Should I get a fireproof document safe, and which one?

Two entirely separate things are sold as a safe, and buying the wrong one is the usual mistake. A fire-resistant box keeps its interior below a temperature for a period; a security safe resists attack. Cheap products claim both and generally do neither well. Decide which risk you are actually buying against, and be clear that no domestic box protects irreplaceable documents as well as simply keeping a copy somewhere else.

Safety

Step by step

1. Decide which risk you are buying against.Fire, theft, flood, or simply keeping documents together and away from children. They lead to different products. A household worried mainly about finding things does not need a safe at all — a labelled box and a written index does the job.
2. Read a fire rating as a test result.It states that the interior stayed below a given temperature for a given period in a standardised furnace test. Paper chars around 180 degrees, so paper ratings target an interior well below that. A house fire can burn longer than the rating, and the box may not be in the same place at the end as at the start.
3. Buy a media-rated product for anything digital.Hard drives, memory cards and USB sticks are damaged at far lower temperatures than paper, and by humidity as well. A paper-rated box will not protect them. Media ratings are a separate and dearer specification.
4. Check the flood position separately.Many fire boxes are not water resistant, and firefighting itself puts a great deal of water into a house. Some products carry a separate water rating; otherwise bag the contents inside the box.
5. For theft, look at the fixing and the weight.Anything a person can carry out will be. A safe should be bolted to a solid floor or wall through its fixing holes, using the right fixings for the substrate. This single step matters far more than the lock.
6. Understand the insurance cash rating if that is relevant.Security safes carry a cash rating, and insurers use it to set the value they will cover inside. If you are storing anything of significant value, ask the insurer what rating they require before buying.
7. Choose the lock for the reality of the household.A key that gets lost, a combination that gets forgotten, or an electronic lock whose battery dies. Whichever you choose, make sure a second person can open it, and record the override arrangements somewhere else.
8. Site it sensibly.Not in a garage, not in a cellar that could flood, not in an obvious place, on a solid floor, and where the weight is supported. Ground floor and against a load-bearing wall is a common compromise between fire and structural sense.
9. Do not put the only copy of anything in it.The safe is one layer. Scans backed up off-site, and the genuinely irreplaceable documents in a second location, are the layers that actually work.
10. Tell someone it exists and how to open it.A safe nobody else can open, whose existence nobody else knows, has converted a document problem into a locksmith problem at the worst possible moment.

Alternatives

• Fire-rated document box: Cheap, portable, protects paper for a rated period. Easy for a burglar to carry away and usually not water rated. Right for a household whose main concern is fire and organisation.
• Bolted-down security safe: Resists attack and carries an insurance cash rating. Heavy, needs proper fixing into a solid floor or wall, and fire performance varies — check both ratings separately.
• Media-rated safe: The only correct choice for drives, cards and film. Considerably dearer, and largely unnecessary if the digital backup is off-site, which it should be anyway.
• Off-site storage with a solicitor or relative: Free or cheap, and it defeats fire, flood and theft at the same address simultaneously. Slower access, and the arrangement must be written down.
• No safe, plus a written index: For most households this is the honest answer for tier-two documents. A labelled box, a scan backed up off-site, and a note of where everything is solves the real problem.

Questions people ask