Featured Basement Option – Safe Rooms

A popular option that our clients choose with their foundation is a concrete safe room.

 

“A safe room is the place to go during a tornado warning or severe thunderstorm warning with high winds.  It is a fire proof and disaster proof room used to store many items.”

Safe rooms are an inexpensive way to add a special feature to your house. At times, this is one option that can convince home buyers to choose one house over another.

Safe Room Location
A safe room   is a four-sided concrete room with a concrete top (ceiling). It is most often placed in the space below the front porch. The front porch foundation walls already create an enclosed area. Instead of filling that area with backfill material, you can add this valuable space.

To create a safe room in this area, you add a door opening in the concrete wall, pour the floor with the basement slab, place a corrugated metal pan on top of the concrete walls, and pour the front porch slab on top of the metal pan.

Another great location for the safe room is below the garage slab. You may need to add one or two walls to create this room. Here, you are not bound by the size and shape of the front porch. It can even be as big as the garage itself.

Super Storage
A safe room is the place to go during a tornado warning or a severe thunderstorm warning with high winds. It is a fire proof and disaster proof room used to store many items. Some of the items that can be safely stored and secured are:

• Important paper documents
• Antiques
• Guns and ammunition
• Jewelry
• Photographs
• Electronic storage devices (computer backups)

In addition to a room for storing valuable items, here are some other uses we have seen for safe rooms:

• Wine cellar and wine tasting room
• Food storage room
• Panic room (a place to retreat during a home invasion)
• Gun display room
• Cigar room (humidor)
• Flooding Prevention

An important thing to keep in mind when storing valuables in a safe room is this: keep them off the floor.

You actually run a greater risk of a water pipe in your home leaking or bursting – causing flooding in your home – than you do of getting a direct hit from a tornado. You should always store valuables at least 8” above the floor.

Depending on your use of the space, you can store items in large plastic containers (purchased at Walmart for $5.00). These work well and don’t have to be elevated from the floor.

Larger items can be raised off the floor with wood blocks, pedestals, or even cmu blocks. If you raise a gun safe or document safe, bolt it to the vertical concrete wall behind it for added security.

Door Options
Choose a door that matches your use of the room. Here are some door options, along with their pros & cons:

Wood, hollow interior door – Poor resistance to tornados or burglars. A good framework for creating a concealed door.

Wood, solid exterior door – Decent resistance to tornados or burglars. Can be dressed up for a finer room such as a wine cellar.

Metal, hollow exterior door – Excellent resistance to tornados or burglars. This is the type you see in schools and commercial buildings. UL fire rated doors are also available. We can pour the frame right into our concrete wall. Additional dead bolts can be added. Not well suited for a wine cellar.

Metal, safe door – Superior resistance to tornados, burglars, or rampaging rhinos. This is an actual safe door similar to those used on gun safes or bank vaults.

Iron, custom entrance door – Typically very poor resistance to tornados or burglars. Mostly for decoration only. This is a custom door designed to enhance the entrance of the wine cellar. Some can be locked, which would be a good first step against burglars (or teenage sons trying to get to the wine).

Secret Door

Safe room door concealed by bookcase door.

Bookcase door opens to reveal safe room.

Bookcase door swings inside the safe room.

You may want the safe room to be hidden. You can do this by building the door into a bookshelf. We gave a builder friend an article from a carpentry magazine. From that article he made an excellent door concealed by bookshelves (see photos).

Another option is to hide the door behind a large object. It can also be accessed through a bedroom closet or seasonal coat closet…hidden by hanging clothes.

Two Critical Tips
Over the past 30 years, we’ve learned two important things about safe room design. One can save your life; the other can save you money. However, we’ve run out of space in this issue. If you’d like us to give you the two critical tips, then send us an email to Tips@HerbertConstruciton.com. We’ll email the two critical tips right back to you.