Safe Handling
Posted: 24 May 2018, 17:20
When we moved down to Missouri a lot of important paperwork was created. This was added to the existing papers we kept in a safe deposit box at our local bank. Well, actually, all the important papers and family jewels are currently sitting in a file cabinet at the moment because we've not gotten around to getting a new safe deposit box at the local bank of O'Fallon. It turns out that the amount of precious goodies has increased, and thus the size of the box in the bank's safe must increase too.
I did some investigating and discovered that I could buy a fireproof safe and pay for it over 6-7 years with the money I would have used to rent a bank vault box. That seemed reasonable to me. I went about researching fireproof safes and found one to my liking at a gun safe dealer in South Carolina. I'm guessing it's a mom and pop operation because it took nearly a month for the safe to be delivered. It was shipped UPS, which surprised me. It's about a two foot cube and it weighs in at 135 pounds. That is quite a load for the UPS driver to handle, but I was here when he arrived. He was nice enough to put the heavy load in my garage. I congratulated him on his muscular strength, and he smiled.
My intention was to put the safe in a corner of the basement and then surround it with cinder block. That's probably not necessary in that it is speced to protect the contents for two hours at outside temperatures in the 2000F range. That's more than the average house fire temperature in my estimation, but I like playing with cement leggo blocks. I got myself a hand truck so that I could transport the safe from my garage and downhill to the basement walkout door.
That was my intention, but apparently the cargo shelf on the hand truck is too short to lift up 145 pound 2 foot cube, i.e., the safe plus packing material. The truck can be laid down for transporting things because it has four wheels; two at the bottom and two at the top. Well, the wheels are large and the platform onto which the safe must be placed is 10 inches off the ground. Lifting the safe that short distance has proved beyond the capabilities of my 73 year old body.
So ... now I have a fireproof safe in my garage, but I can't move it to where it is intended to be.
I did some investigating and discovered that I could buy a fireproof safe and pay for it over 6-7 years with the money I would have used to rent a bank vault box. That seemed reasonable to me. I went about researching fireproof safes and found one to my liking at a gun safe dealer in South Carolina. I'm guessing it's a mom and pop operation because it took nearly a month for the safe to be delivered. It was shipped UPS, which surprised me. It's about a two foot cube and it weighs in at 135 pounds. That is quite a load for the UPS driver to handle, but I was here when he arrived. He was nice enough to put the heavy load in my garage. I congratulated him on his muscular strength, and he smiled.
My intention was to put the safe in a corner of the basement and then surround it with cinder block. That's probably not necessary in that it is speced to protect the contents for two hours at outside temperatures in the 2000F range. That's more than the average house fire temperature in my estimation, but I like playing with cement leggo blocks. I got myself a hand truck so that I could transport the safe from my garage and downhill to the basement walkout door.
That was my intention, but apparently the cargo shelf on the hand truck is too short to lift up 145 pound 2 foot cube, i.e., the safe plus packing material. The truck can be laid down for transporting things because it has four wheels; two at the bottom and two at the top. Well, the wheels are large and the platform onto which the safe must be placed is 10 inches off the ground. Lifting the safe that short distance has proved beyond the capabilities of my 73 year old body.
So ... now I have a fireproof safe in my garage, but I can't move it to where it is intended to be.