We are regularly asked if a safe should be bolted to the floor. The answer is easy – YES, it should be!

Whether it’s a home safe, gun safe, jewelry safe, or any other kind of safe, bolting it down gives you more security. However, there are sometimes issues that must be considered when determining whether or not to bolt your safe to your floor, so evaluate which of the following categories you fall into, and plan accordingly.

Concrete Slab –Whether in the garage or inside the house, if you have a concrete slab floor, the only question is: why not? If the safe is bolted to the floor, a thief will have to work VERY hard to tip the safe over or remove it from your premises. 

Ground Floor, Raised Foundation – Generally, the floor in this situation is plywood, laid over 2×8 floor joists. There are two methods for bolting in this situation:

1.     The easy approach is to drill four lag bolts into the plywood floor. This will stabilize the safe some, but if someone is able to rock the safe or get under it with a pry-bar, they are likely going to be able to break it loose, so this is not the optimum choice, but it’s better than nothing.

2.     The better solution is to drill through the plywood flooring from inside the safe and come up from underneath the house with a carriage bolt (a bolt that you cannot release from the “head” end) and tighten the nut and washer from inside the safe. *The issue with this is that we don’t ask our Maximum Security crew to crawl under houses – most are not very pleasant to crawl underneath. We will however, drill the hole(s) for free, and then you just need to finish the job from that point.

Upstairs Location – Like a raised foundation, the flooring is generally plywood over floor joists. Bolting the safe to the floor will slow down a thief, but will not keep a determined thief from being able to break the safe loose. For this reason, we recommend that a safe going upstairs should weigh at least 450 pounds. Having moved thousands of safes we know that this is too much weight for a couple of burglars to pick up and put in the back of a pickup truck!

Have a question about one of these categories or want more information on bolting your safe to your floor? Leave us a comment below!