$5,000.00 Firearm Safe vs. Cinder Block Outbuilding With Fire Door

how well hidden is the outbuilding?

As long as you're building a purpose specific safe-room (should have hyphenated this first to imply a room built as a safe in and of itself) for your guns, why not take the time to shovel a hole large enough to bury it flush with the ground?

Of course, I'd also love to own a decommissioned ICBM underground silo for a second home.

If I were going to this extreme I'd likely invest in a short shipping container, weather seal that, then bury it and build the fire door in.

http://www.jobsiteexpress.com/servlet/the-12215/10GP-NEW-Standard-Container/Detail 8x 6 for 3 grand, leaving 2 grand to pay for burial. cutting torch and cinder blocks.

Side note: Had the idea of welding 2-3 50 ' ones of these together as the basis for an underground shooting lane years ago

If it were grouted solid with rebar connecting the slab and a concrete deck / lid. I would say pretty good. if it were just CMU with a wood truss roof system, not so much.

Once buried with a decent vapor barrier, I'd think a foot or two of soil would be dandy! Or you could pour concrete and build the kids a Clubhouse, or put your shed over it with the hatch under the carpet .

PS... Don't forget ventilation, you might need it

For $5k, you could build a pretty solid outbuilding to house your guns. Say, 10x10 (most places you need a permit to go much bigger), but instead of cinderblock do reinforced concrete 8 or 10" thick with a heavy vault-type door.

I read an article last week about a guy chasing tornados. His studies have proven that mere cinder blocks aren't enough for a storm shelter against an 8ft 2X4. He recommends that a 16 guage steel sheet and a 3/4in plywood sheathing be placed on the shelter to hamper anything going through the structure. Found the article in Popular Mechanics...good reading...

There is actually a growing industry taking advantage of these pre-fab cubes. Cut, weld multiple ones together, attach more organic wall and flooring materials.

at 3-5k a cube for the big ones, it can really make a lot of sense if you know your way around a torch.

Portability - if you plan to ever move.

ZERO return on your investment if it stays with the property.

Climate control and rust.

Climate control and humidity would be a concern with an out building I would think.

For theft deterrence... and fire Protection...

What makes a $5K gun safe better for either need than a cinder block outbuilding with a fire door and darned good locks?

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You won't find many $5k gun safes that are better. However, you can find $5K commercial safes that are.

For $5k, you could build a pretty solid outbuilding to house your guns. Say, 10x10 (most places you need a permit to go much bigger), but instead of cinderblock do reinforced concrete 8 or 10" thick with a heavy vault-type door.

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You can spend well over $5K on a used vault door of decent quality.

I'm working with a guy now who wants to put a roughly 10' x 10' vault in his basement. His original idea was to do poured concrete walls, a steel plate roof, and a vault door. This was going to result in cutting the basement floor, pouring new footings, pumping in concrete, etc, etc. He had a $30K budget, and I didn't think he was going to stay within it doing it that way.

Shipping containers are as versatile as it gets. I've been involved in designing off-grid houses using them. They can be direct buried, stacked, stood on end, fastned together, ect. After all they are a plumb, and square, rectangle. They have a 1 1/16" hardwood plywood floor, and with a plasma cutter, and welder you can make openings of any size. Look for a "high cube" model (with 8 1/2' overhead. Put in a drop ceiling, and you have a 6" utility chase. Put insulation, and siding on the outside and a roof, and it looks like a 8'X20' shed. The special steel will oxidize, but not rust (after all they're designed to be at sea for months, rocking and rolling). If you think I'm a fan. BINGO!

I like the outdoor rebar and concrete filled cinder block exterior build idea. It could be wired and plumbed. It could have a mud room to hide the vault door and protect from exposure. If built into a hillside it could serve many purposes if large enough. Ideally there would be grass growing on the roof when you're finished. It would just look like a well house only to reveal the ultimate man cave.

Thanks for the Education OC , Good to know about the built in resistance to salt air, Didn't even consider that the dang things are at sea most of their lives.

Easy enough to build in a dehumidifying system, run a conduit out for power too.

Adding insulation is not the only thing to consider -- as insulation does not 'add-heat', it only helps hold any heat in or helps hold it out.

In humid summer months, an air conditioner or dehumidifier should be run and in winter months, heat should be run in order to prevent changes in temperature, which, along with moisture, causes condensation on anything in the building. Humidity, relative to temperature, defines whether it is dry inside that safe or "raining" inside that safe!

Where I live, where winters are long and extremely COLD, it would make more sense to have the gun room inside my house as a seperate building would be very expensive to maintain constant heat and/or humidity!

I would think you would definitely want to reenforce cinder block somehow. Why?? Go shoot one with a 30 cal rifle and see what happens to it. Or hit one with a sledge hammer. Now the shipping container, yea I would love to have a few of those magically appear behind my house.

again, Soil is a great fire insulator. Drop the cube in the ground so you have 2 feet or so of space between the ceiling and ground level, then pour some stairs and a hatch at the back, and build a shed over that, park a pile of bicycles or your lawnmower over the astroturf you throw down on top of the hatch.

Everything can burn to ground level, though If someone with a thermodynamic education could weigh in on how long a buried steel structure would be defended against a wildfire, that would be helpful too.

Just a thought here...but I live out in the country. Would this building be noticeable? No. But when no one is home during the day, I would be worried. The heavy door just screams "Hey! Valuables in here!" Thinking like a thief...why would I mess with that door on your cinder block building? Give me a sledgehammer and I'll be in faster than I could pick a standard lock...and I can pick a lock pretty fast. Have you ever went through a cinder block wall with a sledgehammer? You can do it without really even breaking a sweat.

Of course they could just as easily go through your wall and take your safe. Then again, they won't know your safe is there. Sooner or later, word will spread through family, friends and neighbors to their family, friends and neighbors and so on that Mike built a really neat cinder block building with a vault door for something.

/end my 2 cents

Edit:: Just read this:

Regarding cinder block breaking apart when shot; If the voids are filled with rebar reinforce concrete then cinder block is VERY tough.

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Better space that rebar close enough vertically that you can't squeeze through it.

lol.

People need to watch old "Webster" re-runs, start building more secret passages in their homes, and bore out their back yards for unobtrusive expansion of floor plans.

As long as people are bandying ideas about, Invisible inset hinges are handy little engineering marvels too

http://www.soss.com/ Make sure when you are setting up your magic Bookshelves, that you key the latch to a copy of "A Farewell to Arms"

( just to insert, using a dummy book like this is as easy as assembling a latch on your fence, as simple as a rod from the back end of the trigger book. Make sure you have a failsafe way to get through as well, on the chance a small child gets in and locks themselves into the walls. Further bla bla bla... just give it a rest already D... If keying a book makes you nervous that someone
might discover it by (GASP) READING... or a burglar throwing shelves of your stuff to the ground looking for anything... Electromagnet locks work, as does sinking a handle into the woodwork, hiding it with a lip or disguising as trim)

Further edit- Bonus points for the Raul Julia/Gomez Adams "GREED" instead.