Best portable fireproof home safe & lock box

Best home safe (Not fire resistant)

Introduction

If you have any valuables that you wish to keep well protected at home, getting a strong and durable safe is essential. You don’t necessarily want to keep all your jewelry, stocks and bonds, and other valuable items in a bank or a safety deposit box, especially if you need to have them easily accessible. You will probably want to keep your sensitive personal and business documents close at hand, any of which may be in paper or digital form.

Of course, you do want to make sure that your valuables are as safe and secure as possible. Keeping valuables in a safe will not only give you a measure of protection against theft and burglary but also protect them from fire and water damage. In the event of a house fire or a flood, a good safe could be the only thing that will keep your valuable items protected.  

Safes come in different sizes and forms and have many different features. The best home safes will provide solid construction and tamper-proof mechanisms that will resist the most determined attempts at entry. With a good safe, your valuable items will be hard to get to.

Features to consider first

• Fireproof. Safes have fire ratings that indicate their ability to protect contents against fire damage. The best home safes can keep contents protected for several hours at temperatures of up to 1700° F.
• Waterproof. Safes may also have water protection ratings that indicate their ability to protect contents against water damage. Safes with high water-resistant ratings can protect contents for up to 24 hours even when immersed in water.
• Size. A safe should be able to store paper documents as well as bulkier items such as jewelry and other valuables. Keep in mind that some small home safes have thick walls that may limit the number of items that you can store inside.
• Combination dials/keys/keypads. Safe locking mechanisms may either be combination dials, keys, or electronic keypads. Combination dials and keys tend to be more robust and durable than keypads, although a good keypad certainly offers sufficient protection against unauthorized access and is more convenient besides. You might also consider getting a safe that offers both electronic keypad and key entry, in case you forget the combination.

Before you buy a home safe

Check the brand.

Certain brands have a good track record of strength, durability, and reliability, as well as the ability to resist fire and water damage. Some of the most reputable brands that consistently get high ratings and good reviews are AmazonBasics, Viking Security, and SentrySafe.

What’s the rated durability?

Durability is one of the most important qualities of a safe. A safe should be able to withstand normal environmental conditions, as well as the most determined attempts to crack it.

More importantly, it should be able to protect the contents against damage from fire, water, and other elements.

Consider the way of access.

A safe should be easy enough to access so that you can get to it quickly when you need to retrieve something. At the same time, it shouldn’t be so accessible that burglars will be able to find it easily.

Installing your safe into the floor, into a wall, or in a heavy cabinet should make it accessible enough for you, but still keep it concealed.

 Don’t pay to much.

There’s no getting around the fact that a good home safe costs a lot of money. Quality materials, solid construction, and dependable security features come at a price, which is often pretty steep.

Making do with a budget safe isn’t advisable, like the shoddy materials and build quality offer little to no protection. Get the best home safe you can afford, and you will thank yourself for it.

Are you considering a home safe?

If you have to ask yourself whether or not you need a safe, you probably do need one. Having a safe will allow you to keep valuable items close at hand and easily accessible at all times. Sure, you can keep cash and other valuables in a bank vault or security deposit box. But then you wouldn’t have ready access to your items as you would if you had a safe in your home.

Having a safe not only ensures that you have ready access to your valuable items, but that they are stored safely and securely as well. Without a safe to store them in, your cash, jewelry, and other items will be just as accessible to burglars as they would be to you. Locked drawers barely provide reasonable protection against burglary, and are only slightly more secure than keeping your items in an unlocked jewelry box.

The best safes provide some degree of protection against fire and water damage as well. Although there are limits to how long your items will be protected against water immersion and exposure to fire, a good fire and waterproof safe will at least give you a window of opportunity to retrieve your valuables in the event of a fire or flood.

 What is the best type of safe

The best type of safe is the one that best suits your particular needs. If you live in an area where property crime rates are high, you will want a safe that has a good track record of resting safe-cracking attempts. You should also look into the ability of the safe to be installed securely. A good lock system is a must of course, but even the most dependable lock wouldn’t be of much use if the safe can easily be pulled out of its moorings and carried away.

In places where property crime is less of an issue, you might want to focus more on the ability of a safe to resist fire and water damage. Fire-resistant safes usually have fire protection ratings, which indicate how long they can resist fire.

Lower-rated models can usually guarantee fire protection for only up to an hour. Higher-rated models can keep the contents protected for up to four hours or longer.

If preventing water damage is your primary concern, you should purchase a safe that guarantees up to 72 hours of protection against water intrusion even when fully immersed. That amount of time is usually sufficient for you to retrieve the safe and save the contents in the event of flooding.

Where to install a home safe

Assuming that you want to hide your safe–as opposed to placing it on display–there are a few factors to take into consideration. For starters, you should place your safe where it won’t be exposed to moisture, humidity, or direct sunlight, as these can damage the safe itself as well as its contents.

You should also consider a location that wouldn’t be immediately obvious to would-be burglars.

Inside a wall space.

Installing your safe into a wall might seem like an obvious choice. It is true that most burglars would probably look behind paintings if they know there is a safe in the house.

But you could offset the potential risk somewhat by hanging paintings on several walls in your home, or by having one or two ‘dummy’ safes in addition to your primary safe.

This way, you make it much harder for burglars to find the safe where you keep your truly valuable belongings. Or otherwise, think about inside your wardrobe.

Under the floor.

Installing your safe into a concrete floor is also a good choice. Properly installed, a safe encased in concrete is virtually impenetrable, and will be very difficult to remove or crack open. Short of drilling around it with a powerful cordless drill, or kango hammer your safe will remain right where it is for the foreseeable future.

You do have to take extra care to prevent dust from getting into the safe and into the lock mechanism. You will also have to make doubly sure to avoid exposure to moisture.

Inside a locked cabinet.

Finally, consider installing your safe inside a sturdy and heavy cabinet. Although not quite as secure as concrete, a heavy wooden cabinet will provide a good degree of security and protection for your home safe. It will also be much easier to install your safe in a cabinet than into the floor.

Placing your safe in cabinet probably wouldn’t deter a determined burglar, but it should be a sufficiently secure spot for less valuable belongings.

Home safe maintenance

It’s important to store your safe in a dry area like in a roof space, you can apply clean lubrication like “silicone spray” on internal parts to stop corrosion. Just like any lock can seize so can a home safe if left for too long without movement.

Obviously, the trouble with a safe’s lock is that if is seizes there is no non-destructive way you can get back into it.  Therefore you should open your safe periodically and check everything is hinging smoothly.

Make sure to avoid internal condensation this is a problem with lockable waterproof cases rather than safes. The solution is to keep a silica gel pack inside.

Comparing the top home safes

Conclusion

For almost all purposes, I strongly recommend that you get a safe that is both fireproof and waterproof. Some of the best fire- and water-resistant models offer excellent anti-burglary features besides, so you are pretty much protected against any eventuality.

They might cost more initially, but a reliable safe that keeps your valuables–as well as sensitive documents and digital media–protected, could be worth it in the case of an unexpected emergency.