

Why is the garage a good choice for a safe room? This provides a level of added safety while leaving areas outside the safe room available for other typical garage use purposes. You can set up your safe room area inside your garage as a room-within-a-room, building an entirely separate structure that shares no exterior walls with the garage. It’s more likely, you’ll choose to partition off a part of your garage to use as a safe room, or that you’ll decide to make a living, hobby, recreation section of your garage double as a safe room. You can make your entire garage a safe room if you don’t need to use it to park your cars, store your lawn care equipment, pursue your woodworking hobby, etc. Your safe room can be as big or as small as you want. Safe Room Q&A Will having a safe room take up my whole garage? Tile over that would add even more fire safety and take care of any aesthetic concerns you might have. For fire safety, you may also want to add a layer of cement board.
#Framing around metal saferoom install#
If aesthetics are a concern, you can install drywall over that. This will make it very difficult for someone to chop through your wall with an ax and slip between the studs! It will also make your walls super strong to withstand hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes and the like.įinish your interior walls with 5/8 inch plywood installed with strong, sturdy screws. Build your safe room with lumber ranging in size from 2×6 to 2×12 with close spaced (e.g. Just as with your door, be sure you install these elements correctly for maximum security. There are also roll-up metal shutters that work well to block out storm violence and keep the room secure from other threats. Install a set of interior window bars and/or shutters on hinges so that you can unlock them, swing them open and escape if you need to.
#Framing around metal saferoom windows#
Be sure to lock your windows with sturdy child safety locks to make it hard for an intruder to open the lock from the outside if the glass is broken. Bullet proof glass is best, but it can be hard to come by. Use triple pane, hurricane rated windows to protect yourself against breakage caused by flying debris, intruders and other dangers. If you have a window in your safe room, be sure to secure it. You can put one bar midway across the door and another one at floor level for maximum security. In addition to standard door hardware, add a push lock at the top of the door and another one at the bottom.īolt a pair of brackets on either side of the door where you can place a sturdy metal or wooden bar to add even more security to the door. The hinges and strike plate should also be top quality and installed with hard, thick metal screw bolts. Use strong, thick bolts (not flimsy screws) to install it.Īgain, you want exterior quality locks and deadbolts made of strong metal that cannot be broken if someone is trying to kick the door in.
