The wide range of safes available means that more and more private individuals, for whom price is an important selection criterion, are choosing safes. It is not necessary to spend a fortune to equip a house with a solid and thief-proof safe. However, it is worth avoiding the cheapest models, the quality of which has not been confirmed by certificates. We advise you what to look for when choosing an affordable safe for your home.
Universal safe for home
Customers who are looking for an all-purpose safe for private use at an attractive price usually need protection that will protect the contents from theft, as well as from destruction in a fire, for example. It is worth choosing such models of home safes, which combine anti-burglary and fire-resistant functions. If you have limited space at your disposal, e.g. in a small flat, it is worth looking for anti-burglary fireproof safes with a compact structure and a weight of approx. 100 kg+. When choosing the right model, however, we should be guided not only by its price and size, but above all by its class and solidity of manufacture. The cheapest cassettes are so light that they can be easily removed by a thief without the need to open them on the spot. This kind of purchase dictated by economy does not guarantee any security. For a safe to really pay off, it must meet several requirements.
Safety first
First and foremost, the security class of a safe should comply with the PN-EN 1143-1 standard. This is an important parameter which determines the limit of the value of objects deposited in the safe and informs how resistant the container is to various tools when a thief attempts to open it. It is therefore worth following the principle that the more valuable items you want to protect in a safe, the higher class of model you should choose. Also extremely important is the resistance to high temperatures according to the PN-EN 1047-1 standard, which defines the time during which the contents of a safe will be resistant to fire, which is particularly important in the case of storing important and unrecoverable documents, works of art, digital data backup or family heirlooms. It is important that they are certified and also recognised by reputable insurers as proof of their quality and effectiveness.
Weight and dimensions of the safe
In addition to the price, the weight of the safe, the way it is assembled, the type of locks used and its equipment are also important. All these parameters influence the final price of the safe. We can choose from compact models mounted in furniture, heavy free-standing safes, as well as wall and floor safes. However, wall and floor safes should be planned already at the stage of designing the house, because their subsequent installation requires additional expenses and construction works connected with the preparation of a special recess in the wall, or a hole to be embedded in the floor.
We also recommend to read: Building a house? Think about a safe!
Lock for the safe
It is worth considering how we want to operate our safe on a daily basis. The cheapest but also the least convenient solution is a simple key lock. But when buying a safe equipped with such a lock, we will inevitably have to face the question of where to hide the key to the safe. The most popular solution is the installation of mechanical and electronic combination locks, but they in turn require memorization of the code. Here, technology comes to the rescue of our dilemmas – today we can use fingerprint biometric locks in safes, as well as open the safe from a mobile phone using secure technology like online banking.
In the end
When planning your budget for a safe, it's also worth thinking about additional security features for it, such as an alarm or custom equipment or design. Sometimes, in addition to functions such as burglary or fire protection, the appearance and design of a safe, which after all will serve us for years, is also extremely important.
