Safe Installation Thread

Watch Ryder

This is a basic, cheap and affordable safe.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6eSn9Qn4poQ

In the aftermath of an attempted robbery of the house I’m staying at I’ve decided to upgrade the security. I have a variety of expensive, ‘nickable’ items, among them a powerful autoloading CO2 Air pistol.
Not something I want a criminal getting his hands on to stick up the nearby 7/11 with or blowing holes in people when he's drunk etc.

So I set out in the blazing hot day to scour the shops and stores nearby for a gun safe. It had to be affordable, fairly substantial and light enough to transport on my bike.
It also had to have digital and a manual key override feature; as thieves often deliberately destroy the keypad in fustration when faced with one of these and without a key back-up your safe is locked forever...

Here's the stats on it:

16 kilo’s
Digital Keypad
Manual Key
Shelf insert and carpet
4 x expanding masonry bolts

You will need:

A main’s powered drill with a varied array of masonry drill-bits
A spanner or adjustable
Rawplugs (in the case of breeze-block construction)
A Hammer or suitable blunt instrument
Pencil or other marking instrument

Back at the ranch it was time to get cracking on installing it. I shouldn’t have to tell you that a safe isn’t much good if it isn’t anchored securely to something, preferably a wall and / or floor...

Safe Location

First thing it is to decide where you want it. For me it’s right at my bedside where I can get to it from being awoken from sleep etc.
I was going to mount it at waist-height but decided upon the floor, this was partly to do with making it much harder for a thief to rip-out of the wall using levering tools and also it would be easier to install and remove at a later date.
Next thing is to ‘match-mark’ where the holes that are set into the safe onto the wall itself. I just used a graphite pencil but you can use felt pen etc. This is probably the most important bit of all. Make sure the safe is absolutely flush with the wall, in the case of an uneven / unsquare floor or wall you may have to apply pressure while you ‘match-mark’ it up.

Make your Drilling!

Next is drilling out the holes. Make sure that the bolts you are using won’t protude through the neighbouring wall. A good rule of thumb is to keep your bolts to at least 2.5 inches but no more than 4-5 inches. If you have an olde-worlde stone / granite wall then you can possibly exceed this with bigger bolts...

Don’t attempt to ‘gung-ho’ this bit, unless you are really a beast with a drill. I drilled two pilot holes in each hole before I switched to the proper drill-size.

Pilot drilling each hole is strongly recommended in this case.

Bolt Installation

For European style solid house-bricks and concrete foors expanding masonry bolts are brilliant for using to anchor a safe of any description to.


Elsewhere there may only be breeze-block construction.

If this is the case then it’s best to use a screw-bolt with a hefty raw-plug:

The Screw-type bolts aren’t perfect but it’s the best method for breeze block, short of having steel plate’s, and welding bolts to it on the other-side of the wall you can’t go far wrong with this method!

Then it’s just a case of gently tapping the rawplugs into the holes (or simply inserting the expanding bolts), lining-up the safe then inserting the screwbolts into the holes. You’ll want an even hand on tapping the rawplugs in btw. I buckled one accidently and it was a pliers job to yank it out and put another one it...

Ideally you want a small adjustable spanner. In my case all there was to hand in the shops was this bigger one. Meaning tightening them up at a straight-on angle, which takes a bit longer:

You want to tighten these up in-sequence preferably in a diagonal order for best results.

You want all the bolts to be flush as can be.

One flat washer and one spring washer for between the safe-side-bolt and the wall are also a good idea:

Once you’ve got all the bolts tightened and in place it’s time to fill-up the safe with goodies and valuables

Make sure you use a decent passcode, NOT the factory supplied one or the 1234...

Check out the video at the top for the rolling low-down, video style with some music to get your mental juices buzzin'

Thanks for reading.

fred funk }{

Good post.

A few things to add to it. You should locate the safe inside a cupboard as it makes it so much more difficult to forcibly gain access to the safe as the lack of space is very restrictive. Also, I've seen safes with bolts on L brackets on the outside, they kind of act as dummy fixing to slow down the thief. And finally, connect the door of the safe to your burglar alarm.