Home Security Gadgets & Reviews

Safes have long been known to be designed to be fireproof, as well as acting as a deterrent for burglars, so they can protect your important documents and other valuables in the case of a fire. Today, more and more safes are coming out that are waterproof too.

With increasing numbers of hurricanes and other storms, a waterproof safe can give you peace of mind. This is also true if you live in a flood-prone area.

You can get anything from file safes to safes that bolt to your wall or floor and thus aren’t removable by burglars.

With a safe that protects your valuables from thieves, fires, and water damage, you’ll be far ahead of the curve when it comes to home security.

The waterproof file safe shown here is available from Amazon for $84:

Honeywell Protector 1070-Cubic-Inch 1/2-Hour Fire Waterproof Hanging File Safe

For most people, a little safe that is bolted to the floor in their bedroom closet is enough security for their valuables, but if you need more room, you could check into having a dedicated vault built for your home or home-based business (if you sell on the Internet and store items in your home, they would be much better protected in a vault than in the basement).

A company called FireLock makes modular fireproof vaults that can be made for residential use (with modular construction, the vault is built at the factory and then assembled on site–this usually means higher quality construction, as factory settings are easier to control than climate, weather, etc. which is a factor when building on site). A perk of modular vaults is that they’re not necessarily permanent structures. Old-fashioned vaults were set in poured concrete, so you had no chance of taking it with you if you moved. A modular vault can be disassembled and reassembled at a new locale if needed.

http://www.firelock.com

In this day and age, it’s just stupid to leave the keys to your car in the ignition (even if the vehicle is in the garage), and it’s not much better to just toss them on a table just inside the doorway (like so many of us do). Anybody who comes into the house or the garage (whether neighbors, potential thieves, or just your kids who think they should be driving your car…) can make away with your prized ride. And if you’ve got extra vehicles (snow mobiles or other grown-up toys), there’s just that much more of value that could be stolen.

One way to protect your goods is to keep your keys in a key safe when you’re not using them. A simple wall-mounted safe like the GE AccessPoint Slimline KeySafe is easy to use (you can pick your own combination) and gives you the peace of mind of knowing nobody can take off with your cars and other vehicles.

A key safe can also be used to store an extra house key (in case your kids are always losing theirs but get home from school before you do). A key safe is just a smart addition for any home.

This one is available online for $27:

GE AccessPoint Slimline KeySafe

If you like the idea of having a residential safe but you don’t feel the need for some big hulking box taking up a third of your closet, this anti-theft drawer safe from Honeywell might be a better solution.

The digital safe can be bolted in a desk drawer or onto a shelf in a closet (it comes with 4 pre-drilled holes in bottom of safe, but you would need to get your own hardware), so you can use it in your home or even in an RV or boat. The digital locking system has a re-programmable combination that you can choose and an emergency override key in case you forget your combination (just don’t be a doof and store the key to the safe in the same desk as the safe itself… maybe keep that key at work or some such). Though not as large as a traditional floor-mounted unit, the Honeywell is large enough to store a small laptop computer or jewelry, cash, documents, etc.

The safe retails for $90 at Amazon:

Honeywell Digital Drawer Safe

If you’ve ever shopped for a safe or vault for your home or office, you might have noticed how drab everything on the market is. Black, gray, beige, white… that’s about it for color choices. Granted, you’re shopping for something to protect your valuables from fire and theft, so style shouldn’t be that important, but why can’t you have it all?

These colorful blue, red, and yellow safes are available in Japan from the Nakabayashi stationery company. Powered by batteries and with no sign of a floor- or wall-mounting system in place, I’m sure they’re not very secure in reality (any safe that a burglar can simply walk away carrying isn’t a wise choice), but it’s a neat idea. Maybe we’ll see some of the high-end safe makers coming out with trendy options in the future.

via LuxuryLaunches

So, you want a safe to protect your valuables (documents, jewelry, passports, etc.), but you don’t want a big eye sore in your house. And maybe you don’t need a huge square thing that takes up a third of your closet. Sure, you could go for a between-the-studs wall safe, but an in-floor safe can be an even better bet.

The Sentry In-floor Safe is a cylinder that can be sunken into concrete as the floor as being poured (no way would a thief be able to get that sucker out) or added post-construction to a wood floor without requiring too much work. The lid lies flush with the floor, so if you put a piece of a furniture or a rug over it, no one will ever know the safe is there. Though it looks pretty small in this picture, the Sentry safe can actually hold 540 cu. inches worth of stuff, and it weighs a sturdy 28 lbs.

Available from Home Depot for $119.

Gone are the days when you had to open safes with a rotating dial…. 53 left…14 right…48 left, or was it 84… Half the time you couldn’t get the thing to open even when it was yours and you knew the code (don’t worry; I had the same trouble with my gym lock).

Well, today many safes are entirely digital, which can make things easier on the owner. This safe from Stacks & Stacks lets you open it with a key or via a combination punched into a number pad (just like withdrawing money from the ATM). It’s fireproof, and it comes with bolts, so you can mount it on the floor where no thief can simply come along and carry it off. The price is $255.

Stacks & Stacks

If you live in an area that’s prone to floods, hurricanes, or other wet and wild storms, you might want to consider a waterproof container of some sort to protect your personal documents and anything that relates to the ownership of your house, car, etc. That’s in addition to the usual home security concerns (you don’t want to make it easy for a burglar to walk off with your papers). Sure, you can get a safe deposit box for these kinds of items, but that will put a bill in your mailbox every month. Also, there’s the inconvenience of driving to the bank whenever you want to check on something.

These waterproof file safes from Brink would allow you to keep everything in your house and give you some peace of mind, knowing your paperwork won’t be destroyed in a flood. They’re also fire retardant up to 1500 degrees, so they should keep papers from singing in the event of a fire. Keep in mind, however, that they’re small enough that a burglar could simply take the whole safe and walk away, so you’d probably want to keep them in a full-sized floor-bolted or wall-mounted safe unless you’ve got a secret compartment they can be tucked into (and, yes, burglars think to look under the bed….).

The file safes are available online from Blair, starting at $40.