A few quick notes on Fire Safes.

Fire safes like you buy at Staples or another office supply store are able to protect PAPER - and only paper - not CD's or other electronic media. It actually gets quite hot in a fire safe in a fire.

We worked a fire about a month ago, a HUGE fire in a house that was designed to look like a barn, and when they located the fire safe, the papers inside were hot, but intact, but the CD's had fused into a mass of plastic. I don't know how well magnetic media would hold up, but I've heard stories of hard drives surviving incredible heat and still working. YMMV.

If you want a fireproof box for CD's you need a "MEDIA RATED" fire safe and they are much more expensive.

Hadn't thought of that. Thanks for the warning!

-Blast

Just to add my $.02, since collecting safes are a hobby of mine. You are correct, there is a HUGE difference between fire-resistant safes, and media safes, in the way they protect the contents, the quality of construction, ratings, and most of all, price. Either way, I would STRONGLY recommend everyone to get some sort of safe, even if it's not optimal, it's still better than nothing.

Most all retail fire safes use some sort of gypsum or drywall lining, which releases moisture to raise the humidity level inside the safe during a fire. This effectively keeps the interior temperature down below the 350 degree rating for a certain length of time. And most everyone that's read Ray Bradbury knows the ignition temperature of paper is 451 Farenheit. The problem is as you mentioned, media is destroyed way below that temperature. Also, there doesn't seem to be consistant standards for fire ratings, some rate up to 1700 degrees, some more, some less. I'm not sure how hot a normal house fire gets, so who knows how accurate the ratings are.

Media safes are much, much more expensive for the size, but are rated to keep contents below 125 degrees. They do it by using massive amounts of insulation, which makes the safe much larger and more expenisve for the same interior space. Also, neither one of these are really rated for theft resistance, they do a pretty good job, but for that you'll also have to look for a TL rating.

I'm guessing placement of the safe is also an issue, I've heard certain areas stay much cooler during a fire, such as next to an interior brick wall where it won't be exposed as much. I haven't been able to find any studies to support this, just ancedotal evidence.

The other things you need to look for are a good seal. Not only will it expand to seal it during a fire, but it also keeps water out. Having gone through a house fire before, it's not just the fire that will do damage, but the fireman also. When are trying to put it out, they can cause just as much, if not more damage than the actual fire. I actually take the layered approach, and keep a smaller safe within a larger safe. I can't say for sure how well it works, but if it protects the contents against the heat for just a few minutes more, that might make all the difference between saving it and losing it.

Just a thought on paper in fires. Paper will indeed ignite at 451F. But papers pressed together with a non-metal or burnable weight will probably just get crispy around the edges. I've seen the aftermath of a house fire where the books were still readable. They stank, and were charred at the edges, but the information was still there.

Sue

I think staples DOES sell some media rated fire safes

I've also heard of people storing containers of water on top of their safes. The theory behind this was, in a fire the plastic will melt causing water to spill all over the safe to keep it cool. It seems plausible, but I don't know if it's ever been tested. I just mentioned it because there are a lot of other other factors that can influence the outcome, other than just the type of safe.

Borg-like? Haha. Before the internet, I just thought I had some strange fetishes (flashlights, lighters, locks), but now i realize there are millions of people who are even worse than me. I almost consider myself normal. Check out this kid I saw on TV the other day

http://www.glumbert.com/media/vacuum

My parents put up with a lot of junk, but I think even they would've drawn the line at this.

Also, consider off site back-up. Either on-line or by leaving cd's at your brothers house. Either is a fine way to preserve your docs.

Teacher

Media safes are a very good idea. The differences compared to most commercial safes isn't just a mater of internal temperature. most commercially available safes use gypsum cement as insulation. This is the same stuff as the inside of drywall. It is a very good fire barrier. In part because gypsum contains, even when dry to the touch, a large quantity of water trapped in its crystal structure. For a fire to get through drywall it has to boil off all the water before the temperature can rise past 212F. Even after the water is gone the dehydrated gypsum is both non-flammable and a poor conductor.

