An average of 358,500 homes experience a structural fire each year. Hopefully, you and your family will never have to go through this experience. But that does not mean that you should not be prepared if a fire should break out in your home.
Most material possessions can be replaced, but it is your family’s safety and comfort that matters most. Make sure you are prepared with smoke detectors on every level of your home and that you check their batteries twice a year. The other way you can protect your family is with a fire resistant safe. With a fire resistant safe, you can protect most of the important documents your family would need if your lives were turned upside down by fire. The trick is selecting the right home safe.
What Makes a Home Safe Fire Resistant?
Heavy steel alone does not make a home safe fire resistant. Layers of fireboard need to be built into the walls of the safe to increase its fire resistance. There needs to be enough fireboard built-in to protect the contents in the safe from reaching a point where they will ignite or melt.
Underwriters Laboratories (UL) rates home safes for their fire resistance. In their ratings, UL determines to what temperatures the safe will stand up to and for how long. Most home safes out in the market provide up to 30 minutes of fire resistance, which is usually enough to protect most contents. You should know that if you want to protect items like computer disks, old tapes or 35mm slides, you will need a safe that can stand up to extreme heat.
Liberty Safes Excel Over the Rest
When it comes to protecting contents from fire or smoke damage, Liberty’s safes excel over the rest of safes out there and here’s why!
Our entry level home safe has been rated for 60 minutes of fire protection at 1200 degrees. That’s protection against 83,000 BTUs of heat. Its 12-gauge steel body is reinforced with three layers of fireboard in its ceiling, walls and door for a full 1-3/4” overall body thickness to protect against heat. And when the heat rises from fire, the door’s Palusol™ 7X Heat Activated door seal goes into action by expanding to seven times its size to keep heat and smoke out of the safe.
The Liberty Premium LX Home Safe provides even more fire resistance with a thicker 11-gauge steel body and more fireboard built into it. These safes are fire rated for 95,000 BTUs and will protect the contents for 90 minutes at 1200 degrees.
But if you want the ultimate in fire protection, the Presidential cannot be beat because it offers the best fire protection available on the market. It is rated for 2.5 hours of protection at 1200 degrees and will stand up to 131,000 BTUs with its additional layers of fireboard.