Thread: Securing a pistol safe, wooden house vs concrete floor garage

Hey team, just bought a pistol safe and trying to sort a place to secure it at home. Dwelling is a 1940s hardwood framing home with hardwood floors etc.

I do have a standalone double garage with concrete floor and exposed framing interior about 10 meters from the house as well.

Those that have gone through this before, the simple option is to have it hidden in the garage somewhere but I would like it to be in the house somewhere. How big of a steel plate do I really need to go under the floor? Is there another way to do it?

Love to hear from anyone who has had to do this in the last 12 to 24 months, or longer.

Originally Posted by Rated M for Magnum

Hey team, just bought a pistol safe and trying to sort a place to secure it at home. Dwelling is a 1940s hardwood framing home with hardwood floors etc.

I do have a standalone double garage with concrete floor and exposed framing interior about 10 meters from the house as well.

Those that have gone through this before, the simple option is to have it hidden in the garage somewhere but I would like it to be in the house somewhere. How big of a steel plate do I really need to go under the floor? Is there another way to do it?

Love to hear from anyone who has had to do this in the last 12 to 24 months, or longer.

FSA say it needs to be a plate bigger than the safe at least 6mm thick and secured to at least 2 joists. Use at least 10mm bolts.

When I was looking at doing my endorsed safe it was going to be a bit of a prick through our wooden floors, so I ended up putting it in garage on a concrete floor.

So I'm probably looking at a couple of big pieces of angle iron under the floor. The garage is nowhere near as secure as the house. The garage is also where all our power tools are handy for breaking into things

I fabricated a plate for a friend to go under his floor, what i did was measured between the joists, cut a 6mm plate to fit between them, welded a length of 6mm flat on each side to bolt through into the joists, the tech screwed it in place, sat the safe in place and drilled the floor and marked the plate, i then took it out, drilled the plate, put the 4 10mm lengths of threaded rod in the holes welded up so no way to cut the studs off from below, put the plate with the studs back in under the floor, and bolted it to the joists using 10x50 coach bolts, then sat the safe on top and put nyloc nuts in from inside the safe, then 2x 10x65mm coach bolts into the wall stud on the back of the safe.

I did something similar .as well as the plate I held it up with 200*200 piles I cut to length I think about 860 or thereabouts on the inside of the joists as well . Being old native timber they were spaced about 420 apart so the 400 worked well ,either way it’s very secure . Almost harder drilling through that hardwood than concrete to secure the piles . All held in with rods and coach bolts etc . But just an idea if you are looking to fill any gaps between old native floors .due to the odd spacing by today’s measurements.
I only thought of it after much cutting swearing and bruised knuckles . Of course I had to cut the insulation as well. Nothing is where it should be under old houses .

When you read the FSA stuff pay careful attention to the use of "must" vs "should". The plate between joists is a "should" and as such they cannot enforce it. All the vetters I have interacted with think it is impractical and ridiculous and are happy with the bolts through a piece of angle iron under the floor and nyloc nuts inside the safe.

The wording is vague on purpose. I just didn’t want the wife aggro for cutting the floorboards . I wanted to just use angle iron ,however went the over engineering route .it turned out to be lucky in my case When I got a confirmation phone call from the police I was able to provide photos and the plans I had drawn . They were really good on the telephone .The arms officer had already signed it off . Just needed confirmation as it wasn’t into concrete , I got hit up on the size of plate being bigger than the safe .I used two layers of three mil steel under all the piles . I should have just made a frame using the joists and put readymix concrete in there . Poured some water in bolt holes and hey presto a corncrete pad . It works underwater so it would work under the house .

All tidy now, just waiting on interviews and inspection. Two long pieces of 100mmx100mm angle iron secured to the joists and bolted with nylock nuts and lock nuts, excess thread of bolt bent over to crush the thread so it cant be undone.

Good luck . It will be a nice simple solution that can be used if arms officer is happy 😃 . Thanks for the update