Vault Door Recomendations

[chuckbradley]

I have been looking at several different manufacturers of Vault doors. I am going to build a 20x20 Vault Room in the new building. Most likely 8" re-bar enforced poured concrete walls with concrete slab ceiling.

How important are the locking lugs? Some have 1" and some 1 1/2 " . When there are 8-20 of these does it really make a difference?

What thickness steel is reasonable? There is anywhere from 1/4" solid steel up to 1" solid steel and many different thicknesses inbetween with some being composites and not solid.

What do I need to look for in the inner working of the door mechanics and lock?

Are drill plates and relockers a must?

How important is the way the frame mounts to the concrete? What types should I stay away from and what types are desired?

Got any links to manufacturer web pages?

I am already looking at

http://www.pentagonsafes.com/_office-safes...ault-doors.html

http://www.blackswampsecurity.com/vd.htm

http://www.brownsafe.com/categories/commer...vault_doors.htm

http://www.smithsecuritysafes.com/pages/vaultdoors.html

http://www.homelandsafes.com/ArmoryVaultdoor.php

Any help would be appreciated.

[TraderJack]

Hey Chuck,

One thing I learned from working with steel for 20+ years is that it can be easily bent, shaped, broken, cut, pierced and burned. In other words almost any vault door can be compromised.

The best advice I can give you is to make it very, very, very difficult for anyone to attempt to compromise the vault room. If you're starting from scratch, why not choose something more than a 4" floor slab too. If theives know you have something valuable in that room, they will try to figure out a way to get at it.

Get a door that makes you feel safe. Get the one you can afford. But remember, the vault door with 200 locking pins made of titanium is just for your piece of mind. Hell they took the whole safe from my place! It weighed nearly 4 tons!

Think layers of security. Maybe two doors? And snakes! Lots of snakes!

Best wishes.

Regards,

TraderJack

[chuckbradley]

I know if they want in they can get in if they have the time. The key is to make it take enough time for the police to arrive.

I cant discuss the more covert security measures I will take on a public forum especially methods to deal with situations while somebody is present. Hopefully I can make it more attractive for the criminal to rob a jewelry store or bank before trying a place that sells guns.

A couple of the companies mention that stainless is not as suceptible to a torch. Id that correct? And what level of protection that will require unreasonable amount of force to "bent, shaped, broken, cut, pierced and burned."

what thickness to reasonably keep from being bent,shaped,broken,cut in a reasonable amount of time.

Is a relocker and drill plate a big security plus. Something to stop or really slow them down.

They took an 8000 lb safe. How? Did they get into it and did they get caught? And I thought a 2000lb safe was not movable.

[Jaxshooter]

Chuck

I have a friend that ownes a Pawn/Gun Shop that had a Diebold double door safe that he bought when a bank was being moved to a new location. It was bolted to the concrete floor, full of guns and jewelry, estimated weight around 6000 lbs. The thieves broke thru the wall and put a chain around the safe and pulled it out with a wrecker. They did get caught however.

Guess it dosen't look right to see a wrecker pulling a safe down the street at night. LOL

[Rob Boudrie]

Chuck -

If you're looking for a professional quality door, try to find one with a UL rating (and I'm not talking about the "Residential Security Container" rating). For example, a TL-30 rating means that the UL tester could not open the door or create a 4" hole in 30 minutes of contact time using tools he could carry. TRTL is the same, but with a torch allowed. TX is an explosive rating.

The rating does not cover the attachment to the wall which is also an issue. Typical "home gun safe" style doors can be pretty good, but aren't going to give you sufficient resistance to a highly motivated and well planned attack. If you want a "free" analysis of the effectiveness of a safe system, see if an insurance agent will tell you what would qualify as properly rated if he was underwriting inventory insurance for a jewelery store.

If you want the safe to double as a "safe room" for refuge, consider an inward opening door as these cannot be blocked, intentionally or through natural disaster, by rubble from the outside.

