Walk in gun vault question

[Sav .250]

Make sure the fire-rating of your unit is stout. If your having a walk in built. You must have a ton of stuff.

 

[a1abdj]

Make sure the fire-rating of your unit is stout

Keeping a safe cool in a fire is vastly different than keeping a vault cool. A fire rating isn't always important, whereas other design elements are.

 

[Ranger Roberts]

Make sure the fire-rating of your unit is stout. If your having a walk in built. You must have a ton of stuff.

Most of the doors that I have looked at are around a 90 minutes fire rating I believe.

CB900f - I'll be PM'ing you shortly. I have been working crazy shifts at work because we have an officer injured and one on vacation. I've mostly been posting here from my cell phone and I really suck at typing on this thing. Soon as I can get to an actual computer I'll shoot you a PM. Thanks!

 

[redneck]

From BSA:

Something to think about is heating and cooling the vault. By building code my builder had to drill two 5" holes at the top of the walls for ventilation. Since a big reason for the vault is fire protection this created a problem for me as fire can enter the vault through those openings. I removed the ductwork that went into the vault (for a/c and heating) and blocked one of holes with fireproof expanding foam. I have the other 5" hole open for now as I have not found a solution for it closing automatically doing a fire.

I have never seen one for a round duct, but there are fire dampers that close automatically to shut off ductwork. Its basically a spring loaded steel plate that is held up by a band inside the duct. If the band melts, the damper closes. You may be able to get one that works off of a smoke detector as well. Your HVAC guy should have been able to help you out with this.
I don't know the details of how to spec one or where to buy it but I have had to have them tested during final inspections on commercial buildings when I was a superintendent, they aren't uncommon.

 

[Ohio Gun Guy]

The wood framing is furring over the concrete poured walls.

Not my house.... but i'll bet that is a partition from the other part of the basement, meaning the other walls are furred concrete walls as well.

Not sure on the ceiling... O.P.- is that reinforced?

 

[JimPGov]

I did it in 2012. Though you think you have explained it to the builder in plain english??? Stay on the builder. Mine is in the basement. I said i wanted it fully enclosed in concrete. The builder made no plans for the roof in concrete. Asked the builder how many people does he fire a year. He said 3-4. All it would take is 1 guy with a sawsall to cut through the main floor and drop into the vault from the top. Luckily i decided to put radiant heat on the main floor. So the roof of the vault is 6" thick and the walls are 8" thick. When ready to pour the basement walls i showed up and found the entire top of the vault door ready to be left without concrete. 3' wide by 2' tall. Contractors reason; to run the duct-work and electric. Well that was fixed. 1 piece conduit and 1-5" round duct through the 8" concrete.

Ok; First mine is 12'x15'. Thought it was huge. I was wrong. Build it twice as big as you think you need.

Separate zone for the radiant heat. I didn't think of that. Boy that would have been a nice touch.

Put a range hood vent over your gun cleaning bench. VENTED OUTSIDE

I went with the door that swings in.

I really wish i had put a sink and toilet in it.

Doorbell to hear when someone stops by

You can't have too many outlets

GOOD LUCK

 

[Ohio Gun Guy]

They make an expanded hardened metal that is very difficult to cut.

 

[medalguy]

We built a custom home in 1983 and I decided to build a walk-in vault almost 6 x 9 feet. I wish I had made it bigger but it worked quite well. We had the foundation poured and the home framed in. Then we had a company come out and drill a 10 inch hole through the slab to install a Browning Pro Steel door placed. We set the door and poured a concrete epoxy around the door frame. Then it was bolted to the wood framing and we placed 1/4 inch steel plate all around and on the top. all welded securely. We put OSB inside and outside the steel, then caulked everything and the builder then added the framing around the vault to complete the interior construction. We bought a 34 inch wide vault door, and we put a wooden interior door outside of the vault door which had to be custom made to 38 inches wide so the vault door would swing out. It worked fine and completely hid the metal vault door.

One thing I didn't do right was allow enough room behind the outside hinges to allow the vault door to swing all the way back. I could only get it about 3/4 of the way fully open, but it didn't really create any problems.

I installed racks down one side of the long wall and shelves on the opposite wall for handguns, optics, jewelry, and other valuables. I didn't put any outlets inside but I did have a light in the ceiling with a switch at the door. No emergency lights just because I didn't think I would ever need them. I didn't.

Since the vault was inside the house and not on any outside walls I didn't do anything about ventilation or heat/AC and never had any problems with humidity even though we lived in south Texas at the time. We did put R19 insulation around the outside of the vault to help maintain the temperature.

 

[Chuck R.]

I have to question the walk in safe shown. What good is that big heavy steel door that cant be kicked in when a sledge hammer will get you into any of those wood framed walls. Looking at the door frame its obvious that the wood framed walls are covering a concrete block exterior. I could get into that safe with a good knife. that is unless im missing something.

Lloyd,

IF you're referring to my pics of framing, that framing and insulation is on the inside of 10" of reinforced poured concrete (all 4 sides, 3 sides below grade). The ceiling is an engineered concrete slab that's also the floor of my garage and sits on a couple "I" beams anchored into the walls.

So yea, you can probably get in with a sledge and a pocket knife, but I'd pack a lunch.....it's going to be a little while.

Walls:



Ceiling:



Chuck

 

[TBJK]

You can get at least 2 different fire dampers. One has a Fusible link (only seen lead ones)that when it melts when the temp gets high then shuts the damper. Other style is a spring return fire smoke damper. It has an actuator that opens & remains open until you lose power or the fire alarm goes off. Personally I'd go with the power open spring return. I would also keep a spare actuator just in case. After I have seen probably a 1000 of them only seen one or 2 go bad.

Btw Chuck, that is an awesome vault.

 

[Ohio Gun Guy]

NIce pictures.

 

[Gaucho Gringo]

I can tell you from personal experience no way is anybody going to get through a poured concrete wall with rebar just using sledgehammer. I used to work industrial construction and it took 3 men 2 days tear down a 3 ft X 3 ft reinforced concrete pier using pneumatic jackhammers and a cutting torch. Would have been better dynamiting it but that was out of the question due to the surroundings.