Alexandra Locksmiths have compiled this guide to buying the right safe for your needs. Be it for your home or your business premises, the following advice will help you to decide exactly what kind of secure storage solution is needed.
The cash rating.
The higher the cash rating of a particular safe, the more secure it is deemed to be. So a safe with a cash rating of £5,000 would be more secure than a safe with a cash rating of £1,000. The insurance cover on the £5,000 cash rated safe would also be higher than on the safe with £1,000 cash rating. The general rule of thumb with regards the value of the items stored in a safe is that non cash items can total 10 times the cash rating. For a more detailed explanation please visit our safes page.
The size of your safe.
If you are looking to store jewellery, important documents and cash at home you may not need a particularly large safe. Consider that you may well add to the contents in your safe over the years, so buying the lowest cash rated safe initially could be a false economy. It is better to purchase a secure storage solution that will allow for your growing needs in the future to ensure that you have adequate cover for your items. If however, you are a business owner storing thousands of important documents for clients, a walk in safe would probably be justified.
How will your safe be secured?
You may think that simply keeping your safe out of sight is sufficient, but remember to make it difficult for a potential burglar to find. If you are unlucky enough to fall victim of a break-in, a burglar will not have time to open the safe but they will take it with them if they spot it and it’s small enough to carry. You will need to weigh this possibility up against whether you want a safe that can be lifted out of your residence if necessary in the event of an emergency evacuation. To avoid removal of a safe being possible, you can bolt it to either the floor or a wall. If you have under-floor heating in your property, however, the safe cannot be drilled to the floor. Either an adhesive alternative will need to be used to secure it or you will have to opt for the safe to be bolted to a wall. If you opt for a safe that is not removable from your home/place of work then we would recommend a model that is fireproof.
Fireproof safes.
By maintaining the core temperature of the unit inside at a temperature low enough to protect its contents, a fireproof safe can prove invaluable in the defence of your valuable items contained within during a fire. The length of time that the contents will be protected during a fire will depend upon the specification. Models offering 30mins, 60mins, 90mins and 120mins of safeguarding can be chosen. Items such as birth certificates, passports, wills, precious photographs, memory sticks and CDs should all be stored in a fireproof unit. Alexandra Locksmiths can offer advice regarding exactly which model would be best for your needs.
Combination or key lock?
When choosing a safe for use at home it may be wise to opt for a combination lock, simply because one of the most common problems with safes is that they’re not used in a long time and keys are misplaced. The code to your combination can be written down and securely hidden, nowhere near the safe of course!