# Gun room steel door



## Bungiex88 (Jan 2, 2016)

I plan on finish a room in basement that's all concrete I just need to pour the floor but all the walls are concrete. I wanted to put a steel door on it for more security and thought of something that would be neat. Do they make a electronic door that stays unlocked but if someone goes in without punching in the code and the door shuts and automatically locks. I thought that would be neat if burgalar go into my gun room and let the door close behind them then it will lock them in then I can call the police. I will have a ip camera in there that will detect movement


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## Bungiex88 (Jan 2, 2016)

I just thought of something after I posted the question if I have an up camera in there it will alert me I can view it and buy one of those wifi locks and lock the door from my phone


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## Hitch (Oct 19, 2016)

I've seen military complex doors like that, but never for residential and if they did make one it would probably be pretty expensive.


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## Chuck R. (Apr 24, 2008)

I've never seen or heard of what you're looking for. 

I have a finished "safe room" under my garage with a vault door, but it's the plain old manual version with the intent of keeping folks out, not trapping them inside.

I think I'd be a little concerned with the whole "false imprisonment" thing especially if you caught the wrong person. 

Chuck


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## Skamp (Apr 26, 2014)

Think cammo. Hide in plain sight. 

A vault door, or safe, or cabinet, is just too obvious. Unless that is bait away from the main cache.


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## Bearfootfarm (Jul 13, 2006)

It sounds like a recipe for a disaster to me.
Would you want to bet your life on some electrical device?

Just buy a normal vault door and don't attempt to turn it into a trap.


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## Bungiex88 (Jan 2, 2016)

Just thought it would be funny. Saw a guy on YouTube trap a theif in a office building


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## Dutch 106 (Feb 12, 2008)

I had one in the basement of a house in Wisconsin. I set up a wine rack Down the whole wall and in front of the door and a set of heavy duty wheels on the floor that moved it out of the way. I used a conventional steel door with a dead bolt added and a power vent to recirculate air. It ended up being 8 feet by 24. ran a Rack down the long wall with 3 foot of storage underneath for ammo. a workbench at each end one for reloading the other for gun smithing. Handy setup. The Lady I was living with lost her humor, over me. so I lost it. 
Dutch
Its been sold a couple of times now and keep expecting it to show up as click bait!


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## oceantoad (May 21, 2009)

Would you want someone locked in with your guns.


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## oldasrocks (Oct 27, 2006)

I have a friend in Colorado that blocked off the room under his master bedroom. Then he took out the floor in the bedroom and poured a concrete ceiling over the room Put back the wood floor. In the basement he talked me out of a vault door I had bought on an auction. Installed a shoe rack to hide the door then built a closet around that and a bedroom.

Now even if a thief tried to torch through the door a copper pipe would melt first behind the door which is attached to a bottle of carbon dioxide on 100 psi valve. This would put out the fire and make it hard to breath in the basement.

How is that for a system?


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## Chuck R. (Apr 24, 2008)

Dutch 106 said:


> I had one in the basement of a house in Wisconsin. I set up a wine rack Down the whole wall and in front of the door and a set of heavy duty wheels on the floor that moved it out of the way. I used a conventional steel door with a dead bolt added and a power vent to recirculate air. It ended up being 8 feet by 24. ran a Rack down the long wall with 3 foot of storage underneath for ammo. a workbench at each end one for reloading the other for gun smithing. Handy setup. The Lady I was living with lost her humor, over me. so I lost it.
> Dutch
> Its been sold a couple of times now and keep expecting it to show up as click bait!


Sort of the route we took, ours is under the 3 car garage, 10" reinforced concrete, below grade on 3 sides and has it's own zone for the geothermal unit. It's a safe room/gun & reloading room although my wife states it's looking more and more reloading room as time goes by:

Under construction









Vault door & Dryfire range:









21' Reloading bench:


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## Fishindude (May 19, 2015)

Side tracking a little, but a guy I know has one of those concrete rooms in his basement with a vault door for his gun room.  He's got kind of a reputation for being lazy and those big vault doors take a little effort to open and close each time, so he generally just left it open when he was home and going in and out of the room. 

Took off with his wife for a weekend trip somewhere and failed to remember to shut the vault. Thieves happened to break in that weekend and he lost around 120 guns. The cops only ever recovered a few, they were in pawn shops in Chicago area. The best security systems in the world aren't very effective if you don't implement them.


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## Chuck R. (Apr 24, 2008)

Agrred!!!

When I'm in/out frequently I just lock the dial using a key......

Anytime we're gone, the door's locked, dial spun and alarm system on.


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## Dutch 106 (Feb 12, 2008)

Silly behavior, I bet he also showed evey one who stopped by it was there! Silly silly behavior I told no one about what we called the wine room. The Lady showed her Mom, with my permission we were offering to build her one.
No one else knew it about it she showed it to the buyer after he closed on it! He blew it as the real estate clown later buttoned me and scolded me for not telling him. I told him it was none of his Blanety, blank business. He whined he could have gotten us more money! We got what we wanted and it was still none of his business and if he started telling people I'd done it once, I could do it again I would shoot him in the ass! which is why we didn't tell his gosippy ass.
Dutch
,


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## Road Runner (Aug 31, 2017)

Chuck R. said:


> Sort of the route we took, ours is under the 3 car garage, 10" reinforced concrete, below grade on 3 sides and has it's own zone for the geothermal unit. It's a safe room/gun & reloading room although my wife states it's looking more and more reloading room as time goes by:
> 
> Under construction
> 
> ...