While in most cases drywall releasing water vapor during a fire is not a problem in the case of a safe it depends on what is inside. Paper, and many other materials, can stand a considerable amount of vapor and steam. Computer media, particularly the older 4.25 and 7.5 (remember the old floppies? Way back when a fast CPU operated at 50Khz, memory was measured in KB and a large HD was 100MB. LOL) discs. CDs and DVDs can melt, warp, or corrode. The clear side isn't as sensitive as the thin layer of aluminum under the painted label. That delicate layer of aluminum can corrode. You can see it when it has happened. The disc turns grey and black.

Media safes are designed to keep the insides cooler and, because they don't use water containing gypsum as insulation, drier. So they don't warp or fuse and they don't corrode.

There are media rated safes out there. Be prepared to pay through the nose for a media safe. A cheaper alternative is a media rated box. This is essentially a smallish water-tight insulated box that is designed to go inside a fire safe and make up the difference between what a regular fire safe does and what the media needs. These are a lot more affordable than a complete safe designed around the media standard.

These are available at many office suppliers. If they don't have them on hand they have them in their catalog and can order them.

Buy a media safe ( small one -just larger than a shoebox)and put this inside a fire safe. Even Wal Mart has cheap ones. The best way to buy a firesafe is to go to a used safe store. The prices are usually a fraction of the cost of a new safe. Basement temperatures in a fire are often very low and this is usually the best place for the safe. Be sure to have the safe off of the floor by 6" or so-More if basement flooding an issue. You can also put water sensitive articles in a waterproof container. Very large safes are often very cheap as most people have no use for them. If you ever do a room addition with a basement have a giant safe dropped in just after the floor is poured and before the 1st floor joists are put down. My 7ftH x4'W x 3'D two door safe cost me $1000 including curbside delivery and the cost of a crane to stop by and hoist it into the basement. Best idea I ever had for secure storage.

Very true. We've filled basements with water trying to get a stubborn fire on the 2nd floor out - it's a bit of a tough decision, because when you don't have enough crew for a salvage crew below, you will loose everything, so you try to save something.

We now use Foam - the last house fire we worked had a full knock-down of a well-involved crawl-space and some burn through the floor with only about 100 gallons of water/foam mix. Compare that to the 500 or more gallons we might have needed.

But if you have a fire, there will be a lot of damage, no matter what.

I have heard that, in the absence of a fire safe, putting items in the freezer provides some protection. After all, it is an insulated box (and in a fire, it starts out very cold). Is this a good idea? Will it work?

The best fire safe I have ever seen was a refrigerator freezer.
I have seen then burned up on the outside but the food was still intact on the inside.

One man I know, bought a chest type deep freezer, lined the bottom with collectible coins, put in an inch of water, froze that and repeated the action the next day,,and the next,,etc, until the freezer was full of his collectible coins, full of ice, impervious to theft and fire.

That's my $0.02 and I'm sticking to it!!!!!

Sorry, a little off-topic, and maybe discussed before:
once I was thinking of buying one of those heavy-ish plaster/gypsum-filled vinyl outside fire and waterproof safe boxes at Staples (I think it was the Sentry brand)--the kind with the key lock in front. Anyway, I was looking at one of the small-to-medium sized box models. Someone before me had thoughtfully conducted a little demo on the unit on the shelf. They had ripped the top off the safe from the back (hinge) side. I had always thought there must be a very strong metal rod or somesuch hinge on the back, however I was amazed to see that the "hinge" is composed only of two smallish plastic nubbins (for lack of a better word) that also appeared to be filled with the plaster material. Each nubbin fit in a corresponding socket that composed the other part of the hinge on the lower portion of the box. As I recall, the nubbins didn't appear to be more than a half to three-quarters of an inch long, and they had been completely fractured and bent when the top had been ripped off the safe from the hinge side. I was amazed to see such an apparently flimsy "hinge" for a box that supposedly was supposed to be somewhat difficult to open.

