have-a-safe-room

A Safe Room For Your Home

have-a-safe-room

You have probably heard of the ‘safe room’ concept for inside your home – a room in which you or members of your family could retreat to in the event of a burglary, home invasion, or other emergency. But, have you ever thought about what it should be, and what should be inside this safe-room?

A safe room is a hiding place, should have no windows, should be fairly small – meaning that it is very structurally sound compared to larger rooms (e.g. a decent size closet will be supported by framing and the walls which are in close proximity, making it safer from collapse during an extreme weather event, and safer from immediate personal discovery by a burglar).

One example of a safe room might be a decent size closet, perhaps near or where the bedrooms are. The closet walls could potentially be modified with materials that might somewhat diminish the impact potential of bullets, which in turn would further strengthen the room for other disaster situations. I’ve not tested this, but, I’ve thought about the concept of adding a few layers of ‘backer-board’ – a cement board that is very dense, heavy, and used in various aspects of home construction.

 

About your safe room…

No windows.
Quickly accessible.
It must have only one ‘solid’ – not a sliding type of closet door.
Install a deadbolt on the door.
Install a peep hole in the door.

Whatever you decide for your safe room, just as important should be your decisions about what to keep inside it…

Firearm(s), safely stored.
Ammo.
Pepper spray.
Body armor.
Phone. (If land-lines are cut, a cell phone is better)
A list of phone numbers. (We all know ‘911’, right?)
Flashlights.
Food – Water.
Fire extinguishers.
AM/FM portable radio.

 

Give it some thought. Be it for weather disaster preparedness, and/or for home security from burglary or home invasion, a safe room could save your life or the lives of your family members. After you’ve given it some thought, go ahead and do it!

 

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8 Comments

  1. Check the website http://www.theboxotruth.com/ and look at the test on penetration against different types of materials.

    I suspect the backer board will not do well as a bullet stopper.

    A full metal exterior door did very poorly in the test, with all ammunition punching through with enough force to cause serious injury or death.

    Nothing short of Kevlar plate or sandbags should be considered “cover”

    1. Thanks for the link – interesting! I’ve also read about sand-filled walls being effective to some degree. It’s an interesting subject and one that would be fun to experiment with.

  2. rammed earth homes have an advantage besides being extremely affordable and highly energy efficient.

  3. Sounds to me like a death trap….what if the intruders light your house on fire? and block your only door?
    I would only consider going into one of these if it was equipped with an escape tunnel.

    1. My bathroom its the only door with a lock

      And my house would be very hard to light on fire

    1. @Fred, Thanks for that info. Good stuff. Here is a description… Insulated concrete forms (ICFs) are hollow foam blocks which are stacked into the shape of the exterior walls of a building, reinforced with steel rebar, and then filled with concrete. Insulated concrete forms combine one of the finest insulating materials, Expanded Polystyrene (EPS), with one of the strongest structural building materials, steel reinforced concrete. The result is a wall system of unmatched comfort, energy efficiency, strength and noise reduction.

  4. After reading this post, I realized I had three safe rooms in the house for different circumstances. One is for ultimate disasters such as nuclear war, tornados. This one is not easy to get to if it involves an intruder in the house so I have a second safe room that more closely resembles what you describe in your post. The third safe room is for hurricanes and winter ice storms. This one is in the part of the house that is easy to heat in the winter, safe from flooding and is safe from trees that may crash into the house under hurricane strength winds. The third safe room does require covering two windows with 3/4″ plywood.

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