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Anchoring safe in apartment
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Posted by fotostat (My Page) on Sat, Jul 14, 07 at 23:06
| I used to have my gun safe bolted to anchors in the concrete floor of my house. Now that I bought a wood framed condo I am at a loss for a good anchor.
What do you guys use to anchor your safes? Lag bolt into the floor joist?
What works for you? |
Follow-Up Postings:
RE: Anchoring safe in apartment
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| Check with your condo board first before you do anything. Most do not even allow waterbeds because of the heavy weight and none that I know of, will allow anything that could alter the structural soundness of the building like deep mounting something onto beams. |
RE: Anchoring safe in apartment
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| I don't think bolting something to a beam would alter the structural soundness of a building. OK, a lag bolt THROUGH the floor joist would probably, but not a deep screw into it. How heavy-duty must this be? What sort of force is going to be used to try to pick it up? That's all you have to defeat. Wouldn't a 2" screw be enough? I mean, the only real danger is that a thief would try to pick up the entire unit, and he's not going to have a fork lift in there. And maybe not even a pry bar. It the gun safe locked? I know that the Sentry-brand fire-safe boxes have holes you can use to attach them to a shelf, or the floor, etc., so that you can't pick them up and walk off; you have to unlock the box to get to the screws. Is that how your gun safe works? In that case, I'd just attach it to whatever you could find. A really determined thief could bring a crowbar along and pry it off, but it would take quite a bit, really. And most thieves don't bother with that. |
RE: Anchoring safe in apartment
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| Yes, it's exactly how you described, I would screw it from the inside and then lock the safe door. The problem is that the safe is rather lightweight, so my main concern is a their with a prybar. I would like to defend against that as best as I could (within reasonable measures). |
RE: Anchoring safe in apartment
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| I think screwing it into whatever floor joist you can get to is enough. And if you can anchor it at the back to the wall using molly bolts or something, that would be extra. Most thieves don't carry prybars; they just grab whatever their hands can get ahold of. And they want to be able to carry it out without being spotted, usually--they don't want to be noticed, especially not in an apartment building. If you can put it in a closet so they can only pry from one direction, that would be good. It would also be less visible. What's the safe made of? Could they take it *apart* w/ a prybar? If so, then it's really overkill to do more than anchor it w/ a basic screw. |
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