Home gun vault

[SARuger]

This might be the wrong place to ask but.....

I want to build a home gun vault in my house. I have an old office in the basement that does not get used anymore, just the right size and has two of its four walls as the foundation of the house. I would add a steel door with dead bolt and my safes will be inside the room so i will have double protection. I even have a counter to clean the guns on and shelving for ammo storage.

My question is;

With the humidity of the mountains here in VA, and how damp a basement is anyway, is this a good choice?

Yes I can add a de-humidifier but it will require daily maintenance to dump it. That will suck if I'm on vacation for a week.

Thoughts

 

[turkeestalker]

Could a de-humidifier be mounted in such a way that a length of hose could be used to allow gravity to direct the flow toward a floor drain outside of the room?

 

[2ndsojourn]

^^^ Yeah, can a platform be built high enough to mount a compact dehumidifier so that a drain line can be piped through the basement wall above the outside grade? You won't need a large or high capacity dehumidifier for one small room.

 

[g.willikers]

You might be worrying unnecessarily.
If the guns are lubed and packed well, they should be ok, even without a humidifier.
Air tight safes should be good protection, too.
Just check them every few months or so.
We live in an area with summer humidity that makes air you can drink.
And nothing rusts doing this.

 

[BarryLee]

Actually some dehumidifiers have pumps.

http://www.homedepot.com/p/GE-70-Pint-Dehumidifier-with-Built-in-Pump-ENERGY-STAR-APEL70LT/205843987

 

[SARuger]

The nearest drain is two rooms away, probably 12' or so and some walls. There is however an old water main that is now disconnected at both ends. I might cold hook into that and just let the water drain out to the termination point at the water meter box. My plumber could probably answer that question. He put the new main in a month ago.

 

[BobCat45]

Might get expensive long-term but some "crystal"-type cat litter is 100% plain silica gel, the same stuff that is in many sorts of dessicant packets.

It can be cheaper if you dry it in the oven once it gets waterlogged; just make sure your wife knows it is the litter from the pan in your gunroom, not the litter from Fluffy's box.

 

[kilimanjaro]

Good idea, building a gun room, I did the same thing.

If you're using stud walls for the other two walls, put some rebar in them, wreck the Saws-All when it gets tried. Do put power outlets in the room on a separate circuit you can cut off.

For the door wall, cover the mounting areas with metal plate, and set the floor sills using bolts drilled into the slab.

 

[turkeestalker]

I have wired a good number of banks in my 30 years doing electrical work. In the last 5 or 6 years, they have gotten away from the steel reinforced concrete vaults of the past. Now they use 6 inch structural steel studs on 1 foot or less centers, and use a structural metal lathe, or expanded metal on both sides and then simply hang the drywall to that and finish as usual.
Mind you banks don't actually keep money in vaults any longer, only safety deposit boxes. How they build them now makes it a time consuming p. i. the a. to get into. Doubt the average joe burglar will come prepared to even attempt getting into it. That is precisely how mine will play out, and I will hang a de-humidifier in it. Now I've just got to wait until we do another demo on a bank remodel and snag a safe door!

 

[SARuger]

I should have added, the room is built. It was a home office that I added for my ex wife when she was going to nursing school. When she left I kept the house and I just used the room for storage. My girlfriend keeps clothes in there but she actually thinks it would be better for our guns than where we have the safes now. Plus there is room for a cleaning bench and a reloading bench when I actually start reloading. The room is 8'x10 and is fully drywalled and studded. Two walls are foundation and two are studs. I just have an interior door there now so that has to go and a exterior steel door installed and a dead bolt keyed on both sides. The safes will be lag bolted to the walls and raised from the floor so that if the basement were to flood(it hasn't in 16 years) then the guns will stay dry.

 

[turkeestalker]

SARuger, I gathered that by you mentioning that it was at one time an office. You also said that you would be putting gun safes in the room, so you've kind of got the security covered. I'm out of room in the safe and was looking for an alternative that won't face the same problem any time soon is all.
I think with the fact that the firearms will be in safes, you're fine. A de-humidifier certainly couldn't hurt, and if it can be set up to drain on it's own either via gravity or a pump, all the better.

 

[SARuger]

Thanks for all the ideas. I will get started on it this weekend and post picks as I go.

 

[bungiex88]

I'd be knocking down the 2 soft walls and laying blocks

 

[SARuger]

I'd be knocking down the 2 soft walls and laying blocks

I would love to do that but it isn't practical.

 

[g.willikers]

Even then, the ceiling and floor above are still vulnerable.
There has to be a limit to our paranoia or we'll never leave home or get a good nights sleep.
How about adding a really scary warning on the door.
Maybe something like "Mad Scientist At Work, Enter At Your Own Risk!
In big red blood dripping letters, of course.

 

[kilimanjaro]

Bloody footprints and viscera on the stairs into the basement might work. Unless the culprits are teenagers, of course, in which case they will go into the basement, one by one, despite what every horror film has taught them.

 

[swede4198]

On the two stud walls I would put a layer of OSB screwed into the studs. That will slow down someone who tries to kick through the walls. It won't stop someone but it will make it more difficult and time consuming.

 

[peggysue]

I have a gun room. The basement concreet wall covers 2 sides.I Keep it 80 deg with heater and limit & filter air from furnace to room so little dust. It is nice to have it all displayed and labeled. I can sit in my chair and look at it all. If you google gun rooms there are lots of help pages out there on how to build one. One thing is to not have the door look like a safe, Camouflage.
My biggest mistake is that i made it too small.