The lock will be rated Group II, Group IIm or Group I. Group II is resistant to 15 minutes of professional manipulation (though in practice it is generally better than that, unless the miscreant brings a laptop and the Mas-Hamliton Soft Drill software assisted manipulation system). Group IIm (required to get the UL TL rating these days) is resistant to 2 hours of professional manipulation through the use of a piviting engagement cam and false gates (for the S&G mechanical, other vendors may use different techniques to get Group II). Group I is considered manipulation proof, but usually requires an extra step to use on the mechanical units (press and turn at the end, or turn the butterfly in the middle of the knob). Add a "-R" to the rating for a plastic wheel pack that gives resistance to a radiological analysis, but won't last as long as the traditional metal ones.

If you have employees you can get fancy electornic units that allow you to issue individual conbinations and some that even maintain an audit trail of access.

[bgary]

brings a laptop and the Mas-Hamliton Soft Drill software assisted manipulation system

Anyone else just get a chill down their spine?

Holy crap, Rob, I'm glad you're a "good-guy". Would hate to have you on "the other side".

Bruce

[IPSCDRL]

brings a laptop and the Mas-Hamliton Soft Drill software assisted manipulation system

Anyone else just get a chill down their spine?

Holy crap, Rob, I'm glad you're a "good-guy". Would hate to have you on "the other side".

Bruce

Bruce, I've been saying this for years. Area 7 is especially fortunate to have such a capable representative.

[chuckbradley]

I ended up ordering one from this company.

http://www.pentagonsafes.com/_office-safes...ault-doors.html

He says the safes are DOJ approved. Says he has built doors for the Pentagon and the new vault at the Mirage in Vegas. I may have fallen for a good sales pitch. I was supposedly talking with the president of the company. I got to him by asking questions from Robs post. Thanks Rob.

He is doing me a triple wall 2" thick insulated door with 1" solid hard plate in the critical drill areas, only 3/8 is required for a tl-30 rating he claimed. The lock is supposed to be a group II. It has a new secret 4 relocker system. Whatever that is. The door is a step door with jigsaw cut. He also said the 18 lugs are independent. Cheaper safes have a bar that the lugs are attached to so if one lug is accessed all can be released by manipulating the one. I decided to go for the electronic lock. This safe door is supposed to be better than what he has installed in his own house. Does it pass the smell test?

[askomiko]

They all look thin to me.

Edited March 19, 2007 by askomiko

[Rob Boudrie]

Does it pass the smell test?

Yup, though I'm generally skeptical when I hear things like "More than required for TL30" rather than "has a TL30 rating." It does sound pretty good though.

The "relocker system" is generally not in the lock itself, but the mechanics of the safe. Relockers are mechanisms that trigger when an attempt is made to forcibly enter the safe - some trigger by heat, some by inertia (i.e., banging on the door), some by the breaking of a strategically placed glass plate in front of the lock. The good news is that a triggered relocker makes it MUCH harder to defeat the safe's lock once an attack is underway - in fact, the lock itself is pretty much irrelevant once a relocker has been triggered. The bad news is that you're stuck with a box job once the relockers have fired - at that point, forcible entry is generally your only option.

Useful hint: Take the interior door off the safe, tape a ruler to the inside, and take some pictures including some external reference points (door edge, lock location, etc.), and file at a secure offsite location. Be sure to include all relockers (they'll generally be pretty obvious once you get the back off the door). If you ever have a relocker trigger, or an electronic lock fail, this will be immensely useful when your safe tech starts the drill job.

Even though safe plans and diagrams are generally available to members of SAVTA (safe and vault technicians association), there are often individual variances in the relocker configuration and location. If you are ever stuck with a failed lock or fired relockers, these photos will be worth their weight in gold.

ps to Bgary - Don't worry too much about that Soft Drill gadget - the software cost alone makes Vista Ultimate look dirt cheap. The ITL autodialer is much cheaper, but worth through exhaustive enumeration (tens of hours for a typical open).

[Chris Keen]

Out of curiosity, let's say some thieves try to get in, then trip the relockers, then your vault tech comes out and opens your safe for you .... what then ?

You can't just Bondo the holes go on with life. Do you get a new door put on your safe at that point ? Or do you have to buy a whole new safe. Vault doors ? I assume you'd have to replace them.

