You’re ready to buy a safe for your business or home. You start researching safes on-line and you see a floor safe. You think it’s awesome! It’s got everything you’re looking for! You can hide in that back closet and no crook will ever find it. It's perfect! Not really. The reality is a floor safe is not as great as you think it is.
Here are the top 7 reasons why you shouldn’t buy a floor safe:
1. They somehow always attract water. After servicing and opening a lot of floors safes I’ve seen a lot of mysterious water. The mystery moisture comes from the humidity in the air. It gets captured in the safe when it's opened and the dynamics of temperature with the steel body against the moist concrete begins to liquefy into the humidity. Is it also possible you might experience a broken pipe or a backed-up sink? Do you want all of your valuables submerged in water?
2. How flexible are you? Are you going to want the squat down or get on your stomach to open and retrieve things from the depths of your floor safe? If so, don’t plan on wearing skinny jeans or ever having any type of back pain.
3. They’re not cheap to install. Unless you’re getting it installed when the construction guys are pouring the concrete. If you do it after the fact make sure the installer is familiar with post tension slabs. If it gets damaged during installation it could compromise your slab. Definitely not a D.I.Y.!
4. The springs break on them. Most floor safes have a spring hinge or hydraulic arm that hold up the door when opened. They will all fail at some point. Some are abled to be serviced but the majority of them are not. Do you want a safe door falling on your hand?
5. They’re pretty permanent. If you decide to move it’s going to be pretty hard to take the safe with you. It is after all stuck in concrete.
6. Limited space. Because it’s just a box without shelving, it’s hard to organize. Think of it as a big metal purse. Things get lost in there and you need a flashlight to retrieve items or you have to pull everything out to access them.
7. It’s hard to install them correctly. When installing most people only worry about the door opening all the way. They fail to consider dial orientation in a user-friendly way.
Now that I’ve finished trash talking the floor safe, here’s a little history on it. In their heyday, there were no real alternatives available for business or homeowners. Back then, most all surface positioned safes were made of only steel, meaning no fire protection. Today, through industry and innovation most all burglary/gun safes offer varying levels of fire protection.
The inspiration for this article came from a request from a friend. They recently moved into a new business space and inherited this beauty. I told them to get a grinder and cut the door in half.They wanted to save it and I almost spit my drink out. I then explained all the reasons it was a lost cause. It is a great picture to illustrate most of my points.
About the Author
Mike Foster is a licensed security professional with 20 years of experience in the door security arena, having implemented over 15,000 IC Cores and hundreds of key management systems. Mike is currently a leading security solutions project manager for Rolland Solutions. Mike currently lives in Dallas with his wife and their pug named Princeton.
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