Steel security door input wanted

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I have a room approximately 5x10. Exterior wall, kind of a closet accessed only through my attached garage. Its where I keep my gun safe. Long story short, I've outgrown it. Instead of investing another couple thousand in a decent safe, I'm considering putting in a quality steel entry door.

I've seen $600 doors online with Home Depot and $2500 doors like you'd see at a school. Of course I don't want any windows which will cut the cost just a bit. I see the locking mechanism as being the weak point. As far as walls I've considered plate steel or a metal grid. It would also be easy enough to put a sprinkler system in this room with access above and below.

So, steel doors with a steel frame. I have zero experience in this area and of course want one that would take a large truck and serious effort to remove. Nothing that screams "Don't look in here!", and blends in as much as I can hope for. I'd be tying into stick framing but could reinforce that easily enough. Drywall needs redone anyway.

 

[vette-kid]

No idea, but I'm curious to see what you come up with. I'm betting it will be costly

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[SALIV8]

There’s a lot of knock down frames/doors as I know them. They are all steel and would be very secure. The frame comes in 3 pcs.

 

[Boomer9275]

Was just in your shoes. I decided on a safe style door but looked into steel option. Get a good lockset. Medeco locks can’t be picked and you want an out swing door. Inswings are too easy to kick in.


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[MikeinNorthWales]

If you go with a commercial-style hollow metal door and frame, get security hinges with tabs and/or non-removable pins. Tabs will prevent forcing the hinge side if the pins are removed.

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[SGKent]

I would be talking with professional locksmith companies that serve the commercial industry, not the big box stores. I managed a big electronics store many years ago, like a Fry's or Best Buy. One morning the alarm went off early. Police entered first to be sure no one was inside. We found a big heavy tow strap wrapped around the door handle lock in the back of the store shipping area, and two sets of rubber burn marks where a truck or car with posi-traction tried to pull the door off its frame, and failed. It was a thick steel door set into concrete with high grade commercial steel locks. I doubt if you can get that type of equipment from a big box store. I can't even get a set of locks for my house where something inside the lock doesn't fail within 5 years, let alone something that would hold up to someone with determination. A 5 lb sledge swung at any lock sold in a big box store would probably destroy it in one swing these days.

 

[^&right]

Thanks for the inputs gents. Like you Boomer, I'm looking into safe doors, but I'd have to fortify the framing. Probably hire a mason to set some reinforcement? As mentioned, most anything out of a box store I won't have much confidence in.

It won't be cheap, but safes aren't cheap either. It'll be cheaper and easier in the long run to build a safe room than add safes throughout the years.

When the safe I have now was delivered and set in place the guy bolting it to my slab said he had a customer who had his safe set up much like mine. Went to lunch every day at the same time to meet the local dudes. Came back to find his garage door backed into and a set of burn marks from a 4x4 dually going out the door. Where his safe has been they had run a chain around it and hitched it to the truck, pulled it right through his wall, loaded it and left within 1 hour of him pulling out his drive.

 

[nadogail]

IMHO, locks are to keep honest folks honest.
Locks are a challenge to dishonest people.

 

[The Cobbler]

now deceased locksmith friend use to say, if they want in bad enough, and have enough time, they will get it. all you do is slow them down .
A good hollow metal commercial door&frame , grout filled frame , good deadbolt is probably your best spent money . additional items may add security.
I'm not sure that I totally agree with an outswing door. sure it will slow some down, but a good pull device with a ram can open that in a split too .

 

[Chilliwack Murray]

My inlaws were in the steel door business for many years and the majority of their business was retrofitting better doors after businesses had been broken into.

Talk to a small commercial door outfit that specializes in security and fire doors. There are lots of tricks to drastically improve the security of a steel commercial door but little you can do for the doors you can but at HD or Lowes. They will take a commercial door and frame, add all sorts of security devices and custom fit it for what you'd pay for a premium door and locks anyway. Once you get the door, you can easily put it in yourself, though it will be very heavy.

As others mentioned, an outswing door is much harder to deliver the same kind of force you can get by ramming into an inswing. If there is nothing but a simple doorknob to pull on it's near impossible to overcome a good deadbolt.

