Gun Vault

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Trent,

you are definitely going to need a structural engineer. I just finished building a storm shelter; I'm going to bury it, which adds a lot of ballistic protection.

When designing my shelter one of my best sources of data were a series pdfs:
http://faculty.delhi.edu/hultendc/AECT480-Lecture 6-REV.pdf
Change the "206" to 201-207 to get the other ones. There's a lot of high level data in there that was way above my head. But I think what you want is attainable at a lot less cost than you are looking at.
I built a 12 by 20 shelter for just over $3,000. It's 8" reinforced concrete everywhere but the roof, which is 7". It would be easy to add more rebar and increase the thickness of the slab. I poured 4,000 PSI concrete but that also could be increased.
You can see some pictures here: http://diystormshelter.com
I'm happy to try to answer any questions you might have.

Jowy
 
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Engineer / Architect stopping by at 11 AM today.

Initial estimate for materials and labor from the local place was $13,500.

That's a heck of a lot more reasonable than ~50k.

Jowy, will take a look at that site & resources tonight when I have more time to think. Thanks! :)
 
Unless I missed it, I did not see any provision for a washroom. If you and seven others may be trapped in that room for any extended length of time you are really going to need some form of sanitary facility. Also food and water.
 
^
I'd figure for a storm it'd be like 12 hours max.. probably be more like an hour. A five gallon bucket and some trash liners would get you through that/the former easy.
 
Unless the house falls in around us. I could see being trapped overnight if that happened, especially if the roads are blocked with crap, getting a recovery crew here might take some doing.
 
Another advantage to a larger shelter is that if your house DOES get wiped out you have somewhere secure to camp for a while. A lot of commercial shelters are only 4x6 or something - 12x20 like mine provides a lot of room. If my house slab gets swept clean I've still got somewhere to stay on site.
 
Getting closer to launching Operation Gun Vault.

Architect just left, we talked about shoring up my deck and stuff while the work is done. Costing me about a quarter of what I'd THOUGHT it was going to cost.

Of course, there's still the small details:

Vault door, have to find a place for that which can install (specs on sizing the entryway appropriately will also play in to how the pour goes.... so that has to get decided before the work begins)

HVAC extensions are another issue; going to need an aux unit or a dual zone addition to my current system to regulate temp separately from the rest of the house. Going to talk to my HVAC guy soon.

Electrical, I can handle myself.

Water; opting NOT to run water to it, don't want any risk of frozen pipes ruining what I store. I can keep a couple 5 gallon sealed containers of distilled water in there for emergencies, and will move at least a portion of my food reserves in. (We always keep at least 3 months of non-perishables on hand)

Build is currently estimated for 8" reinforced rebar poured concrete walls and roof, with 3' footers. Should be sturdy enough for my plans. :)
 
Jowy-D

Yeah .. but I'd probably ship the kids, wife, and my mentally disabled sister off to a hotel room. 10x20 is a bit crowded for 8 people. :)
 
Vault doors - contact folks who make them for banks - start with a good locksmith who handles commercial jobs like that - he might have some contacts.

There was a poster on TFL who did this for a living - the last vault door they restored from an old bank for a walk-in vault for a customer weighed right at 6,200 pounds and needed special reinforcing for the door and wall areas
 
Josiewales - Tornado!!!

You'd be surprised. When South Pekin was hit back in 02 everything three houses down from my Uncle's house was LEVELLED. They found a minivan in a tree after it passed. They found a compact car that was tossed OVER a mile away - it landed in the middle of a corn field.

We live in FARM country. SUV is the least of my concerns about falling debris in a tornado - I'm more concerned about COMBINES and TRACTORS landing on my house!

EDIT: *THAT* was only a "small" F2 tornado. Scale goes WAY up from there.
 
(I'd thought it was an F3 in an earlier post, but my coworker who lives there corrected me, and said it was rated as a "strong F2", didn't quite hit the F3 scale.)
 
Trent-

Once I helped someone move a bank vault door (old, small) to a basement to install as a door. It was in an old cellar with 3 of the walls being sandstone. The forth wall was concrete block, filled with concrete with discarded carbide bits mixed in. The door was affixed to this wall. The ceiling was poured concrete, with steel i beams. I do not know if I had re-bar in it, I assume so. We moved the vault door with a piano mover (dolly) and chain hoists, after supporting the stairs.

Also, a friends house recently burned down, completely. The basement had a poured concrete ceiling, and while it was hot (for a long time) it did not fail from the fire or the efforts to put it out.

Good luck and stay safe!
 
Pics of that car in the field-

dcp_0178.jpg


dcp_0179.jpg


I'll see if I can dig up the one in the tree :)
 
You must be planning on living in this structure after a tornado takes the rest of the building off the top of it. With that in mind, Would a generator be something you need to consider being built into this, on the outside of course.
Since you will already have this wired into your house and are doing the wiring yourself, maybe you should consider putting a double throw disconnect on your house electrical system on the wall inside your shelter, so you can disconnect this safe room from the house in the event of immenent disaster and could do it on the way in the door to it. Then the room would have the ability to be powered off a generator.
We did this in Pennsylvania because our power went off all the time from being on REA.

At -20 deg and no power for heat, it take to many times to build an alternate power system in the house.

We put in the double throw disconnect so when the power went out we could go down stairs, switch the disconnect to disconnect the electric companies system from the house and hit the electric start and run the house from the outside slab mounted generator.

It worked well for us and if you get hit with a tornado that wipes out your house, your shelter will still have heat if even just electric heaters that are already inside the shelter.
Keep it simple, but remember that anything you have in your shelter that is running off your house current could also be ran off a generator. Any time the power went off you would be covered.

