HOW TO CHOOSE A SAFE

What do you wish to protect?

We often have telephone calls from our customers wanting to purchase a safe and when we ask the question; "What do you want to protect?" they are suprised as they think it is a stupid question. It's obvious they think - all my valuables of course.  If only it was so simple. The problem is that unless you have a very high budget you can't protect your val;uables properly from all hazards. For instance a fire resistant safe will be fine in a fire and if somebody tried to pick the lock. However, if the safe was attacked with great physical force the result could be a disaster for you. Conversly if a burglary resistant safe was involved in a fire then the safe would act exactly the same as a kitchen oven - the contents would heat up and combust.

So you can see why we ask this question - safes are designed for various uses. For instance, if you wanted to buy a car and you worked on a farm then perhaps 4 wheel drive would be a primary requirement, but a Land Rover wouldn't offer low fuel consumption nor comfort nor speed. In the same way safes are generally designed for specific tasks. In a nutshell these are the main uses:

• A safe to protect cash or jewellery from burglary and forced entry
• A safe to protect valuable paper documents from fire and theft
• A safe to protect vital back-up tapes or digital computer data from fire and theft
• A safe for multi-use such as in a hotel or hospital where the user changes regularly

Therefore your choice of safe must be a compromise depending on your primary threat or concern. 

Safes that offer protection from Burglary and forced entry are the most popular type of safe in the UK. Why? Because burglary is statistically the most likely form of loss from both private homes and business premises.

With prices of burglary safes that are priced from £50 up to £15,000 there is obviously a wide variety of safes to choose between. How should one select a security safe?

Well first of all you need to consider the cost of the cash, jewellery or family treasures that would be required to purchase replacements if they were stolen. Then generally you can assess your needs by comparing this with the insurance cash rating that various models of safe aspire to. Therse cash ratings range from £1000 right up to £150,000 and generally insurance companies multiply this figure by a multiple of 10 when cash is not insured.

N.B. Always check with your insurer before you purchase. Sometimes the value of your valuables may require a higher insurance cash rated safe due to local conditions and recent history of theft and claims.

However Insurance cash ratings can be loosely graded for security in the following manner and should be good enough to secure the cash value stated with the provisos shown:

£1000 to £2000 rated safes - OK if burglar alarm system is installed and safes are bolted securely

£3000 and £4000 rated safes - OK if bolted securely

Eurograde tested £6000 to £150,000 - the best, if installed to manufacturer's instructions.

Underfloor Safes - All Cash ratings - if installed to comply with the manufacturer's instructions

Protection for Paper Documents

Paper documents need to be kept below 175 degrees celsius to ensure there is no damage by heat. ( Paper ignites at  All Fire resistance safes are tested to protect paper from being damaged with times of 30, 60 and 120 minutes, although the Phoenix Fire Commander range of fire safes should be OK for 180 minutes. There are various tests for fire resistant storage and these differ in their strictness from region to region. The main tests are as follows:

EN-1047-1 - European Union test standard
VDMA - German fire resistance standard
SP - Swedish Fire resistance standard
NT Fire - Norwegian Fire resistance standard
UL - American Fire resistance standard
JIS -  Japanese Fire resistance standard
KS - Korean Fire resistance standard

Fire resistance tests are carried out in independent institutions by placing the fire chest, safe or cabinet in a furnace for between 30 and 120 minutes in an ambient temperature of approximately 1090 degrees celsius. The product is then removed and the contents checked for damage by heat or smoke.

Protection for Back-up Tapes and Digital Media

Back-Up tapes and photographic film and negatives CANNOT be protected in a Fire Safe designed for protecting paper documents. The reason is simple - the melting point of tape and film is above 52 degrees celsius while paper safes only guarantee to keep the internal temperature of the safe below 175 degrees.

Protection for Hotel Guests

Hotel safes are different from normal security safes in one way - the locking mechanism. A hotel style safe can be used by the ever changing customers to the hotel. The last problem a Hotel Manager needs is a safe that cannot be opened because the guest has left without leaving the code. That is why a hotel safe is designed with the facility for the guest to sert their own code when they rent a room, but with the control remaining with the Hotel management of a Master code, which will open the safe in an emergency. Hotel safes can also be supplied with an Audit control lock so that a record of all openings of the safe are recorded for security reasons.