When it comes to choosing the best home safe, you may feel overwhelmed. There are a lot of options on the market. There are many different shapes, sizes, and brands to choose from. You may or may not have a reason in mind for purchasing a safe, whether it be for family photos and documents or to safely secure your guns. Your local locksmith in New Jersey wants to help! Firstline locksmith has been servicing its customers for over 25 years. We’ve invested time and energy into home safes so you don’t have to. Although we don’t sell safes directly, we’ve interacted, serviced, and repaired enough to know how to help you choose the best one.
Safe Size
Ideally, you want to know the size of safe you think you need prior to anything else. Whether you have a specific set of items you need to be secured or you want to grow your collection of items, you need to purchase a safe to match your needs. The reason safe size is a priority is due to the various levels of security and other features safes offer. If you have a size in mind, it narrows down your search so you can decide sooner and purchase quicker.
For example, a growing gun collection may require a safe anywhere between 50-75 percent larger than what you need right now. On the other hand, you may need to store a limited amount of family sentimentals, document, or high valued items, which means the safe size can be exactly what you need.
Fireproof Rating
It can be misleading, but fireproof actually means fire resistant when it comes to residential home safes. No safe is completely fireproof, and a fire resistant safe can last an estimated amount of time in the heat before it fails. The best approach when shopping for a safe is to look for one that’s labeled as fire resistant. These types of safes typically show their estimated time to last before failing. Also, if you’re looking for a safe to protect media or sensitive documentation, you may want to go with a data or media engineered safe with fire resistance.
The fire resistant rating is simply how long the home safe will last the heat before failing.
Security Rating
It’s important to know how safes are rated to understand which home safe is best for you. The following system developed by the insurance industry is used to rate the security of safes from least to most secure:
- B Class (least secure)
- C Class
- UL RSC
- UL TL-15
- UL TL-30
- UL TL-30×6 (most secure)
As you explore safes, consider which type you think you will need. A burglar or a fire safe. Each offers pros and cons to their use. There are also two methods to classify safe security: Test Performance Ratings and Construction Ratings. The Construction rating is determined by the material used to create the safe and the burglar resistance classification. The performance rating of the safe shows how the safe independently tested against break-in attempts or fire exposure.
When you’re looking for which safe is best for your home, give the security rating a deep-dive, since it will be a major factor to determine the safety of your contents.
Choose Your Local New Jersey Locksmith
Shopping for a new home safe can be tough. You know what you want to secure in the safe but the size, fire resistance, and security rating all feel overwhelming. Nonetheless, if you’re storing guns, documents, or your baseball card collection, the above advice will get you started in the right direction. Firstline Locksmith has been serving New Jersey for over 25 years. If your safe won’t lock or is stuck shut, give us a call and schedule an appointment today!