Frequently Asked Questions

Why do I need a safe?
What size safe do I need?
Is there such a thing as a "fire-proof" safe?
How does a safe provide fire protection? How does it work?
What does "fire-rating" mean?
How do I compare fire ratings/What kind of fire rating should I get?
What is an intumescent door seal and why is it important?
How are safes fire tested?
Why use sheetrock for fire protection in a safe?
What fire rating do I need?
What is the difference between a composite and a plate door?
What is a "relocker"?
Should I get a safe with an electronic lock or a manual lock?
Is the manual lock or electronic lock better in a fire?
Is the manual lock or electronic lock better in an attempted break-in?
What do I need to be prepared for moving my safe into my house?
What is the best location in my house for my safe?
Should I anchor my safe to the floor?

A gun safe protects you and your family against theft, fire, and the potential liability that might arise if one of your firearms is used to commit a crime. In the U.S., a burglary is committed about every 12 seconds and a house fire occurs nearly every 85 seconds.

2. What size safe do I need?

Most safes have a listed capacity which is based on the total number of gun barrel slots. Your particular firearms determine how many you can store. For every scoped rifle, add two slots and don't forget to account for future accumulation. Take inventory of your valuables. You may want to store things such as documents, taxes, pistols, expensive tools, photos, jewelry, collections, heirlooms, and ammunition. These things take up a lot of space in your safe and you'll want to make sure you have extra space for things you may have overlooked. Buying one large safe can save you the hassle of having to upgrade later, as moving the safes into and out of your home can become a very expensive and exhausting undertaking.

3. Is there such thing as a "fire-proof" safe?

There is no truly "fire-proof" safe, but virtually all will offer some level of fire protection. The amount of fire protection provided is determined by the design. The more fire-lining and thicker the steel, the longer they can withstand a fire, though every safe has its limit.

4. How does a safe provide fire protection? How does it work?

Virtually all gun safes and home safes provide some minimal level of fire protection merely by the fact that they are steel boxes. Increased fire protection is generally facilitated by adding one or more layers of fire-resistant sheetrock that acts as an insulator and a heat sink, and by the addition of a fire/smoke seal on the door. There are a wide variety of fire lining materials in use, such as ceramic insulation, mineral wool blankets, or a combination of ceramic blanket and sheetrock, or concrete mixed with vermiculite. The safe's door design can make a big difference in its fire protective capabilities. Generally speaking, composite door designs tend to offer better fire protection than plate door designs. Plate doors, although generally offering superior security, tend to transfer heat faster than formed "composite doors".

5. What does "fire-rating" mean?

Safe manufacturers use fire ratings to give their customers an idea of how long they can expect their safe to last in a fire before its contents will be ruined. For example, if a safe's rating is 1200 degrees/45 minutes, the safe was exposed to temperatures up to 1200 degrees. After 45 minutes, the internal temperature of the safe reached a certain "failure" temperature. Most companies use 350 degrees as their "failture" temperature, because this is the temperature at which paper begins to darken.

6. How do I compare fire ratings/What fire rating should I get?

Fire tests and fire ratings vary from manufacturer to manufacturer and there is no standard or required test in the industry. This makes it impossible for the consumer to use manufacturers' fire ratings to compare safes. Comparing fire ratings is like comparing apples to oranges. The prudent customer will verify any fire protection ratings by comparing design.

Here are some factors to consider when comparing:

While plate doors tend to be slightly more secure, they inherently provide less fire protection and transfer heat faster to the safe's interior. Generally, 40 to 50 minutes is the maximum you can expect out of a plate door design.

Make sure there is an intumescent door seal around the entire perimeter of the door. See "Why is an intumescent door seal and why is it important?".

Internal hinged safes are generally inadequately protected against fire around the hinge area.

