Which safe to choose for an apartment, office or home
If you have decided to increase the security of your office, apartment or home and are planning to purchase a safe or metal furniture for this, you need to answer a few questions in order to make the right choice. This is due to the fact that the production of safes has gone a little further than the average person can imagine. By the way, along with production, hunters for safe content have also advanced. Therefore, before buy a safe , you need to decide on a number of factors that need to be taken into account when choosing.
Contents of the article:
First of all, you need to decide on a storage unit.
Of course, in our time, in addition to traditional storage, jewelry, money, documents, weapons and completely new values have appeared. They also require special storage. Namely, various types of information in the form of disks, audio cassettes, CDs, photographs, etc.
Next, you need to decide on the type of room in which you plan to install the safe.
- Small safes are suitable for apartments. However, both large and small (especially up to 70-80 kg) safes should be mounted to a wall or floor. In most cases, burglars will not try to open a safe in an apartment in order to avoid unnecessary noise, but will try to withstand it in order to carry out burglary procedures in comfortable conditions. Therefore, with a reliable fastening system, a crooked person will not be able to simply carry it away along with your valuables. When purchasing security, pay attention to. Fastenings must be present on the internal rear and/or bottom walls, it is recommended to fasten with strong steel anchor bolts capable of withstanding gaps from 500 kg to 3 tons (5-30 cm, diameter 5-20 mm) in length;
- As a rule, the territory of a country house has several security elements. This is ideal. You can store values in one safe, and in another, for example, in a document. There is pure psychology at work here: even if you find one safe, the burglar may not realize there is a second one. As with apartments, it is also worth considering and installing safes on the walls and floors;
- Depending on the expected amount of valuables, you should choose a safe in the office. To store printed materials, important documents and papers can be kept in the smallest safe. Improved fire safety.
Decide on a location
To prevent burglars from stealing the safe along with its contents, it must be large and heavy, wall-mounted or floor-mounted. Before purchasing, consider where it will be placed. Small safes under beds should be screwed to the floor. In cabinets, it should be attached directly to the wall so that thieves cannot cut the furniture along with the safe.
If the safe is installed like a movie on the wall in an apartment in a multi-story building, it can come out anywhere. The partitions will be thin, and there is a risk of breaking through the next room. You can create a niche in an external wall. The thickness of the windows can be measured. Remember that there may be electrical wiring under the plaster, and the wall itself may be made of plasterboard.
Safes that are lightweight and can be carried away should be screwed into the floor or wall. Special holes must be provided for fasteners or anchor bolts to connect it to the structure reinforcement.
The next question is what will most threaten the contents of the safe.
- If your main goal is to keep important documents safe and sound in the event of a fire, you need a fireproof (fireproof) safe. You should also take care of protection from thieves and prying eyes by renting out the premises under security or simply installing metal doors. The space between the walls of a fire-resistant storage facility is filled with fire-resistant foam concrete, which has low thermal conductivity. However, such foam concrete is unlikely to provide protection from robbers. The fire resistance of a safe determines the time (usually 60 or 120 minutes) during which the temperature inside the safe under the influence of fire does not exceed a critical value;
- It is worth purchasing an anti-theft safe if your main goal is to ensure that no one has access to what is stored. These safes are much heavier than fireproof ones. Instead of lightweight fireproof foam concrete, heavy, high-strength concrete is poured between the steel plates of the walls of a burglar-resistant safe, often reinforced with metal and with the addition of corundum or granite chips, which makes it difficult to impact the body. Tools and items. In addition to special concrete, safes are protected from burglary by locks: key, combination mechanical and electronic. The classic option is a key lock. Safes typically use lever locks, which cannot be easily picked and cannot be opened silently. Keys for lever locks have grooves – the number of grooves determines the number of levers in the lock, and the difference in their depth determines the uniqueness of the key. Combination mechanical locks come with a fixed, replaceable cord. Electronic locks have sophisticated protection against guessing the secret code, and the code can be changed from time to time. There is a digital scale for determining the burglary resistance class of the safe – from 1 to 15. The opening of the case is taken into account. The higher the class, the more resistant the safe is to damage;
- If it is necessary to store magnetic media, audio-video cassettes or photographic film, use a safe designed for magnetic media;
- However, if you only need to slightly limit access and at the same time organize work with documents in the best possible way, the best option would be to purchase filing cabinets or other metal furniture.
Therefore, when purchasing a safe, the buyer must independently or with the help of a sales consultant determine the potential dangers that may threaten the valuables stored in the safe.
What is the volume and quantity of items to be stored in the safe?
You should have a clear understanding of the amount of material you will be storing in the safe, not only on the day you purchase the safe, but also in the future. Additionally, you will need to provide the items that are intended to be stored in the safe, as manufacturers are available to offer overnight safes, gun safes, built-in safes, hiding places, furniture, hotels, and more. Type.
What is the value of the valuables you plan to store in the safe?
Safe manufacturers recommend that the price of a safe be at least 1/5 of the cost of the valuables stored in it.
In the safe market, like all others, there are many cheap fakes. Outwardly, they are not much different from the “branded” ones, but they cope with their function poorly or do not cope at all. Fortunately, most buyers of such goods are lucky and avoid the thieves. However, those who are unlucky need to make sure that the claim is true. “The bitterness of low quality lasts longer than the pleasure of low prices.” The value of the contents of a safe usually far exceeds its price. Therefore, if the decision to purchase a safe is made, you need to save wisely.
In order not to be misled when choosing, here are some recommendations.
- It is better to buy safes only from trusted manufacturers and well-known brands of safes;
- Before purchasing, you must ask the seller and consultant to provide you with a certificate in accordance with the manufacturer’s national standards.
