Thoughts on bolting your safe to the floor . . .
We are regularly asked if a safe should be bolted to the floor. The answer is easy – YES, it should be!!
However, there are sometimes issues that must be considered when determining whether to bolt your safe to your floor. Please read the following information and let us know what you’d like us to do.
- Concrete slab. Whether in the garage or inside the house, 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 is plywood over 2×8 floor joists. 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.
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 do not ask our crew to crawl under houses – most are not very pleasant to crawl under. We’ll drill the hole(s) for free; but you need to finish the job from that point (determine the proper length bolt and secure it in place with your crew and tools).
- Upstairs locations. 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 1,000’s of safes we know that this is too much weight for a couple guys to pick up and put on the back of a pickup truck.