Internal Door Hinge This is a picture of a very well known gun safe manufacturer's internal hinge where the internal hinge attatches to the inside body of the safe. Notice the large area of exposed metal. In a house fire, this exposed metal area will be glowing orange, radiating heat directly into the gun safe's interior. The manufacturer claims a "certified 30 minute/1200 degree fire rating". Furthermore, internal hinged gun safes frequently have significant gaps in their fire/smoke door seal, where the hinge attatches to the door. For this reason, it is unrealistic to expect more than 20 to 30 minutes of fire protection from any internally hinged gun safe, unless the manufacturer has taken extra steps to remove these deficiencies.

7. What is an intumescent door seal and why is it important?

When exposed to heat (in a house fire) the intumescent door seal expands to fill any small gaps between the door and the body of the gun safe, sealing out smoke, gases, and heat. A safe without an intumescent door seal can not be expected to offer more than 10 or 15 minutes of protection.

8. How are safes fire tested?

Some gun safe companies choose to send their safes to an independent "lab" to be fire tested, but don't be fooled; in many cases, the labs allow the manufacturer to define many or all of the test parameters. For instance, if the manufacturer chooses, they can specify to have their gun safe fire tested laying down on its back in the oven. This will lead to a very misleading test. The coolest place in a safe during a fire will always be at the bottom, as heat rises. Similarly, the coolest place in a gas fired test oven will be the bottom. If the safe is tested laying down, the entire temperature reading inside the safe shows a uniform, lower than usual temperature. Additionally, the weight of the door will unrealistically help seal the door. The lab will then give the manufacturer a fire rating of, for example, 1200 degree/60 minute fire rating, when in a real-life situation, the gun safe would fail in a fraction of the time. A safe standing upright in your home, will experience much more heat than this test safe.

A manufacturer can also specify a longer ramp-up time (time it takes for the testing oven to reach the desired temperature used in their fire rating). The longer the ramp-up time, the shorter duration at peak temperature. For example, if the safe's desired fire rating is 1200 degrees/30 minutes, with ramp up during the first 20 minutes, then the safe was only exposed to 1200 degrees for the last 10 minutes of the test. However, a long ramp up time is not necessarily bad as long as the test duration is appropriately longer as well. Look for tests that are 30 minutes or longer with at least 20 of those minutes above 1000 degrees. An hour long test should have a ramp up of no more than 20 minutes. There are a number of other factors that can skew test results, like thermocouple (temperature sensor) quantity and location, burner placement, safe placement in relationship to burners and oven walls, and of course, failure criteria. As a consumer, it is impossible for you to verify exctly how the test was done. You can ask all the right questions, but you are still assuming that the person you are talking to knows exactly how the test was performed and is telling you the truth. For this reason, the only way to accurately compare fire protection is to compare how the safe is constructed and fire-protected. It is the only way you can verify you are getting your money's worth.

9. Why use sheetrock for fire protection in a safe?

Sheetrock is relatively inexpensive and is actually very effective in a fire. It transfers heat extremely slowly. A typical gun safe may have over 100 pounds of sheetrock inside of it. Moisture, normally trapped in the gypsum mixture, when heated above 212 degrees, turns to steam and escapes. This process is called 'calcination' and will hold the internal temperature of the safe at approximately 220 degrees until the sheetrock has dried out completely.

10. What fire rating do I need?

As a consumer, you must decide what level of fire rating is appropriate for your situation. Some determining factors are: fire department response time, type and amount of fuels near the safe, and heat tolerance of the items stored in it. Most house fires can reach temperatures of 1200 to 1500 degrees. Paper documents and wood start to change color at approximately 275 to 300 degrees. The average person may store rifles, photos, jewelry, or documents in their safe which may be located in the garage. What's in your garage now? Most garages are full of stored items, most of which are flammable. If you have a car parked in the garage, the gas tank is a potential source of fuel that you must consider. In such a case, we recommend a safe with a fire rating of 1200 degrees for a period of 40 minutes or more. For other locations in your house with minimal fuel in the vicinity, a 1200 degree for 30 minute fire rating may be adequate, depending on the safe company's fire rating rating parameters.

