Is A Fireproof Safe Really Fireproof?
When it comes down to actually testing a safe for its fireproofing ability, fireproof turns out to not really be fireproof, but rather a variation of fire resistant. It isn’t really practical to completely fireproof a safe. The best that we can hope for, particularly in the home or small office setting, is to have a degree of fire resistance. After time, most fireproof safes will break due to the intense heat.
The quality of the safe will have a lot to do with the durability during a fire. A small fireproof safe, if not sufficiently protected, will have a much harder time protecting the contents of the safe than a larger, well protected variety. Fireproofing comes in many different forms, and all are not created equal. Most safe companies will specify how long they anticipate the safe to be able to resist fire damage. Ratings often range from a couple of minutes to a couple of hours.
The fire rating on the safe is not exactly an exact measurement, and is difficult to use to compare different safe manufacturers. Many safe companies use different measurement criteria and third-party sources to test their safes. This can lead to some incongruent test results between brands. These results can be a good way to compare safes inside of single company. There are common threads here, and as long as you recognize the source of the test results, you can make informed and wise decisions on what you can expect out of the safe.
When people think of a fireproof safe, many think that a fireproof safe is just for safeguarding documents. And while fireproof document safes are important for the protection of irreplaceable files and folders, they are not the only type of safe that can benefit from good fire defense.
One of American homeowner’s most common possessions that are kept in a safe is their assortment of firearms. Whether you have one firearm or an entire arsenal, the investment of time and money spent on the weapons should be protected. Not to mention the fact that if you have children in the house, it is prudent to safeguard them by preventing access.
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on this Fireproof Gun Safe
Because of the value of the weapons often stored, most safe shops will recommend that the gun owner purchase a fireproof gun safe. These fireproof safes can protect your guns from damage due to a fire in the home. Unfortunately, home fires occur at an alarming frequency. And even though the fireproof safe is more money initially, think of it as a bit of paid up insurance on your property.
In the case of a fire, sometimes the most damage comes from water damage from trying to put the fire out. Some waterproofing techniques have been designed to protect against continuous water being shot at the safe from a firehouse for up to a set period of time. Similar to the fireproofing limits, the waterproofing has its set time limits as well. Some solutions, though they are far less common than fireproofing, have sealed the safe for up to 3 full days submerged under water. This type of protection is increasing in popularity since the disaster Hurricane Katrina left behind.
Damage from a fire can come in a number of different forms. Direct fire damage is not the only vulnerability that you must protect against in the event of a fire. Safes must be built with sufficient structural strength as to withstand the destruction bound to collapse upon the safe during a fire. It has been reported that fireproof home safe installations have failed because of debris falling onto the safe, jamming the door wide open.
Another increasingly common type of fireproof safe is the fireproof media safe. These safes are designed to provide protection to your media; meaning your files, documents, CDs, DVDs, flash drives, hard drives, and other digital information. These types of devices are particularly susceptible to fire damage and must be locked in the safest of environments. Media protection safes provide the data an enclosed and tightly sealed location. If your data is critical to maintain, perhaps consider two levels of fire protection for the documents. You can easily store small fireproof safes inside of larger document or gun safes.
A fireproof wall safe, although available, is not always the best way to protect your valuables. Understand that if you intend to protect your possessions from damage by placing them in a wall safe, the wall must be able to withstand fire as well as the safe does. It does little good to have a fireproof wall safe mounted to wood studs. As soon as the wood studs burn through, you can expect your safe to drop to the ground. This can be often mean that it will fall until something is stable enough to stop it. This is not to say that a wall safe cannot be fireproof, it just means that additional precautions must go into the proper installation of this type of safe.
Again, it is important to remember that your fireproof safe is really only fire-resistant to a degree. If you have anything of value that you are storing in your safe, it will be well worth the additional cost to add this protection. Fire damage is far too common, spend the little bit of extra money to have a little built-in, prepaid fire insurance in the form of fireproofing.
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