Room Conversion?

[Guinness]

Anyone do a room conversion into a safe room?..

IE using a vault door for the room entry.



If so how did / would you reinforce the rest of the room?

Just some thoughts for future projects...

[slick_711]

I haven't, but it's something I intend to do "when I'm older" and have the stability for such a project. It strikes me as the kind of thing that's much easier to do if you're building the home; but it's definitely possible in a pre-existing room. Some things you'll want to consider:

- preferably a windowless room, or at minimum a room with small easily barred windows.

- you'll want/need to setup a separate climate control from the rest of the house, so you can maintain temperature and humidity (the upside of this is you can also use your vault room to store your good whiskey and cigars (maybe that's just me)

- I would suggest using a vault door that mounts as an inner door, that way you can have a normal hall style door on the outside. Just helps keep the fact that you have a room full of expensive stuff secret when you have company.

As far as securing the walls, I couldn't say. If you were building a new home and just including this in the plans there are all sorts of things you could do, but as to reinforcing an existing room If you're going to be refinishing the inside of the room I'm sure theres something you could do. Fire-lining, or an extra layer of dry-wall for insulation? Someone else will chime in on that I'm sure.

[JPglee1]

As far as securing the walls, I couldn't say. If you were building a new home and just including this in the plans there are all sorts of things you could do, but as to reinforcing an existing room If you're going to be refinishing the inside of the room I'm sure theres something you could do. Fire-lining, or an extra layer of dry-wall for insulation? Someone else will chime in on that I'm sure.

If you're building a NEW house, I'd look into something called Polysteel pour-in-place forms. www.polysteel.com look at the PS4000 model.

You pour the concrete into the form and you get a nice concrete retaining wall thats easy to wire/plumb and simple enough to do yourself.

You should try to do ANYTHING related to a safe room/vault BY YOURSELF as much as is possible. If you DO have people help, DONT tell them what they're working on. Most people don't realize how many robberies happen from having a worker/repairman inside your house... They case the joint and someone else or themselves comes back for what they want (sometimes anyway)

If you don't want to go with polysteel, you could use conventional concrete blocks with rebar inside for an inner structural wall, or to retrofit an existing home/structure.

The roof will be the hardest part to do right, IMHO. The proper way is a poured in place ceiling, but that can be tough to do by yourself

Good luck to you.

J

[guimus]

I helped my dad and uncle do one at dad's house. Not much help to you, though, as we used an old septic tank as the room. City water and waste came in 20 years ago, so the previous owner pumped out and cleaned the tank (which was buried 1 foot from the outside wall of the house), cut a hole in the basement wall, dug out some dirt, and cut a hole in the tank (roughly a 12x12 foot room, 8" think concrete all around, surrounded by dirt, capped by concrete and 2 feet of dirt.)

I'm thinking that I'll do something similar when I finally decide where to settle. If retrofitting a house, I think that a basement room (if possible) is ideal, due to less traffic, and more-secure walls.

[mstlaurent]

Seems like you could pick your windowless room and build another room inside of it. Build four cinder block walls, rebar every rank and fill the cores with a good concrete, then set up a support structure and lay a rebar-reinforced slab for a ceiling. Set the safe door in the block wall and let the original door camoflage it. I wouldn't do it without getting an engineer to sign off on the plans, but it seems fairly straightforward.

[Guinness]

Some good input here guys thanks keep it coming, I too was thinking about the cinder block / rebar reinforced route.

[grammaton76]

*grin* If you neglect the roof, you're in danger of the girl from Underworld spinning around in a circle, shooting through the floor, to drop down into your 'safe room'.

[Guinness]

*grin* If you neglect the roof, you're in danger of the girl from Underworld spinning around in a circle, shooting through the floor, to drop down into your 'safe room'.

And we all know how much havoc that can cause

[Nismo]

If I ever had the money to do one of these I would include a secret secondary escape route just incase the main door becomes blocked or un accessable or if bad guys are on the other side waiting to get you. Maybe add another reinforced door on the other side that you can open and bust out the side of the house with a sledgehammer to get out of the house. Then again Im not james bond.

[Matt C]

Rooms with windows and the house already being built are not much of a factor if you know a thing or two about home construction. I tore out old windows and put new ones on (in a different in two cases) in one weekend. Walls are just 2x4s, drywall and stucco/wood on the outside for the most part.

If you want a safe room it just depends ho much you want to spend, in terms of the steel. You just tear off the drywall and mount/weld the steel into place, then put the drywall back. It's pretty hard to make something that will be as sturdy as a decent safe though. I could get through pretty much any wall with a good axe, even one with 3/16 steel plating. It would not take as long as you think either.

If you wanted to convert a closet type space, make the closet vanish and have a hidden safe room, that would make more sense, and be easier to reinforce. The best thing of all would be to go DOWN...

[turinreza]

i'd suggest hide the entry door behind a wall of bookcases..
like a secret panel used to get into that room..
if you just have a door then someone will know there is a room
there but cant get into... so must be good stuff in there..

[skywlkr]

I'm an architect. If you have a raised wood floored house and you plan on pouring steel reinforced concrete walls+ceiling+etc. you are going to need to pour new footings underneath to support all the extra load. Typical wood floor joists are just 2x6 or 2x8 spaced at 16-24 inches on center, which won't support the extra load. Also, for a raised wood floor safe room I would suggest pouring a reinforced concrete deck floor system, which again will add to the load and will need new footings to be poured.

[Gringo Bandito]

I helped a buddy of mine do this recently as we made a new walk in closet in a room in his house.

As we framed the walls we placed every stud at 12" on center. Heavily reinforced the door frames with multiple studs and closed in the area above the header board.

This was the formula for the walls - Apply sheets of plywood to the walls followed by perforated metal sheeting. The final layer is hardibacker which is way more durable than sheet rock.

[Gringo Bandito]

My buddies grandfather had a pretty cool set up as well.

As you walk into the barn, there is a coat rack on the wall next to you. Pull on one of the coat hangers which releases a lock in the other room.

Walk into the " canning room", push on one of the walls and walk on in. There was no way that anyone could ever know that that room ever existed.

[PistolPete75]

My buddies grandfather had a pretty cool set up as well.

As you walk into the barn, there is a coat rack on the wall next to you. Pull on one of the coat hangers which releases a lock in the other room.

Walk into the " canning room", push on one of the walls and walk on in. There was no way that anyone could ever know that that room ever existed.

that would be so cool to have.