500lbs safe on 2nd floor?

Full send.

Wear a back brace. Nothing a six pack of Bud can’t solve.

May depend upon the age of the house.
Modern house ought to carry such loads.
call the safe 30x30, that's 900 square inches, or 6.25sf, 600#/6.5sf is only 92# per square foot, which is less than on "average" adult (yeah, you said 500, but I have experience with how full safes get).

As a practical matter, though, put a level on the safe and watch it for a few days, the floors may settle a bit.

If the upstairs closet floor is carpeted, note that there's (probably) a 1" wide tack strip on the floor at the wall--so don't push the safe up on top of it, or it will tilt--possibly more than a bit. (You may need to go source some wedges to level the safe in any event--a big box store, in the cabinetry area can help.)

Note, too, you probably have no more than 3/4" of subfloor to bit into to screw down the safe. Rather than fussing with lag bolts or the like (unless you hit a joist or truss) a toggle bolt may be your answer. YMMV

Ttrl

Get 2 boards to place underneath as long as possible, running across the floor joist to spread the weight across more of them. Also, will get it off the carpet and make it easier to get to the electrical access hole if there is one in the bottom of the safe.

Disregard her pleadings and don't let her carry it, she could be injured!

As others have said it will depend upon how old the house is. If it’s an older house I wouldn’t. Do you have a basement? If so, big safe in basement and small couple gun safe in the bedroom.

500 lbs is like two big guys standing three feet apart. Not a big deal. Loaded maybe three big guys.
Would you be worried if three of your buddies went in the closet? Okay, that might worry me but not about the weight.

Rule of thumb is a load limit of 30lbs per square foot in a bedroom, but your local codes may require more than that. Or, as some have said an older home could be weaker or stronger than that.

I have spent a lifetime in Residential construction building and inspecting homes and the one thing I can say is codes are minimum requirements and live loads are much less than a person realizes. Bearing wall under that area would be helpful. Lol and hopefully the staircase doesn’t collapse during the process.
Blueprints of the home structure would be the Only way to be sure of the joist sizing , spans and intent of that area which is most like loaded already.

Good luck… or google IRC
J

Axis II said:

Purchased a sports afield 36 gun safe today and it weighs 400lbs empty. Girlfriend is hell bent it goes in the master bedroom closet so what do you guys think? Too heavy or good to go?

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Read the above and don’t listen to girlfriends

How close is the place it will reside to a 1st floor supporting wall? If one understands framing placing a safe in the middle of a span has a lot more effect on the structure attempting to support it. So if you can do some measurements and get the safe close to a 1st floor bearing wall that would be what I would suggest as a requirement.

One also has to think and plan for a fire in the home and having a 500+ pound safe land on a firefighter on the 1st floor, not likely in the least but should be a thought nonetheless. More than likely a home that is burning to the extent of failure of the floor joists firefighters are outside doing perimeter work letting it burn for the most part.

Framing experts can chime in but as was said place the safe against an exterior wall if possible.
It may be that putting a 1” plywood covering the closet floor (with an entry transition) would help spread the load. Again I am sure experts will chime in.

Find a new girlfriend

Already been through similar scenarios
with waterbeds and gigantic entertainment
centers that would take a dozen bruno's
to move across the room, let alone up
a staircase

My Liberty safe went to the second floor near an outside wall. $200 cash to a local piano mover and his two gorillas, aptly monikered “Full” and “Partial”. When I asked, he pointed to the larger, called “Full”, and said “Eclipse”.

Makes sense, as those two boys blocked a LOT of daylight.....

bassjam said:

Rule of thumb is a load limit of 30lbs per square foot in a bedroom, but your local codes may require more than that. Or, as some have said an older home could be weaker or stronger than that.

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Typo? 30lbs/software?

If I stand on 1 foot I'm probably around 10X that.

danez71 said:

Typo? 30lbs/software?

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As a guess, yes. 30# Live Load is typically used for calculating joist spans--but, that's linear feet, not square feet.

Loading per square feet could be imputed from the joist spacing, but usually isn't.

The 30# number is in the IRC tables for design, and goes back to the Southern Building Code and the Uniform Residential Code as well. It's actually a bit "bouncy" as that's only generally will conform to L/240 deflection, and you want L/360 to not crack plaster or wall board, and L/480 for tile.

For construction "back in the day" the dead loads increase as the timbers were of fuller dimension. The doubled subfloor was also a bit more resilient than modern construction.

With modern methods, with the subfloor glued to the framing, the floors can be stronger. But, they can take and hold a deflection if given a large point load like a safe/RSC.

In modern apartment construction, floor trusses are the rule. As is a layer of "gypcrete" over the subfloor. The material will generally resist heavy point loads like RSC, but offer little in terms of anchoring (which is generally not allowed on leases).

danez71 said:

Typo? 30lbs/software?

If I stand on 1 foot I'm probably around 10X that.

Click to expand...

Not a typo, but that's averaged over the entire area of the room, not concentrated. You could put 30 lbs on every square foot of the room, or 120 lbs on 1/4 of the area in the room.

https://findanyanswer.com/how-much-weight-can-you-put-on-a-second-floor

https://www.awc.org/codes-standards...ese limits are based on,floors L/360 & 30 psf

https://civilengineeringbible.com/article.php?i=66

We had a house fire in 1995. The house was built in 1948 with a full basement. We started over with new footings on up. While the old house was being demolished, the back hoe operator drove the back hoe onto what was the living room floor in order to reach the back wall. I was surprised he did not end up in the basement.

if the house can't handle 500 lbs on the second floor, maybe you shouldn't be living in it.

Not worried about the safe alone. The safe loaded with 300#s of rifles plus- the safe and other junk adds up.
Make sure that the weight is spread out across several floor joists. They should be on 12" centers, but could be on 16" centers. The footprint is decent but make sure it is spread out over the support system.

I have a 900 pounder being delivered tomorrow. It is going on my first floor until my basement remodeling is finished. old house 1947 build. hardwood floors over a sub floor. I'm putting it in a corner of a outside wall.

I'm not too worried.

Why would 2nd floor be any different than 1st floor other than getting it up there. The strength of the floor is the same.