Again, sorry to drag this off the fireproof subject, but I thought those considering purchasing one of these units might be interested.

Although I am not familiar with the safe you describe, the hinges on a good safe should only function to hold the door on when it is open and to align it when it closes. All security should be a function of the geometry of the structural overlaps of mortices/ flange arrangements that engage as the door closes. Even so, one would like to see good hinges!

Great security, but poor accessability. Always a trade off. On the otherhand, if I'm a thief that has to have those coins, I'd take an axe to the ice and what does it matter if I damage 20% of the coins.

Sotto,

Many of those fire safes that you see in Staples or Office Depot are NOT safes, but fire rated security containers. They aren't inteded to protect against someone trying to break into it, but to protect the contents in a fire. They look secure, but really they're just gypsum boxes with a thin layer sheet metal covering, easily pried open with a prybar or broken with a hammer. Think of them as heavy duty ice chest, that's basically what they are. Even some of the mid-sized ones are still relatively easy to open with regular tools. That's why some safes are TL rated, to protect against this.

It wouldn't really help to heavily armor something that small, when the thief could just pick it up and walk off with it. I believe those containers are best kept inside a much larger, more secure safe to give added protection against heat, not used by themselves. As with any safe, you really need to have it bolted down or secured somehow. Anything less than about 300-400 lbs could easily be moved by a single person with a dolly.

"As with any safe, you really need to have it bolted down or secured somehow. "

Even heavy ones get stolen. A decade ago a thief heard a guy had a load of money in a large and heavy safe. He used a sledgehammer on the front door walked in with a logging chain, tied it around the safe, slipped it over his trailer hitch on the way out and took off in his truck. The safe missed the door a bit, took out a good bit of wall, and bounced along behind the truck until he got it to where he could open it. Where he used a torch and jackhammer to break into it.

He got about $50 and ten years in jail because the sheriff deputy followed the skid marks and divots dug out by the safe to the man's wrecking yard, with his name on the gate, and found the destroyed safe in plain view.

He was a bold and effective thief. But one that wasn't particularly smart about covering his tracks.

A lot of people have found the most cost-effective safe to be be one concreted into a slab. These are very difficult to remove and hard to break into if place in a tight spot. The safe is slightly below the slab so they enjoy a certain amount of protection from fire even without an actual fire rating. Their main weakness is that water might get down into the safe. Many of these units have rim that sticks above the floor several inches and that eliminates a lot of the danger from minor flooding.

If the fire dept fights the fire in your house, you can count on a certain of water flooding in any case, but it may be easier to put the contents into a waterproof [and thermal resistant?]container of some sort into the safe, rahter than to make the safe itself waterproof.

Jeff

> Also, consider off site back-up. Either on-line or by leaving
> cd's at your brothers house. Either is a fine way to preserve
> your docs.

I highly recommend off-site backups. Consider the disaster most likely in your area and pick a place not in your disaster zone. (_Big_ zone if you're in hurricane areas, smaller zone in tornado alley.) I'm on the West Coast and my brother is in Texas, so I'm happy to mail him CDs of stuff and expect it to survive my earthquake.

Archiving stuff online is worrisome, because I don't know if I'll have reasonable access after a big hurricane, but I do also maintain backups online on servers that I'm told are outside my area.

In the last few major house fires I was in, the Fridge melted, leaving a lump of machinery and molten charred gloop.

Well I happened to build "fire safes" for 9 years,and the last 17 years my job has been that of firefighter . SO.... yes they work, look for the ones with a UL label. There are differant levels of ratings also .

As said they are for papers and such. The UL label ratings will tell you the inside temp. the safe is rated for.Many other items guns, jewlery etc. will be fine. For media storage you CAN by safes rated to protect those items .

Do your homework BEFORE you buy .

Dude if you got a second floor on fire go in there and put it out ! Been to 100's of workers never seen a basemnet filled with water ?