Does a house fire or wildfire worry you? From birth certificates and cash to irreplaceable heirlooms and precious metals, fire is a serious concern for many of us. Understandably, the search for ‘fireproof home safes’ has skyrocketed. How do you keep these valuable possessions safe as fire season and home fires threaten communities throughout the West Coast?
Wouldn’t it be lovely if there was such a thing as a fireproof safe for a home? Unfortunately, there’s not. In this article, we’ll dive into why fireproof safes don’t exist, what to know about fire ratings, and the best fire-rated home safes.
While we’d love to sell you a safe (it’s what we do after all), this advice is intended to help you no matter where you’re shopping. Ultimately, we want you to get a safe that offers the level of protection you need.
Why There’s No Such Thing as a ‘Fireproof Safe for a Home’
There are no fireproof home safes because no safe can withstand a flame indefinitely. Labeling something as fireproof is an advertising gimmick designed to tap into your fears. We just used it because we know it’s such a popular way to refer to safes, and we also wanted to ensure we helped you nip this false rumor in the bud right away.
While there are commercial safes with much higher fire protection, for this post, we’re going to focus on home safe fire ratings. In the home safe world, you'll generally look at safes that keep the internal temperature 350 degrees or lower.
Fire Ratings Are Based On Internal Temps 350 Degrees (or lower)
If you’re searching for a fireproof home safe, you are likely focused on safeguarding your paper documents, cash, precious metals, and jewelry. As a general rule of thumb, we consider Paper’s combustion temperature to be 451 degrees.
That said, we know that paper can become discolored, brittle, and illegible before it combusts. This is why most home safe fire ratings are based on an internal temp of no more than 350 degrees.
Testing ranges widely from manufacturer to manufacturer, but typically involves placing the safe within a furnace and then ramping up the furnace temperature to 1,200 - 1,500 degrees. The fire rating is the amount of time a safe can maintain an internal temperature of 350 degrees..
How Trustworthy is a Home Safe Fire Rating?
Fire ratings are not all created equal because safe fire ratings are not regulated. Manufacturers can award any fire rating they want to a safe, no matter the testing. As you shop for a fire rated home safe, the following are some key considerations.
How Was Your Home Safe Fire Rating Tested?
One of the most confusing elements of home safe fire ratings is that they aren’t regulated. Manufacturers can assign any fire rating they want to any safe. As you compare brands, simply looking at the sticker, doesn’t give you an accurate comparison.
What does this mean for protecting your valuables? The labeled fire rating does not always represent a real house fire. The Zebra, an insurance research company, released a 2024 report detailing a house fire's temperature. Researchers found that the heat from a house fire can reach over 1100 degrees Fahrenheit in less than five minutes.
Additionally, it can take a substantial amount of time for firefighters to even reach a house fire. In 2019, NBC reported that the average response time in Bellevue is “about five and a half minutes when the department is staffed at the building. But, the Chief says it can take upwards of 14 minutes to get to a house call when employees have to be called in.” And that’s in a highly-populated area with multiple, fully-staffed firehouses.
Fire Rating Test Transparency
You want a fire rating you can trust, which means you want a fire rating test to accurately mimic a house fire. For this to be the case, temperatures inside the testing furnace should reach full temp within 10 minutes or less. The internal temperature of the safe begins at room temp and will gradually rise throughout the test. In order to pass, the internal temp should never exceed 350 degrees.
Look for a manufacturer that is transparent about their testing process, like Liberty Safe. In a 2019 review of Liberty Safes published in Eastmans' Hunting Journals, video snippets of a side-by-side competitor comparison test with similar fire ratings. The interior of the Liberty Safe is relatively unblemished. The competitor’s safe was on fire.
UL RSC Rating vs UL TL Rating vs. UL Fire Rating
Founded in 1894, Underwriters Laboratories (UL) is a third-party testing agency that offers unbiased tests and ratings. As a consumer, a UL label is always a good sign. But keep in mind it’s easy to confuse UL ratings. Not all UL fire ratings are equal and not all UL ratings even relate to fires.
Here’s a quick breakdown:
UL RSC Rating
The UL RSC (Residential Security Container) Rating is NOT a fire rating. There are three Attack Levels for the RSC Rating
- Attack Level 1: The safe can withstand a five-minute attack by one technician using common hand tools such as drills, screwdrivers, and hammers.
- Attack Level 2: The safe can withstand a ten-minute attack by two technicians using more aggressive tools, including picks, high-speed carbide drills, and pressure applying devices.
- Attack Level 3:The safe can withstand a 10-minute attack by two technicians with even more aggressive devices.
During each test, the technicians will attempt to make a six-inch-square opening on the front face of the safe. Safes that successfully ward off this accomplishment are eligible for certification.