11. What is the difference between a composite and a plate door?

There are two types of doors currently in use in the gun safe and home safe industry; the plate door and the composite door. The plate door consists of a plate of steel with a framework welded on the back of it. The plate is usually 3/16" thick or more. Sheetrock is usually attatched to the back of the plate. Composite doors are a formed steel outer shell filled with fire protective sheetrock. Properly constructed composite doors provide better fire protection than plate doors. Unfortunately, some well known safe manufacturers use 14 gauge steel (.0747") or thinner when manufacturing their composite doors. Some merely spot weld the door shell and then cover up the joints with body putty, with the end result being a door that may appear to be 4 inches thick but can be easily smashed open with an axe or a sledge hammer.

12. What is a "relocker"?

A relocker is a device or design that "re-locks" the locking mechanism in the event of tampering. Generally, a spring loaded plunger is mounted inside the safe with a trigger mechanism that will fire if the lockbox is damaged. UL Group 2 manual locks have internal, spring-loaded mechanisms that will relock their deadbolts if the back cover of the lockbox is removed or punched out. All Bighorn and Rhino safes have a spring loaded, plunger-type relocker. A new invention we developed and use on the Rhino series safes is the integrated relocker. We've patented a boltwork design, used in the Rhino series safes, that incorporates additional modes of relocking geometry into the parts of the boltwork. This design is used in conjunction with the standard spring-loaded relocker to offer up to 5 times the security of other brands.

13. Should I get a safe with an electronic lock or manual lock?

They are Essentially the same. The biggest reason people upgrade to an electronic lock is for convenience. With a manual lock, you'll have to remember how to dial a combination of three numbers. This, for a lot of people, gets confusing. If you happen to miss a number on the manual lock or even are slightly off, you'll have to start over again. With an electronic lock, you'll have a combo with a certain number of digits that are pressed on a keypad. Immediately after the last digit in the combo has been pressed, the lock releases & the door can be opened. Another feature of the electronic lock is the ability to see better in a dimly-lit area. The numbers on a dial lock can be hard to read when in a room with low light or if you have a vision problem. If you needed to get into the safe quickly, an electronic lock would be much faster. Therefore, if you are storing home defense weapons in your safe, you may want to consider an electronic lock. Lastly, the combo on the electronic lock can be changed by the user quickly and easily without using any tools, while the manual lock does require tools and is not as simple.

14. Is the manual lock or electronic lock better in a fire?

Neither. The manual lock and electronic lock will both be damaged in a fire, but your safe remains secured.

15. Is the manual lock or electronic lock better during a break-in attempt?

Each lock will perform the same in a break-in attempt. However, most quality electronic locks have an automatic lock-out feature which disables the lock for a period of time (usually 15 minutes) if someone enters three incorrect combinations consecutively.

16. What do I need to be prepared for when moving my safe into my house?

Safety should be paramount given the weight of most safes. If you've never moved something this size, have back problems, stairs are involved, or the safe weighs more than 500 pounds, you should hire a professional. Always keep non-essential persons away from the area.

Move a safe to a ground-floor location should be possible using two or more men with the proper tools. A moving dolly with pneumatic tires or a heavy-duty appliance dolly should be able to handle up to 700 pounds. These can be inexpensively rented from a local tool rental store. Remember, a heavy weight placed on small diameter wheels may damage floor tiles, wood, or vinyl flooring. Lay sheets of plywood to dissipate the point load and protect door thresholds if necessary. More than three stairs requires specialized equipment, more men, or better yet- a professional. The pro may save you time and money in the long run.

17. What is the best location in my house for my safe?

Locating your safe in the garage is convenient, but unless the safe is bolted to the floor, it can be an easy target for burlgars. It is not uncommon for thieves with a truck to back into a garage and load up a safe in broad daylight. Even with the safe anchored down, it is a good idea to cover it some way to hide it from view. You'll also want to remember that heat rises, so the first level or basement of your home will best protect it and your belongings in case of fire.

18. Should I anchor my safe to the floor?

For security and safety reasons, most manufacturers recommend bolting your safe to the floor. Most safes are pre-drilled, allowing you to bolt into wood for concrete as are Rhino and Bighorn safes.