So right now I rent and I live on floor 4 of a 7 story apartment building; (I live in Seattle... I know what you think but it's not bad honestly.) I have a small shitty gun locker thing that is adequate for keeping wandering fingers out but it's tiny and I am looking to upgrade to something that actually fits a Tavor and guns with optics. My current thing don't have enough depth.

I am looking at two safes at a local dealer and one is basically the same size as my current one only 6 inches of extra depth which would help. The other is  about 7 inches of extra depth and 6 inches of extra width. I'm leaning towards this second option because it's only $50 more and well large enough that it could fit anything I could want for a few more years.

The issue is it's a 400 lb safe. The smaller one is like 240 lb. I know fridges are like 250-300 lb so I think the smaller one would be aok but I'm leaning towards the larger one.

Do I have anything to worry about? I asked the maintenance guy in my apartment because we're friendly and he's a gun guy and he told me I should put a piece of 3/4" plywood down where I'm putting it to distribute the weight.

What say you all?

You're not anywhere near a weight that would be a concern.

Disregard the plywood to spread the weight.  Your floor is already going to do that for you.

Doesn't matter how old/new the place is?

Or if the safe has legs or a flat bottom?

Consider that 5 'average-sized' (which means at least 2 are obese) American adults standing in a small group while having a conversation = ~1000+ lbs.

Three 6' men taking a 'buddy' photo with arms on each others shoulders = 600 - 750 lbs in a small area. If there was a danger of a floor collapsing from this, the building would be deemed unsafe and condemned.

Residential should be good for 150lbs/sqft

I thought about all of that and thought there's no issues at all. But I'm also not a structural engineer and I don't know if there is a difference between a temporary load and a constant load. The maintenance guy was concerned about it squeezing something in my floor / the ceiling below me effecting the sprinklers. I didn't think it would be an issue but plywood is cheap.


So the safe is 26 x 20" so it's about 3.6 sq ft bottom which puts it at 111 lbs/sq ft. with nothing in it.


I also jsut googled how much Pianos weigh and small uprights weigh 300-400 lbs. Larger upright pianos weigh 500-800 lbs. And apparently a baby grand piano can weigh as much as 1200 lbs.

Design live load for residential is 50 lbs/sq ft.

It took about 150 people crammed in and jumping up and down dancing....

Is that a state thing? Only 50?

What did?

I looked up Seattle code here
http://www.seattle.gov/dpd/cs/groups/pan/@pan/documents/web_informational/p2631236.pdf

and if I'm reading it right the table on page 415 states 40 psf for residential

and after doing some reading here

http://www.cichlid-forum.com/articles/aquarium_weight.php

It seems like that means 40 psf is the uniform live load for the whole floor... which I think means I'm ok as long I don't have a ton of stuff.

Let me check with my mother in law.

That is the part that many people seem to leave out.  A 10x10 room is designed to support 4,000 pounds evenly distributed.

I have never seen it narrowed down any further in residential construction, but I have seen it commercially.  We have dealt with wooden commercial structures that are designed for 60 pounds per square foot, or 2,500 pounds concentrated.

We usually draw the line on residential floors at 1,500 pounds.

Legs could be an issue definitely.. point load. Should be 40- 45 psf design minimum.

I looked it up and my city spec is 40 psf and the closet I'm stuffing it in is 5x9 which if I to my math right means the room can hold 1800 lbs before it starts to deflect(?) and well more than that before it bursts.

The safe is flat bottom but I'm going to put some plywood down because it doesn't hurt and it will help distribute the weight across floor joists because I don't know which direction the joists run.

Floor loading limits are there to force a very high degree of safety, and they are intended to limit long-term load induced sagging of the structure. They are not intended to represent a safe loading limit on a momentary basis. If that were true, a 250 lb man, standing on one leg probably exerts somewhere around 65 lbs/sqft. If the live load was the basis of the specification, it would be many times that number. A 1000lb safe with a 30x25 footprint only exerts 28 lbs/sqft, unless it's elevated with pucks or some other means to concentrate the loads. Installing near a wall adds a degree of forgiveness to this calculation, as it's is near supporting walls.

You should not be concerned with any "normal" gunsafe floor loading in a second story room, unless the home is very old is structurally compromised...