A safe is possibly your last wall of defense between your important belongings and a home invader. A good alarm will prevent a burglar from getting near any of your stuff. Usually they will just run away upon hearing an alarm, even if they don’t you will have enough time for the police to come or for you to stop the threat.
But what if you’re away from home and you don’t have an alarm system that will alert the police? This is where you will need a safe. It’s better to get one than lose all of your cash, jewelry and most importantly, your documents, in a flash. You know you will feel much more secure knowing my most important possessions are behind steel and locks, even if you are away from home.
A safe is not just a steel box with a lock on the door. Most people who don’t know about safes think that’s all they are. There are actually lots of different types of safes. This article will discuss about the different types of safes you can get, so that you will have a good idea which type of safes will work best for you.
Fire resistant safes
Simple fire resistant safes are designed to protect your belongings from fire. But how well they can these safes resist fire depends on what they’re made out of, so you can’t just buy any fire-resistant safe because they’re labeled as such, and then expect the maximum protection.
Fire resistant safes that are made with thin-sheet metal walls and insulation panels are going to provide the lowest protection from fire, and even little to no burglar protection. Giving one of these a good bang with a hammer would open them. You’re best looking out for fire resistant safes that are composite clad. The most secure ones will have thick steel walls and an inner layer of concrete-like composite material.
While they’re called “fire-resistant,” it doesn’t mean that these safes are fire-proof. With a good fire-resistant safe you’ll get protection but you won’t eliminate the threat of losing your important stuff to be completely gobbled up by fire. That’s an important thing to remember if you’re considering to buy this type of safe.
Cash safes
Cash safes are easier to choose because they all have what is called a “cash rating.” Cash ratings will tell you about how secure the safe is from thieves. So a safe with a low cash rating will offer low security and one with a high cash rating will offer high security.
For instance, a cash rating of $5,000, means you should be able to call up your insurance company and get a $5,000 cash insured.
But what if you don’t have a lot of cash to store away, but you have lots of other valuables such as jewelry? In this case, the cash rating will be multiplied to ten. So in this situation, a cash rating of $5,000 means you can get $50,000 worth of non-cash items insured. It’s simple as that.
Data safes
These kinds of safes are designed to protect fragile media devices and equipment from damaging heat. Many digital media storage devices will get wiped in high heat so the interior of these safes maintains an environment that ensures the integrity of your data. In many cases they’re even more fire-resistant than so-called fire-resistant safes because jewelry can withstand temperatures far in excess of that which digital media can. These media safes can be quite expensive, depending on the size, features and specifications.
Keep in mind though that these types of safes have various levels of security from thieves, so make sure you focus on this as well because if you don’t, you might just see your perfect data safe broken into.
High security safes
The best and most secure types of safes. They may cost you a lot of money but these have extra locks inside the safe that are usually behind the visible locking mechanism. This means they can’t be picked. They have safeguards against drilling too, so even the most despicably organized and trained home invaders will draw a blank on these.
The more secure ones can be dropped from 100 feet without breaking. You usually get the fire resistant tag and lots of room inside these kinds of safes. Good for storing cash, jewelry and important papers and documents. However, you cannot safely store media inside it because of the thick steel that are usually wrapped in, causing the heat to build up and your precious media will probably get destroyed.
Portability
How many times do you want to move this your possessions? If you’re going to be shifting your valuables around a lot then you’ll be tempted to go for a pure portable safe.
This is a safe that is not pinned down by anything and can be picked up at anytime. But the problem is that it can be picked up by burglars too, so you might be better going for a wall-mounted or anchored safe.
You may think that a thief will leave the safe when it’s not installed against a wall or anchored. But no, he will take it anyway even if he has no prospect of getting inside. So it’s better to have your safe pinned down.
Size
We want all of our important and beloved stuff secured. So before you go out and purchase a safe, get together all of your valuables and see how much of it there is. Then add about 50% because in three years’ time, you will be likely to have 50% more valuable stuff that you need secured.
What are your risks?
Is your neighbourhood prone to flood damage? Have you had a house fire before? Do you live near a forest or a woodland where fires might start? Perhaps you do live in one of these types of low-risk areas where there’s a low crime rate. In this case, it is recommended that you get a safe that offers low theft protection and high flood or fire protection.
You want the opposite if your area has very little risk of flood or fire but a high risk of theft. If you’re at risk of flood, fire and theft then you need a good all-around, highy secured safe.