2-hour UL3918 Firesafe, the walls are 3-3/4 thick. Now you can see the difference becoming very apparent when Gunsafes walls are generally 2-3 walls of gypsum board that is only around 2" thick. Just some data points for you to digest there.

... double post

How about used safe that was be drill for alarm or open , after they bonded ( fill the hole )  , will that  effect the fire rate ?

I take it that the water heater was gas fired?