How much does a safe for home cost?

Let's start at the beginning, which is to define what a home safe is, how it is built and what it can be used for. Counter-intuitively, an awareness of the nature of a safe as an everyday household appliance often requires clarification.

Regardless of what level of security a particular home safe represents, most are built according to a single scheme.

A home safe is a device constructed from steel. Lightweight models, such as small furniture safes, have a single-wall construction, i.e. their body consists of a single steel plate. The higher the burglary resistance class, the more complicated the construction of the body becomes, with more steel layers supplemented by other materials such as special concrete, a layer of thermal insulation, etc.

The thickness and type of corpus directly affects the resistance to mechanical damage and therefore increases the burglary resistance level of a specific safe.

The door of a safe generally has a heavier and thicker structure than the body. Even single-walled and lightweight models usually have double-walled doors. Two types of doors are common:

• those with internal hinges that allow the safe to open 90 degrees, most commonly found in lightweight furniture safes. The positive effect of this type of hinge is that the whole safe has a regular body with nothing standing out.

• with external hinges, which are generally thicker and stronger, they also allow home safes to be opened ajar, which offers many possibilities. In this case, of course, there are safeguards against cutting the hinges, either a fixed bolt or even an overlapping inward profile.

The article 'Furniture safe – external or internal hinges?' deals more extensively with this difference.

An element that is always present in safes is multi-sided bolting. Only the smallest and weakest home safes have bolts on one side.

Next to the construction of the body and the door, the lock is the most important element of a safe which will keep its contents secure: valuables, cash, jewellery, documents or weapons. We have a variety of different locks on offer.

A key lock is a standard feature of every safe, and you will always receive at least 2 pieces of key in the set. The use of a key lock is of little convenience, especially in the case of safes for several users, and also in the case of heavier models where the key is several centimetres long.

A much more convenient solution is an electronic lock, which is just as easy and secure to use and hassle-free.

A mechanical combination lock is a good solution for customers who are averse to electronics, but it requires patience and precision.

On the other hand, the most technologically advanced lock is a biometric lock based on a fingerprint reader.

As home safes are designed for the secure storage of valuables, documents or the keeping of weapons, each has a security class.

The burglary resistance class is issued by EU-accredited testing units and in accordance with European standards. Such bodies are, for example, the Institute of Precision Mechanics in Warsaw, but also VdS – the German association of insurers, where the most valued certificates for burglary and fire resistance are issued.

There are several security classes. Below I briefly summarise them.

• • S1, S2 – basic resistance classes according to EN 14450, most often in these classes we have a light household safe, a furniture safe, rather not for storing cash or valuables, but for housekeeping purposes.
• • 0, I, II, III, IV and V – resistance classes for safes designed to emerge unscathed from a burglary attempt using serious equipment. The security class here is based on the stricter EN 1143-1 standard.

• • S60P/S120P – fire resistance level expressed in minutes, 60 and 120 minutes respectively, certified to EN 1047-1. Applies to paper documents.
• • S60DIS/S120DIS – similarly, the fire resistance level relating to electronic data carriers such as disks, LTO tapes or USB sticks.

Fine, but what then can you use a home safe for? Home safes have quite a few applications, we will briefly discuss them.

A popular topic lately – weapons. Under current law, users of weapons are obliged to store long and short weapons in safes with at least class S1 in accordance with EN 14450. Safes for long weapons make up a large chunk of the market, although the simplest ones are quite cheap. Small weapons, in turn, can be kept in virtually any safe from S1 upwards, so it happens that just the home safe is the place for them.

If you have – and you probably do, since you are reading this article - valuables such as jewellery, valuables, cash or securities, a high-security home safe is the best option. Burglar-proof home safes, commonly referred to as strongboxes, are the perfect protection against the theft of valuables, including your most precious possessions – your family heirlooms.

Each of us has kilos of more or less important documents at home that need to be secured. Theft is theft, but the most common accident that can happen is not a burglary at all, but a fire. Therefore, if you anticipate storing documents at home, it is worth having a safe that guarantees fire resistance.

If, when doing a review of your needs, you see yourself in all of the above categories, then there's nothing stopping you from storing everything in one universal safe.

You'll find both models that fit specific solutions and home safes that you personalise to suit all your purposes in our range.

Let's use the example of the WT 297-01 gun safe, a model with the following dimensions:

• external height 1510 mm,
• external width 705 mm,
• weight: 365 kg.

This safe has security class I according to the EN 1143-1 standard, making it suitable for storing valuable items in addition to weapons. The high burglar-proof class, in addition to its resistance to mechanical damage, results in a considerable dead weight, which will effectively prevent the safe from being taken out during a burglary.

On the other hand, it is a model with 60-minute fire resistance, so you can keep important documents or cash in it without fear.

Elements such as the number of shelves, the number of weapon holders or an internal safe can also be personalised, so we will tailor the base version of the product in terms of the required functionalities to your needs.

Well, but what about the price? As I mentioned at the beginning, the regular price of a safe depends not on how much you will allow yourself to be overcharged, but on what you need. Buying a safe can be simple and cheap. We have safes available almost immediately in our online shop, there are numerous products where you can keep your valuables. The lowest regular price there even falls below PLN 1,000 and so a sense of security is assured.

But! If you want to be sure of optimum security for your valuables, based on a strong, heavy, large-walled construction, such as that provided by high grade burglar-proof models or fireproof safes, check out what we can offer you. If you'd like to find out more and get information or a quote – give us a call.

Check out more:   Is it worth buying a safe from a supermarket?