How To Choose A Fire Safe – The Ultimate Buyer’s Guide
Are you looking to buy a fireproof safe for your home or business, but don’t know where to start?
There’s more to choosing a fire safe than you might think. The different certification systems, safe constructions and compromises between capacity, security, cost and fire ratings can be confusing.
Get it wrong, and you could end up with a fire safe that simply isn’t right for the documents, data or specialist items you want to keep safe!
In our Ultimate Guide, our team of safe experts go deep into the subject, guide you through the process of buying a fire safe – providing you with all the information you need to make the right decision.
Safe Fire Ratings Explained
As you’re shopping for a fire safe, you’re likely to find a lot of different language used by safe manufacturers and retailers to describe fire safes. These include:
- Fireproof
- Fire resistant
- Fire tested
- Fire rated
The truth is that no safe is considered 100% fire proof.
In the simplest terms (more on this later!), safe fire ratings are measured in terms of the amount of time they protect the contents from fire, and the kind of item they are designed to protect (documents/data/etc). They are generally rated from 25 minutes to 2 hours.
Which level of fire rating is right for you depends on a few different factors, including:
- What you are storing inside – domestic customers looking to store passports and personal documents may be fine with a 30 minute rated safe, whereas business customers with mission-critical hard drives will want additional protection!
- Your insurance requirements – some insurance policies will demand that safes come with a certain level of fire rating.
- The location of your safe / property – in urban areas where fire service response times are lower, 30 minutes may provide sufficient protection. For rural properties or large commercial buildings, a higher fire rating may be more prudent.
- The fire risk – for commercial businesses on sites with a higher fire risk, or whose business comes with a risk of fire, a higher fire rating may be required.
What do you Want to Keep in Your Fireproof Safe?
The primary question you need to ask yourself when choosing a fire safe is what you want to store inside.
Fireproof safes fall into three main categories.
Documents
The most common reason people choose a fire safe is to protect documents. Paper has quite a high ignition point (233°C, though it starts to char at 177°C). Document safes are designed to protect the contents from flames and smoke, whilst keeping the internal temperature well below the ignition point for a defined period of time.
Data
High temperatures can cause catastrophic damage and loss of data stored on hard drives. Data safes aren’t just designed to protect against flames – they also shield the contents from high temperatures for a defined period of time. These safes are ideal for storing invaluable business data stored on hard drives.
Specialist
Some items, (like specialist optical media, discs, old camera film and negatives) are extremely susceptible to high temperatures and magnetic fields. Specialist safes designed to protect these items focus on keeping temperatures inside as low as possible in case of fire. This enhanced temperature resistance usually comes at a significant cost to security.
Fire Safe Insurance Ratings
As with any safe, you will also want to ensure that the safe has a security rating that satisfies your insurance requirements.
All safes come with an insurance rating measured in cash values, from £1,000 - £100,000 or more. This is the amount of cash you can store inside it for insurance purposes – and you can store valuables up to ten times the cash value inside.
Fail to get a safe with the right level of insurance rating, and your insurer may refuse to pay out in the event you need to claim.
Fireproof Safe vs Security Safe – What’s the Difference?
The difference between an ordinary safe and a fire safe comes down to the design and materials used in its construction:
Security safes
Security safes are designed primarily to prevent people from getting into them! Thick metal walls, filled with combinations of concrete, steel, ball bearings, wire wool and other reinforcing materials make it as hard as possible for would be thieves to drill their way in.
Fire safes
With fire safes, the primary objective is different – it’s to keep the contents safe from fire, and to keep temperatures inside the safe down. Instead of using concrete reinforced with metal (which conducts heat), the walls of fireproof safes are filled with advanced, fire-resistant foam that doesn’t conduct heat in the same way.
Unfortunately, this foam simply isn’t as strong as reinforced concrete, which makes them easier to break into than security safes.
