Mental exercise/idea wrestling: Built in gun safe/room

[Jamisjockey]

Okay so the basement in the new house is unfinished.  I was toying with the idea of building a hardened room as a gun safe/storage room.  So let's call this thread a mental exercise in (valid) construction techniques and material acquisition to construct such a room.
Thoughts?

[Fly320s]

Windowless room built with concrete block walls.  Tough door, doesn't need to be a vault door, hidden behind false wall or bookcase.  Run power, HVAC, ethernet cables through hidden ducts.  Put the room out of direct sight if possible.

Lots of build threads on the nets.

[Ben]

No experience, but off the top of my head:

If it's a safe room as well, if you used concrete blocks I assume that means filling the blocks and also using a lot of rebar. I'm wondering what the cost differences would be between that and steel walls. If steel could you get away with 1/8" along with some fill in a standard 2x4 wall, or would you need to go 1/4". I'm guessing your residential home invader would not show up with a .50 or armor piercing.

Off the wall (ha ha) thought: standard concrete wall with a Line-X barrier coating.

[Jamisjockey]

Using concrete brick for the walls seems like a no brainer. 
But what about the ceiling?
I was thinking of screwing chain link fence to the bottom of the joists and then putting the drywall up.
This would essentially be under the kitchen, which would mean tearing up flooring just to get that far.

[K Frame]

Will it include a cat and a vial of poison?

[brimic]

I've been kicking around the idea of doing the same thing with my root cellar, which is for the most part a 4'x6'x7' concrete box with a door on it at the moment. All I would need is a vault door and a dehumidifier.

[K Frame]

I saw pictures of one a few years ago when a guy essentially built a cage out of surplus railroad rails and I beams, including the ceiling, then built a concrete block structure around it cored with heavy rebar and concrete.

On the interior he attached 2x4s to the rails so that he could hang drywall, and got a reinforced (not vault quality) door from some company.

Total cost was a couple of grand and several weeks of work.

In your case, I wouldn't bother with chainlink fence. That's easy to cut through with bolt cutters. I'd do like the guy above did... make the roof part of the box, not the floor above.

[AJ Dual]

FYI you can't just build a cinder block wall on your basement slab without jackhammering out a perimeter and pouring proper footings.

Well you CAN, but it wouldn't be a good idea. Cracking the slab, busting/collapsing a sewer line, or the weeping/drain tiles is on the low end of the expensive/bad things that could happen.

If footings are too much to ask, the best you can reasonably do is stud construction, but then sheath it on both sides in hardened security-grade expanded metal mesh and 3/4" plywood using screws, then disguise that with drywall.

And don't get clever and figure you could fill the stud gaps with concrete or gravel or something, because that would have the same weight problems as the cinder blocks. Although spray foam, or cut rigid foam board to fill the gaps would add some structural strength by filling the voids in between the studs, provide fill and support to prevent the studs from twisting or racking sideways, and providing some backing cushion to the metal mesh and plywood to a sledge or axe attack, and/or tornado debris etc.

[HankB]

I believe there are programs which give you a tax writeoff if you include a "tornado shelter" in new construction - you might look into that.

If my gun vault was going to double as a safe room, I'd want ventilation in there and a second exit. (Somewhere I saw a video about Swiss civil defense shelters - a lot of homes over there are so equipped, and all had more than one exit.)

A friend of mine up in Amarillo built himself a new house, and he included a "safe room" in it; it's just like a walk-in closet, but the walls and ceiling are 6" thick reinforced concrete; the door is steel clad with three 1" stainless steel deadbolts. It's slab construction up there (no basements) so when they poured the foundation, they put in extra footings under the walls of the safe room.

[K Frame]

"FYI you can't just build a cinder block wall on your basement slab without jackhammering out a perimeter and pouring proper footings."

Excellent point. I didn't mention that. The one I was talking about looked like the guy cut out a bunch of holes, dropped in large diameter sonotubes, and went from there, essentially pier footers.

Tornado debris isn't really that much of a problem in this area. We have the occasional twister, but they're generally short duration and not all that destructive.

[dogmush]

I build mine in an existing room, so I didn't have free rein to tear down parts of the house.

First step, Be realistic.  You aren't building an Arms Room that will keep people out indefinitely, just trying to make unprepared folks look elsewhere.  For comparison, a full on military Arms Room, with IDS that we keep machine guns in is only rated (by GSA) to keep people out for 45 min.  You basically want to stop folks with prybars and big hammers.

I concentrated on entrance points. (mine has a window, you can skip that part) Metal (non hollow) door, Hinges  screwed into 8" of laminated 2x4 studs with 6" screws, deadbolt strike plate is 1/4" steel, mortised into frame and screwed in with 6" screws.  Frame is re enforced on interior corners with steel, and screwed in to framing on top and sides with 6" screws (again laminated studs) and into the slab on the bottom with 4" concrete anchors.

Pulled the drywall down, sistered up all the studs so they are 4x4, tied new studs into top and bottom of framing.  Used my Hilti to double up on framing attachments to slab.  Put up some .120" thick 3/4" diamond flattened expanded metal, screwed to every stud.  Re-sheet rocked, mudded and painted. Honestly I left my ceiling, because of my house construction, but you could do the same thing on a ceiling, although I would use lighter metal.