UL TL Rating
UL TL (Tool Latency) Ratings are also NOT fire ratings.TL ratings range from TL-15 to TRTL-60x6. (TRTL stands for Torch Resistance Tool Latency.) These ratings are assigned to commercial safes built to withstand much more extreme attacks using any number of tools and/or torches.
UL Fire Rating
It’s important to note how stringent the UL fire rating test is. How a test is conducted dramatically impacts the outcome and the UL’s test is one of the most intensive.
The UL fire rating is a fire rating. (High five, we got there!) The most common UL fire rating is the UL Class 350°F-one hour. This rating indicates that the safe can withstand 1700 degrees for one hour without the internal temp rising above 350 degrees. The test also includes a 10-minute cooldown period, during which time the internal temp must stay below the 350 degree threshold.
Additionally, after the fire test, the safe must withstand a three-story fall while maintaining its internal temperature.
Testing Methods Skew Outcomes
During testing, the location of the heat sensors (aka thermocouples) can also greatly impact the results. If the thermocouples are only placed at the bottom of the safe, the test will yield a longer fire rating than if they were placed in the middle of the safe or top — where heat rises.
Reputable fire tests, like the ones conducted by Liberty, place thermocouples at the safe's bottom, middle, and top shelf. This gives you the most accurate view of what will happen to the contents of the safe during a fire.
Living Near a Fire Department Doesn’t Guarantee Protection
Living near a firehouse doesn’t necessarily give you an added layer of fire security. It’s not uncommon for us to hear customers say, “I live by the fire department. If they can’t put it out in 30 minutes, then there’s a problem.”
We’ve been selling, installing, and servicing safes for nearly 40 years, and we’ve seen homes burn down across the street from firehouses. And that’s not because the firehouse did a poor job. In our own hometown, a recent fire started just three miles from the Enumclaw Fire Station 41. Despite crews arriving swiftly to the scene, most of the home was destroyed.
The short answer is that a home will likely burn down or be severely damaged in the event of a house fire. And even homes that aren’t destroyed often need to be torn down and rebuilt due to smoke, soot, and water damage.
Forest Fires Overwhelm Fire Departments
As we mentioned, fire season has become an unfortunate reality for those on the West Coast (and beyond). As these massive burns spread across hundreds of acres, destroying homes and entire communities, fire departments are frequently overwhelmed.
Access to water is a major issue that plagues forest fires and home fires in remote areas. In 2020, the Sumner Grade Fire burned several homes to the ground and burned more than 800 acres. As the flames blazed, the news consistently reported that the fire crews' resources were strained with a lack of resources.
We recommend removing the variables you can’t control when determining the right fire rating for your situation. This brings us to another critical factor when looking at safes for fire protection.
How a Fire-Rated Home Safe is Built
The structural integrity of a home safe plays a substantial role in how well it will protect your valuables. The following three factors play the biggest role in the fire rating of your home safe:
1. Door Fit
When it comes to fire protection, it’s not just about keeping the temperature down. Contaminants (like smoke, soot, and water) can also do substantial damage to goods. A tight door fit helps keep these contaminants from getting into your safe.
2. Heat Tolerance
Many lightweight safes are built with sheet metal doors that buckle and warp when exposed to the heat of a house fire. As these doors warp, your safe’s interior is exposed to additional heat and contaminants.
Alternatively, a solid plate steel door WITH fire insulation will be able to maintain its structural integrity for longer periods, giving you a better fighting chance.
The additional protection of expanding fire seals on the frame and the door of a home safe offers an additional layer of security. When exposed to heat, these seals can swell to five times their original thickness, creating a tight seal around the door. Home safes, such as Liberty’s Home Safes and Liberty’s Premium Home Safes, feature these seals.
3. Insulation
Insulation is a primary factor when it comes to a home that is fire-rated and safe.Sheetrock is the standard insulation for most manufacturers.
Manufacturers typically place a fire rating sticker inside the door of the safe. In our experience, Liberty's Fire Rating Sticker stands out for its transparency. It shows the fire rating and compares the specific safe's performance with both higher-end and lower-cost alternatives..
Image showing a Liberty Safe fire rating sticker and the sticker of a different safe’s fire rating sticker.
One of the industry’s best forms of fire insulation is a poured concrete or composite material. The benefit of this higher-end build is that it eliminates the hot spots (or weak spots) that can occur between the sheetrock gaps. Safes like the American Security BFX or a Graffunder safes use poured insulation, in addition to heavy, plate steel doors with very tight tolerances. This combination gives you the best chance of surviving a severe home or wildfire.
What Are The Best Fireproof Home Safes?
When you’re shopping for a home safe, there are so many options it can be overwhelming — especially when you want to protect your valuables from a fire. To help you weed through the ins and outs of fire-rated home safes, we put together our top picks based, sorted by what level of protection you might need. Take a look to find which one suits you best.