Double walled fire safes
It is possible to create more secure fire safes, by using a double walled system. These safes include both a security wall and a fire insulating wall. This provides a balance between security and fire resistance, but does mean reduced internal capacity…
The Trade off – Security vs Fire Rating vs Cost vs Capacity
As we’ve mentioned throughout this guide – fire safety usually comes at a cost in terms of the security rating.
The reality is that when choosing any safe, there is always some kind of trade-off between:
- Level of security
- Fire rating
- Capacity
- Cost
A safe with a two-hour fire rating will invariably have to sacrifice a level of security. If you want a safe that combines security with fire resistance, it will come with additional cost – and you will have to sacrifice some capacity!
In the end, it’s about finding the right balance to suit your individual requirements.
Fire Resistant Safes – Certification and Testing Explained
Not all fire safes are created (or tested) equally!
You might be surprised to learn that there is no single agreed global standard for fire ratings when it comes to safes. There are multiple different testing systems, accreditations and standards in play, which all use different parameters for their fire resistance.
These include:
Manufacturer tested
Some manufacturers use their own in-house certification system. This means the manufacturer has tested the safe itself. Usually, these safes are tested to a certain temperature, for a set time, defined by the manufacturer.
At Safe & Vault Company Limited we only acknowledge and recommend fire safes tested to industry approved fire test standards EN 15659, NT Fire and EN 1047.
EN15659 (LFS)
Also known as the Light Fire Storage standard, this test provides certification of a basic level of fire protection. There are two EN15659 designations, 30P (30 minutes) and 60P (1 hour) for the protection of paper documents, keeping internal safe temperatures below 170°C.
EN 1047 (VDMA 24911)
This is a European standard, and comes with several different ratings. As part of the testing procedure, safes are heated in a furnace to around 1000°C for up to two hours. As part of the testing, some safes will also be dropped from a height of more than 9m to simulate a building collapse.
The ratings include:
- S 60P (1 hour) / S120P (2 hours) paper protection – internal temperature stays below 170°C
- S 60D (1 hour) / S 120D (2 hours) data protection – internal temperature stays below 70°C and humidity below 85%
- S 60DIS (1 hour) / S120DIS (2 hours) sensitive data material protection – internal temperature stays below 50°C and humidity below 85%
NT Fire 017
The NordTest NT Fire 017 is a rigorous fire test that’s commonly conducted by SP Testing Lab in Sweden – and it’s become the industry standard.
The certifications include:
Paper – keeps internal temperatures under 177°C
(last number represents minutes of protection)
- NT Fire 017-60 Paper
- NT Fire 017-90 Paper
- NT Fire 017-120 Paper
Data – prevents internal temperature increasing by more than 50°C
(last number represents minutes of protection)
- NT Fire 017-60 Data
- NT Fire 017-90 Data
- NT Fire 017-120 Data
Diskette – prevents internal temperature increasing by more than 30°C
(last number represents minutes of protection)
- NT Fire 017-60 Diskette
- NT Fire 017-90 Diskette
- NT Fire 017-120 Diskette
At Safe & Vault, we believe the NT Fire 017 test to be the best.
It’s the industry standard – and it’s this system that the leading manufacturers use for their high end fire safes. A manufacturer’s in house testing process may be fine for domestic fire safes, but for serious commercial applications, looking for an NT Fire 017 and SP Testing badge is the one to go for.
Choosing the Right Fireproof Safe From Safe & Vault
Want a helping hand in choosing the right fire safe for your home or business?
At Safe & Vault, we have dozens of fire safes and cabinets available, in a full range of shapes, sizes and fire ratings, including those rated to the latest NT Fire 017 standards.
Whether you’re looking to keep your papers and passport safe at home, or need an expansive, robust data safe designed to protect your business-critical information, you’ll find it at Safe & Vault.
Whatever your requirements, you can come to us secure in the knowledge that you’re in safe hands! Explore our full range of fire safes today. visit our Leeds Showroom, or get in touch with our team today on 0113 274 4627 / [email protected].