Fire rated document safes and cabinets

Fire rated document safes for paper and data media

What the fire rating tells you

The rating is a score in minutes from a furnace test. The safe is put in an oven that follows a defined temperature curve, and the measurement is how long it takes before the temperature inside reaches the level at which the contents are damaged. That number becomes the rating: 60, 90 or 120 minutes.

Most safes here are rated to NT Fire 017, the Nordic test method. Others are rated to EN 15659 (marked LFS) or to the manufacturer's own standard. Which applies to a given safe is always stated on the product page and in the Fire rating filter.

The furnace reaches around a thousand degrees Celsius. That is hotter than most room fires, and the point is margin. Several of the ranges are also drop tested from just over nine metres, so the fire protection holds even if the safe goes through a floor into a storey that is already burning.

More minutes is not always the right answer. What decides is how long the fire gets to burn before it is put out, and how hard the contents are to replace. A receipt can be reissued. An original will, a signed instrument or the only copy of something cannot. If you are unsure, call us. We have had that conversation many times.

Paper and data media are not protected the same way

A hard drive tolerates far less heat than paper does. A USB stick, a memory card or an external drive is damaged long before the paper beside it has even darkened. A safe rated for paper therefore does not automatically protect anything digital.

If you need both, there are safes tested for it. Select the Protects digital media value in the Fire protection filter to show them.

You are not trading one for the other. Every safe in this category that protects digital media protects paper too. There is no safe here that does only one of the two.

If only digital media is to be stored, and no paper documents at all, data media safes are a better starting point.

How much fits, and why the safe is so much bigger than its contents

The Binder Capacity Total slider filters by how many A4 binders the safe holds, and it is the quickest way to arrive at the right size.

The total assumes a particular arrangement. Which one is on the product page under Binder Capacity: this many upright on the shelves, this many hidden behind them, this many lying flat, this many in the drawer. If everything has to stand upright and visible, you get fewer than the total promises. Read that line before you settle on a size.

Allow margin. A safe that holds exactly the binders you have today is full next year. And unlike an ordinary steel cabinet there is no fixing it afterwards: the insulation takes between ten and twenty-five centimetres out of both the height and the width. That is why a fire safe is so much larger than what goes into it, and why one more binder will not squeeze in once the space is used.

One thing that often solves it anyway: on many of the safes the pull-out drawer can be removed, which frees that whole height for binders. If the product page does not say, ask us. We know which ones.

If the documents belong in suspension files rather than in binders on a shelf, a filing cabinet is the right piece of furniture even when you need fire protection. Fire rated models with drawers are available there.

What is inside

Most safes have adjustable shelves, so the layout can be set to suit what goes in. Many also have a pull-out lockable drawer, a lock inside the lock, for passports, seals, spare keys or anything that should not be reachable by everyone who knows the code to the safe.

Other common details are a pull-out plastic tray for small items, and key hooks on the inside of the door. What each safe has is listed under fittings on the product page.

Code lock, key or fingerprint

An electronic code lock is the most common choice here. No key to keep track of, and the code can be changed when someone leaves.

The batteries are always changed from the outside. A document safe has no emergency override key. If the battery compartment sat on the inside of the door, flat batteries would lock you out of your own safe for good, so on every model it is reachable from outside.

Use good quality alkaline batteries, Duracell or Energizer. The code locks depend on it. Change them all at the same time, and do not wait until the display starts to fade.

Several of the code locks have a time delay that engages after repeated wrong entries, which makes it pointless to stand and guess. What your particular lock does is on the product page.

A key lock is simpler and has no battery to forget. It suits places where few people have access anyway, or where the routine is that the key follows a particular role. Fingerprint locks are available on a couple of models.

The Lock system filter shows what each safe has. And one piece of advice we give everyone who buys a code lock: change the code three to five times a year, and always change it when someone who knew it leaves.

Should the safe be bolted down?

Weight is not always the protection. The largest safes here cannot be carried out. They need a pallet truck and two people just to get through the door. But the category also holds models one person can lift, and for those the anchoring is the whole theft protection. A safe that is carried out can be opened at leisure somewhere else, and then the lock does not matter.

The Prepared for bolt-down filter shows which are prepared with holes in the base. A safe without bolt holes is usually a statement rather than an omission - those safes are built in a weight class where nobody carries anything out. An expansion bolt is included with several of the boltable ones.

If the safe is going anywhere other than the ground floor, check the load capacity of the structure first. The weight is on every product page, and it often surprises people.

The warranty does not apply automatically after a fire

Every safe carries a warranty against manufacturing defects. But several of the models also have a lifetime after-the-fire warranty: if there is a fire, and the safe has done its job, it is replaced with a new one free of charge.

That warranty requires the safe to be registered with the manufacturer. How to do it is in the manufacturer's documentation, which comes with the safe. It is done once and takes a few minutes.

Do it the day the safe arrives, while the paperwork is still out on the desk. Registration is the only thing separating a warranty you have from a warranty you thought you had, and that discovery is otherwise made after a fire.

Not sure whether yours is covered? Get in touch with the model designation and we will look it up.

Dimensions, and the space it has to stand in

The Outer Height and Outer Width sliders help when the space is already decided: in an alcove, under a counter or against a particular wall.

The dimensions on the product page are external, with handle and code lock included. That is the depth that actually decides whether the safe fits, and it is not the same as the dimensions of the body.

Leave clearance in front as well. The door has to open fully, and if the safe has a pull-out drawer it has to come out with nothing in the way.

If you would like help choosing for a specific space, get in touch with the measurements and we will suggest something that fits.