A very important aspect of maintaining home security is to have a safe place to store valuables and cash within the house. Despite having sound alarm systems or security cameras installed or other security measures, there is still no guarantee that your valuables will be protected from theft.
There is always the chance that an insider such as a domestic help or someone who you employ might be able to circumvent these security measures and gain entry to your house. Storing your valuables in a home safe is therefore a good strategy to adopt as the last stand against theft.
Varieties of Home Safes
Home safes come in different varieties. Some of them double up as fire safes to protect your valuables from fire damage as well. Most home safes are compact and box style compartmentalized safe storages that can be kept in a relatively secure place within your house. The trouble with these small and portable safes is that, though they might have a good locking system, the burglar can easily carry it away and offer no resistance. Hence bigger safes that are heavy and difficult to carry away without drawing attention or ones that are fixed onto the wall of your house are recommended.
Safes fitted onto walls can be made more effective if they can be concealed. Some safes depend purely on concealment strategies to avoid burglars and are usually made out of materials that can be broken into with ease such as wood or plastic. A well hidden safe would usually recommend concealment on a wall face or on the floor of a room. There are safes that are concealed by portraits or large pictures or even hidden under carpets and floorboards.
There are also others that are heavy and strong and are as big as a cabinet or a large cupboard and can be bolted down onto the floor which prevents them from being carried off by burglars. The ones that protect against both burglars and fire damage are made up of materials that are mostly fire resistant as well as tough enough to create a lot of trouble for thugs who try to break in. These fireproof safes are accorded different ratings based on how strong a fire they can withstand or for how long.
Ratings for Home Safes
There are safes that can bear more than a thousand degree Celsius of heat for at least an hour without damaging any of their contents. There are also data protection safes that also protect sensitive data stored on magnetic disks or media data which are highly sensitive to heat and magnetic fields. The common characteristic which all these have is that they are also waterproof to provide security against water damage caused while trying to put the fire out.
There are ratings ascribed to burglary-proof safes as well. These ratings depend on how long these safes offered resistance to a professional locksmith trying to pry them open using commonly available tools. Any safe that offers resistance for up to half an hour or more is considered relatively secure. Most burglars look to safe crack within under that time and usually panic and flee the scene if they find it is taking more time unless of course the scenario is such that the safe is unguarded for long periods of time such as days or months which would give them ample time to break it open.