[bountyhunter]

A couple of the companies mention that stainless is not as suceptible to a torch. Id that correct?

Hard to answer since there are about 400 or so different formulae of stainless steel, all having different properties. If a blanket comparison between stainless and typical carbon steel was made, maybe:

Stainless is probably less brittle, but also has lower tensile strength. Milling stainless tends to "gum up" cutters, carbon tends to cut cleaner.

Not sure why stainless would be less suceptible to a torch, since the torch would still be at a temp much higher than the melting temp of the material.

[Jim Norman]

Everyone looks at the door. That is what theey want you to do. Make darn sure the walls, floor and ceiling are impenetrable as well. Layers of steel plate or better yet stainless and Copper in the concrete, along with a very tight weave of #6 of better re-bar. Also use a minimum of 6000 pound concrete.

You want something that is resistant to a pneumatic hammer ans well as a saw.

What you are trying to accomplish is to make it take longer to open than you will ever leave the building unattended. Forget alarms calling the police, anything you dream up, someone else has dreamed up a defeat for. You lock up on Saturday and noon, you re-open on Monday at 9, you need protection that will last 45 hours! Think about the neighbors, you are 200 feet from the nearest building, how long to tunnel under and enter through the floor.

The big question is this. Is what you stock in your safe worth the tens of thousands of dollars and the manhours that an attack like that would require?

Fort Knox is not an impregnable vault, it does however have a pretty good guard service around it. 24/7/365.25

Jim

[Rob Boudrie]

Out of curiosity, let's say some thieves try to get in, then trip the relockers, then your vault tech comes out and opens your safe for you .... what then ?

You can't just Bondo the holes go on with life. Do you get a new door put on your safe at that point ? Or do you have to buy a whole new safe. Vault doors ? I assume you'd have to replace them.

If the safe is opened properly with a minimum of holes drilled, it can generally be repaired without loss of structural integrity (see my earlier post on the importance of keeping a photo file on the internals). If some hack cuts a hole in the thing, you're stuck.

The proper technique is to use "safe repair pins" on the holes. These are pounded in to the drilled holes from the inside although I am not sure welding is common practice, and are very slightly tapered to be a snug fit (and can be welded from the inside), after which they are surface ground. If the drill point is under the dial, you won't even be able to see it. If the drill point is outside the dial (sometimes needed to get to one of the relockers), you'll have a trickier refinishing job.

If you're safe has one of those TL ratings, it generally won't after the repair.

Everyone looks at the door. That is what theey want you to do. Make darn sure the walls, floor and ceiling are impenetrable as well. Layers of steel plate or better yet stainless and Copper in the concrete, along with a very tight weave of #6 of better re-bar. Also use a minimum of 6000 pound concrete.

You want something that is resistant to a pneumatic hammer ans well as a saw.

With most guns safes, the side, rear top and bottom doors are the easiest ones to open by force.

What you are trying to accomplish is to make it take longer to open than you will ever leave the building unattended.

Not gonna happen . A TL30 is a "real safe"; a TL60 is a really good safe. 45 hours? Even a bank vault can be forced open in well under that amount of time.

He says the safes are DOJ approved.

BS alert. He is probably referring to the California Department of Justice approval that is granted to certify that a container meets the legal requirements for safe gun storage. This does not imply a high standard of security (although it does not preclude it).

[chuckbradley]

Several things he said or how he said it caused some doubt but others were good. I realized I did accept some risk when I went ahead and ordered. The other company that i was looking at that did have a TL rating was around 6000.00 for the door. This guy mentioned them by name and compared their safe to that one. Will have to see. Bottom line it doesnt really matter anyway. A cheap safe door will keep the smash & grab types out but wont protect from a real pro. From what i read hear there is nothing that will keep it safe from a real pro. I plan on making it as hard as I can. My alarm guy is pretty good also and with a cell back up to the phone lines I dont see how they can beat that unless they have a way to scramble the cell signal. I dont think what I will have in the safe will be worth what it will take to get into it and not get caught.