I see you have the safe door opening inwards. For security a safe door should always open outwards.

Road Runner


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## Chuck R. (Apr 24, 2008)

Road Runner said:


> I see you have the safe door opening inwards. For security a safe door should always open outwards.
> 
> Road Runner


Not for a "safe room" unless you plan on being trapped inside due to debris.....Inside swing you can still open and clear.


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## Danaus29 (Sep 12, 2005)

Chuck R. said:


> Not for a "safe room" unless you plan on being trapped inside due to debris.....Inside swing you can still open and clear.


A few years after we bought this house I was really glad the basement door opened inward. We had a couple feet of snow and could not get out through the outward opening front storm door. As it was we had to shovel our way out of the basement.

Not to mention that if the door opens out, the hinges are accessible to those on the outside. Not at all what you would want on a safe room door.


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## Road Runner (Aug 31, 2017)

Valid points regarding which way the safe door should open. I mentioned the outward opening door as all the safes I have seen always open outwards, some have had "hidden" hinges which can't be got at.

RR


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## Danaus29 (Sep 12, 2005)

Yes, a safe or locker has the outward door swing. Pretty hard to fill one if the door swings in. Then if something falls against it you can't get the door open again. A few companies make hidden hinge safes. The majority have easily accessed hinges. Easy to remove if you have time and tools.
For the best protection a person would want a door to swing in to the room where they might be hiding. You can pile stuff against an inward swinging door to more securely fasten it against an intruder.


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## Chuck R. (Apr 24, 2008)

Honestly for most safe doors I don't think the external hinges matter, they can be tampered with, but you still can't get the door open due to the "bolts" on the inside that mate with the door frame. You can see the bolts here on the hinge side, and on the 2nd photo:



















We have an "honest to God" vault at work as compared to "home Security containers" like normal commercial gun safes, and our vault has external hinges. But based on the bolts on the inside, regardless of what happens to the hinges the door is not coming open.


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## Danaus29 (Sep 12, 2005)

That is true of safes with locking bolts. But I've seen videos where thieves can still pop the door if the safe is laying down. That is without removing or cutting the hinges. Given the time and incentive I really doubt the effectiveness of any safe. They just make it harder for thieves to get to your stuff.


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## Darren (May 10, 2002)

Another possibility is not to have a door in the basement room. Instead do a trap door from above that's concealed.


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## GREENCOUNTYPETE (Jul 25, 2006)

Danaus29 said:


> That is true of safes with locking bolts. But I've seen videos where thieves can still pop the door if the safe is laying down. That is without removing or cutting the hinges. Given the time and incentive I really doubt the effectiveness of any safe. They just make it harder for thieves to get to your stuff.


placement is very critical with safes 

first they need to be made so it is not easy to move them or tip them over , bolting to a wall or into the floor so that bolts are not exposed 

building a wall or closet around them is also a great idea 

adding a wall around them can also greatly increase fire protection with extra layers of drywall board

a basic door with a deadbolt to a closet that your safe is in that is double lined in drywall , as long as the fire doesn't start inside the closet it will give much greater resistance. if you have the room to build around it spending hundreds less on the safe might be a wise move if you put that money into building around the safe 


if a person first has to get through a standard metal door with dead bolt then finds there to be a safe in a closet they can only access the safe door and have no room to use a pry bar , they can start tearing the walls apart it all takes more time.


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## Road Runner (Aug 31, 2017)

GREENCOUNTYPETE said:


> placement is very critical with safes
> 
> first they need to be made so it is not easy to move them or tip them over , bolting to a wall or into the floor so that bolts are not exposed
> 
> ...


I agree with your last statement. When, or if I build another home that is similar to how I will build my safe room. The difference is I would build using core filled cinder blocks.

RR


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## Danaus29 (Sep 12, 2005)

A basement would be a better place to put a safe, from a security aspect. But if your house ever burns and collapses into the basement the safe would be exposed to higher heat for a longer period. 

Core filled cinder blocks would be great. Even better would be a poured wall with rebar reinforcement, but that gets expensive.

If I ever had a chance to build a home and design it the way I wanted it would have a basement and be backed into a hill. A safe room would be a concrete vault (with an escape tunnel, got to have a way out) with no house over the top so it would be secure from the house collapsing in on it. It also would be tornado proof and hopefully high enough that it would never get flooded. I would want it to be earthquake proof and solar powered. It also would cost a large fortune! But if I ever hit that huge lottery jackpot I'm building one!


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## GREENCOUNTYPETE (Jul 25, 2006)

Road Runner said:


> I agree with your last statement. When, or if I build another home that is similar to how I will build my safe room. The difference is I would build using core filled cinder blocks.
> 
> RR



as would I but I didn't think I needed that added detail


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