Anchoring Your Safe, Anchoring to Concrete Floors

Anchoring Your Safe

Anchoring the safe to the floor reduces the risk of tipping and makes theft of the entire safe extremely difficult. The safe can be anchored to any surface, but wood and concrete are the most common.

Before anchoring the safe, all shelves and wall boards must be removed to expose the anchoring holes in the bottom of the safe. Holes can gener- ally be drilled with the safe in-place, depending on the size and shape of the drill used.

Anchoring to Concrete Floors

Lag shields are generally recommended because they mount flush with the floor and allow the safe to be bolted down with a lag screw and flat washer.

Lag Shield Anchor

and Lag Screw

Verify that floor area to be drilled is free of electrical wires, gas lines, water lines, sewer lines, etc. Drilling into these items unintentionally can cause electric shock, fire, or property damage.

Anchoring to Wood Floors

Lag screws and flat washers are typically used to bolt safes to wood floors (or floors with a wood sub-floor).

Lag Screw

Flat Washer

Safe

Floor

Installation of lag shields requires holes to be drilled into the concrete to accommodate them. Drilling into concrete properly requires a hammer drill with an appropriate sized concrete drill bit.

To ensure strong and successful anchoring to concrete:

•Drill holes in one pass and avoid raising the bit up and down to clear the dust, which may cause the holes to be come slightly over- sized.

•Drill holes 1⁄2"-1" deeper than the length of the lag shield to allow room for the bottom of the screw and any remaining dust.

•Vacuum dust from holes before installing lag shields.

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Installation works best if holes are pre-drilled to accommodate the lag screws. A standard hand- held power drill with the appropriate-sized wood drill bit is required to complete the job.

To ensure strong and successful anchoring to wood:

•Pre-drill holes at the correct size for the lag screws. The correct pre-drill size is always smaller than the lag screw size. (For exam- ple, a 7⁄32" bit is used to pre-drill holes for a 3⁄8" lag screw.)

•Use at least a 2" long lag screw.

•For additional strength, fasten at least two of the screws into floor joists.

H5674 Large Gun Safe