Use the best quality deadbolts (yes more than one) spaced high, mid and low. High security deadbolts will always be tapered so you can't get anything propped under them and they will deflect a blow making it much harder to take them out with a sledgehammer or a jack.

Make sure the framing around the door is as strong as the door, pay particular attention to someone trying to pry the frame away from the door. Make sure to use at least a triple stud, then reinforce that with a couple more at 90 degrees to the studs.

Use the pinned hinges as other suggested, and put a full length astragal (yes, sounds like asstickle) over the deadbolt side.

Given time, thieves will get through any door but it will take them long enough that most will give up. On that note, if you do all that to the door and have a plywood wall, you can guess how they will get in.

 

[vette-kid]

... On that note, if you do all that to the door and have a plywood wall, you can guess how they will get in.

This is my issue. I considered doing a security door (not to this level) but realized if I wanted in I would just go through the drywall. Securing a room would take A LOT more than a door and a fancy lock. I was looking at a house on Zillow that has a safe room for the previous owners gun collection, but no mention of the walls being reinforced. It was a substantial for, is hate to think they spent $10k on a door without reinforcing the walls!

Like I said, I'm really curious to see what you come up with and if this is feasible for a reasonable price. Certainly something is look into doing.

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[matt_i]

I could be wrong but by the time you raise the level of entry-PITA for the entire wall, framing, ceiling, door, you'd be even-money or money-ahead by just installing another safe. Build your own steel box vs. buying one....

It does depend on how far you want to go...

 

[jbwilkins]

Keep in mind, your planning on this being in your garage, so anyone trying to break into it would have access to every tool in the garage to use to get it open or go through the wall...

Once you start looking at sheet steel of any thickness/size (for reinforcing the walls) you might get a nasty surprise too....

 

[JamesW84]

Not a gun guy, so not sure how much money you have invested, but I wouldn't want to spend 5 grand to "possibly" protect 10 grand "if" someone tries to get them.

Don't let everyone know what you have (hard to do when you're proud of your collection), and keep it out of sight. Maybe consider not having an exterior door, but make it a false room inside your shop. Frame out the back wall and make it look exactly like how it looks now, just in 5 ft. Now you have a hidden room.

 

[ace10]

Squeeze more safes into the space, if it can be done.

You reduce the free area in which the ill-intentioned visitor can work, ie tipping the safe over to get at the softer sides AND you increase the amount of effort to gain entry into each container.

Personally, I really don't like "room" approach unless the space was designed and constructed as such.

$0.02

 

[Chevy-SS]

My advice - look around for a new safe.

Many places are giving away big, old, heavy safes. My gun club just gave a few away. I was astonished they didn't want the safes any more. All the lucky recipients had to do to get a huge, heavy, bombproof safe was take it away.

 

[rjacobs]

Without reinforcing EVERY wall and the ceiling, your door choice is meaningless... Your lock choice is meaningless...

Your room would take A LOT of work to make secure. And dont think "ill just put some 1/4" or 1/2" plate steel on the walls" because you wont be doing that... a 4x8x1/2" sheet of plate steel weighs 650lbs... and a good saw with fresh blades can cut right through it.

There is a reason most bank vaults have 18" thick walls as a minimum...because basically anything less can be cut through by a saw that sits on every fire truck or can be rented from any rental place.

I wouldnt put to much thought into it myself. Throw a steel door on from home depot, throw a grade 1 deadbolt or two. Reinforce the frame a little bit(you wont be able to do much without completely rebuilding the wall). Tie an alarm sensor into the door and a motion sensor inside the room. In your case, stealth is better.


I went through a similar thought process on trying to secure a new to me house build and I was asking about high security dead bolts and after talking to a few guys in the security industry they said they are a waste on residential(or any structure really) that has a ton of windows on the ground floor...unless you are going to install kick resistant glass everywhere(99.9% of people and businesses are NOT going to do that). They all said the high security(Abloy Protec2, Medeco, etc...) deadbolts and key systems are cool and gee whiz, but nobody is picking locks...nobody...no matter what the internet tells you. Entry is brute force and you can spend 10's of thousands of dollars to protect against brute force entry.