A double throw disconnect is not that expensive and insures that a generator will not back feed into an electric companies transformer. They are manditory in most states for use with a backup generator that is tied into house wiring.

Just a thought.

Just something to think about
 
Tightgroup Tiger -

I have a small portable Honda generator that I can keep inside the room. It'd be enough to power a small heater. We used to use it when I raced motorcycles for tire warmers and power tools.

I doubt I'd live out of the room if a storm took the rest of the house - probably just bolt it up and hotel it. Like I said, have a lot of kids.

Speaking of disasters, fire is a serious concern. I've been researching all the different types of concrete to try to get the best strength / durability / fire resistance / spalling resistance. Apparently there is lightweight high strength synthetic fiber reinforced concrete that is rated for 4 hours at 1200 degrees at 5.1" thick.

Siliceous aggregate needs to be avoided, it has poor thermal characteristics and gets weaker when put under 1200 degree heat. Carbonate aggregate concrete actually gets STRONGER when exposed to this level of heat. (Yeah, my house burns down, but my gun room is 15% stronger than it was before.. what the hell?!)

Interesting stuff, concrete.

We're looking at 8" thick walls, reinforced with rebar, on all sides and ceiling. That'd give my guns protection for about 6 hours at 1200 degrees, if I'm reading the specs right here: http://www.nrmca.org/research/fireresistance_cif_winter_07.pdf

Surely the house will either be put out, or completely gone, within 6 hours.
 
One ounce load -

Those look pretty good, I want to get at least two or three options on doors. One of the things I need is a door that can be opened from the inside without too much fuss.

I'm sure those things would stand up to a tornado but I should probably talk to them. I need at LEAST two hours of fire rating on the door; would prefer four or six hours since the structure itself will stand up to a fire for that duration. We DO live out in the country with the nearest fire department being small, 100% volunteer. So I have to assume a 30 minute response time. By then, any fire would really be going.

EDIT: Fire is a major concern, one of the biggest, actually, that I have. I want this room to offer "better than gun safe" levels of fire protection; with 8" concrete walls... should do the trick. :)
 
Having built an addition that connected two foundations, I can tell you that a properly prepared site with a footing drain (preferably piped to daylight), will go a long ways to keeping your new room and your basement dry.

My concrete guy drilled holes for rebar into the existing foundation at a 45 deg down angle and then epoxied the rebar into the holes and bent it horizontal. The end walls of the new foundation were poured with the forms terminating at the existing wall with the rebar sticking out into them. In order for the new wall to pull away, it will have to lift it's own weight up to extract the rebar from the downward sloped holes in the existing wall.

This system has worked, and with a very liberal amount of calk on the exterior seam, some foundation tar and backfilling with clean stone all the way to the footing at these junctions, and a footing drain.... the basement is bone dry (and we don't have gutters on the roof eaves).

Even though it worked and was relatively easy to do, I wish the foundation guy had cut a slot into the existing foundation to act as a verticle toung and groove joint, as all the lateral pressure is supported by the four rebar connections. Fortunately for us, the surrounding soil is ledge, so there's no real soil pressure pushing back on the foundation.

We had a concrete cutter come out and cut a door hole into the existing foundation, so the two basements are connected.

Best part of all, is I was able to claim the basement of the addition for a hobby woodshop with dedicated reloading and hobby gunsmithing benches :)

Good luck with your "safe room" .... (keep in mind that as we saw in Lybia, they don't hold up against RPGs)

I'm soooooo glad I don't live in an area with frequent tornados or hurricanes any more. I just have to maintain a good backup generator and a wood stove to cope with ice storms.
 
Great info, appreciate it.

Unfortunately tying the two foundations together is difficult / impossible - the house has a WOOD foundation. (Yeah, 4800 sq foot 5 level house, with a wood foundation...). It's strange, but in over 35 years the house hasn't budged, moved, or had any issues whatsoever. We do have gutter guards on the rain gutters, and they drain in to subterranean pipes which carry the water 15+ yards away from the house. Keeps the areas around the house from collecting water.

SSN Vet said:
Good luck with your "safe room" .... (keep in mind that as we saw in Lybia, they don't hold up against RPGs)
Click to expand...

That possibility is pretty remote, I'd think.. :)
 
Trent said:
One ounce load -

Those look pretty good, I want to get at least two or three options on doors. One of the things I need is a door that can be opened from the inside without too much fuss.

I'm sure those things would stand up to a tornado but I should probably talk to them. I need at LEAST two hours of fire rating on the door; would prefer four or six hours since the structure itself will stand up to a fire for that duration. We DO live out in the country with the nearest fire department being small, 100% volunteer. So I have to assume a 30 minute response time. By then, any fire would really be going.

EDIT: Fire is a major concern, one of the biggest, actually, that I have. I want this room to offer "better than gun safe" levels of fire protection; with 8" concrete walls... should do the trick. :)
Click to expand...
You might want to consider an airlock-style entry - vault door first that opens out, followed by a fire door that opens in. You would need enough room between them for the lockset, but you wouldn't be standing between the doors. Probably cheaper and more effective than a 4-hr fire door.

If you think you might be trapped inside during such a fire, a backup air supply is a consideration.
 
SSN Vet: "Good luck with your "safe room" .... (keep in mind that as we saw in Lybia, they don't hold up against RPGs)

I'm soooooo glad I don't live in an area with frequent tornados or hurricanes any more. I just have to maintain a good backup generator and a wood stove to cope with ice storms."

Well, I'm soooo glad I don't live in an area with frequent RPGs, even if we do get warnings fairly often in the spring and fall.
EDITED: To clarify, I mean we get TORNADO warnings. Not RPG warnings.
 
I have been meaning to build a "hidden" door to a vault room (really, just a room with a couple of gun safes and such.) Something like those secret bookshelf doorways would be nice.
 
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