It wasn't cheap, but it wasn't too horrible, and there's not a huge vault door in my house for my wife to stare out.  So a good compromise.  You'll need more tools than an average burglar has to get in faster then the cops that my alarm called get there.

If you build one in your basement, don't forget to run HVAC and data lines.  Wi-Fi doesn't like the walls in that room.

[230RN]

Too many tabs up, posted on wrong thread.

But I was going to needlessly suggest that even the youngest person knows how to open the door to get back out.

[Kingcreek]

I have a friend that built one in his basement. The beauty of his is that it is undetectable in a walkthrough. He has a rec room with a bar at one end. If you know how to get through the backbar, you are in the gunroom. The false wall is barnboard with a pivot door that can only be released by pressing the hidden switch for the electric lock.
A good security system is probably the first thing I would budget for. Frame construction with 1/2" plywood on both sides would be fairly stout, especially if you use 2x6 studs and/or went 12" on center and set a steel door.

[MechAg94]

One side of my master bedroom has two closets each with their own door.  I thought it would work to wall off one door and open up the wall between the closets.  Turn it into one long walk in closet with a hidden reinforced room/closet in the back to store guns or other stuff.  Would burglars easily notice a "short" closet?  

[wmenorr67]

One side of my master bedroom has two closets each with their own door.  I thought it would work to wall off one door and open up the wall between the closets.  Turn it into one long walk in closet with a hidden reinforced room/closet in the back to store guns or other stuff.  Would burglars easily notice a "short" closet?  

I would say the normal "smash and grab" kind wouldn't.  Those that have time might be able to figure it out, or someone that had cased your place.

[Jamisjockey]

I like the idea of using the security mesh. 
This stuff right? http://www.clarkdietrich.com/products/security-systems/barrier-mesh-security
Would simplify the process for sure, and the room wouldn't take up any more space than it has to.  I'm picturing something in the 5x8 size, basically a big walk in closet.  A light, a couple outlets for a dehumidifier that sort of thing.
I do like the idea of concealing it behind a hidden door.

[Firethorn]

Wi-Fi doesn't like the walls in that room.

Well, yeah, you effectively built a faraday cage out of it.  While the ceiling and roof leaves 'lots' of openings, it's a question of signal strength, and while people generally prefer more conductive metals such as copper for such cages, thicker steel does the job just as good.  The holes in the mesh don't matter as long as they're small enough.

[dogmush]

I like the idea of using the security mesh. 
This stuff right? http://www.clarkdietrich.com/products/security-systems/barrier-mesh-security
Would simplify the process for sure, and the room wouldn't take up any more space than it has to.  I'm picturing something in the 5x8 size, basically a big walk in closet.  A light, a couple outlets for a dehumidifier that sort of thing.
I do like the idea of concealing it behind a hidden door.

Basically that stuff, yeah.  Mine didn't say "security" in the name or have those very fine little clips to run screws through, but was probably a little cheaper.  I have an account at the local metal supplier so I just called them and ordered what I wanted.  http://www.alro.com/divsteel/metals_gridpt.aspx?gp=0101&gpn=Flat%20Expanded%20Metal&Mat=CARBON%20STEEL&Type=Expanded%20Metal

Build it bigger then you think you need.  Like a gunsafe, it'll fill up faster than planned, and you don't want to tear down a wall to expand.

[dogmush]

Another piece of free advice:

Plan out your wildest dreams first, then build that.  I did the door and window and security first, then moved in to my Man Cave.  Later I decided the walls needed the upgrade, so I had to move everything back out, tear the walls out upgrade, and reinstall everything.  Way more work then needed.

If you look at a feature and there's even a 10% chance that you think "yeah, down the road I'd like that."  Do it before you move thousands of pounds of steel and anchor it to your house.

 

[MechAg94]

Doesn't a lot of the concrete wall board have a thin metal backing? 

https://www.southernfrontdoorsonline.com/SearchResults.asp?Cat=689
I guess you could also back out to the home exterior and put in better doors and windows.

[RevDisk]

Personally?  I'd make a normal utility room. And then hide your gun safe behind ordinary drywall, with fake bookcase or whatnot. All of the utility, done of the headache. For a slight bit of security, you could go with those concrete drywall panels and a more sturdy door, but honestly don't even need that.

[MechAg94]

I mentioned it to someone here at work and they knew someone who built a room/closet in their attic and put in a heater to keep it dry.  I figured I could run an A/C duct to it with a floor vent down into the house.  Not sure how many burglars would bother searching the attic.

[Mannlicher]

My brother in Las Vegas finished his new home earlier this year.  He has a hardened room, with concrete and rebar  walls, and a metal door frame and door.  I have no idea what it cost, but he says it's going to be dang hard to get into it.
The contractor said he does a lot of these, and had the system down pat.

[MechAg94]

What would it take to just do the whole house like that?   

[Jamisjockey]

What would it take to just do the whole house like that?   

Concrete and rebar?  Probably expensive because you still gotta frame the entire inside of the house if you want drywall.