 

[Junkman]

I used to manage a shopping center, and one tenant on the property that had a extremely large store with lots of cash registers had a counting room with a vault in it. When they left, the building was being stripped on the inside for a new tenant, and I wanted the vault door. What I learned once I had the opportunity to take it out, was that it was only a regular steel door that a locksmith had installed a combination lock into. It had bars that moved in all directions to secure it from being pulled open, and the handle on the outside as beefy as it appeared, was only bolted on the inside. I believe that the handle screws were designed to break if someone tried pulling on it very hard. The outside of the walls were made of steel plate that had studs welded to the inside and they were bolted to brackets that were screwed to the wood frame work that the "vault" was made of. It certainly looked like a steel vault, but it was all smoke and mirrors.
The bank that moved out had also left their vault, and it was a vault door that was mounted into a hollow concrete block wall, and the wall was plastered over. The "roof" of the vault was wooden framed and plywood covered. It had the appearance of being extremely secure, but you could have broken into it by going through the roof of the building and then cutting a hole in the top of the vault. Once again, smoke and mirrors.
Really good security is more expensive than most business want to pay for, so they make it look secure, and depend on alarms to actually protect what is inside the closet.

 

[greg13]

If I had to spend that much money to make things secure, I would MOVE!!!

Where I live I can leave my doors unlocked and I know that if anyone strange comes to the house I have at least three neighbors and two dogs watching.

 

[Chilliwack Murray]

It’s not that hard to make the room secure. Block wall with concrete poured down the blocks will take a lot of time and noise to get through.

If you delay them they will likely move on. If you can build into the ground and make it nearly invisible even better but even a false wall will stop most thieves since they aren’t likely to take the time to look that hard.

You should be able to get a good door and frame and locks for under $1000. You’d have to decide what it’s worth to secure your stuff.

 

[rjacobs]

Block wall with concrete poured down the blocks will take a lot of time and noise to get through.

LOL...

There is a video somewhere(im to lazy to look it up) where a guy tests various "safe room" techniques... I think he got through the "concrete blocks filled with concrete" in like 2 minutes with an 18" concrete saw like you see on a fire truck. If you weave rebar in there you can, in theory, shatter those masonry blades when they hit the rebar.

 

[Chilliwack Murray]

Like I said it nothing will stop them if they have time and tools but it will make a lot of noise and take some effort.

The best solution as others have pointed out is to hide it so they don’t know it’s there in the first place.

 

[Junkman]

It’s not that hard to make the room secure. Block wall with concrete poured down the blocks will take a lot of time and noise to get through.

If you delay them they will likely move on. If you can build into the ground and make it nearly invisible even better but even a false wall will stop most thieves since they aren’t likely to take the time to look that hard.

You should be able to get a good door and frame and locks for under $1000. You’d have to decide what it’s worth to secure your stuff.

Solid concrete blocks that weigh 92 pounds each properly mortared in place with steel grid between the blocks are next to impossible to knock a hole into. I know, because we installed a wall with these blocks, that were supposed to hold the solar heat and return it to the room in the evening didn't work as designed. A couple years ago, we took it down, and it took 2 strong men 3 days, working with sledge hammers, and large jack hammers to just break the blocks loose. When they gave me the price to remove the wall, they thought it would be easy, but it proved them wrong. The block absorbed the impact blows.

 

[Jackfre]

I remodeled a building recently and wanted a door that would discourage people. It is an oak door that I made. I embedded 1/4" steel plate in the jam and the length of the door. It is a small building and only 4' from the corner to the jam. I have a regular lock-set and what I think is a good dead bolt on the door. The corner trim on the outside of the building is hinged. I have three 1/2 rods that slide into sockets on the door itself. I find it to be pretty effective but a pita to deal with. On an interior secure room it might be better in that regard.
I suffered from your same malady years ago in collecting way the hell to many guns. I know that is kind of an oxymoron, but life is much easier once the collection grew back into a much smaller box. I found that the kids didn't want them and some I hadn't shot in 30+ yrs, so what the hell. I sold them and bought tools I use all the time. After all, it is the "mad money" account.