Burglars are often looking for items they can grab quickly and steal, but if they don’t find anything, or spot a safe that hasn’t been properly concealed, they may be prepared to spend longer in a home trying to open the safe, or carry it away with them. In fact, experienced burglars have a number of safe breaking tactics they use, and while safe manufacturers do their best to combat these with features designed to protect the safe, there are some things you can do as a homeowner to make your safe harder to steal or break into, too:
- Change the try-out combination
Many safes come with a stock lock combination that you are strongly advised to change as soon as you get the safe home, otherwise you risk a burglar being able to open it by using the manufacturers original set code.
- Purchase a safe with a cobalt plate
Drilling into or close to the main lock of a safe, is a common tactic deployed by burglars, but you can prevent them from being able to do this by buying a safe that’s fitted with a cobalt plate lying between the door’s exterior, and the locking mechanism. You can check with a local safe expert if unsure which safes have this, and which do not.
- Purchase a safe with anti-pry door tabs and internal hinges
To prevent a burglar from prying the door of your safe open, ask your local safe seller about safes that come with anti-pry door tabs to create a tighter, stronger seal around the door of the safe, or one that has internal hinges instead of external ones. Both features help to stop the door from being opened with a pry bar.
- Purchase a safe with true composite wall construction
Torching or burning a safe is one method desperate burglars will resort to in order to access a safe, but you can help to prevent this from happening by purchasing a safe with multi-layer walls consisting of a layer of fire-resistant concrete amalgamate cement, sandwiched between two layers of metal.
- Bolt your safe down
While you might think that your heavy duty safe is too heavy to be carried away, think again! Burglars have been known to remove safes as heavy as 500 lbs from homes during a robbery, and the only way to prevent this from happening is by having a qualified safe technician bolt it securely to the floor or wall.
As you can see, there are many ways that a burglar can still gain access to your home safe, whether they manage to break into it inside your home, or steal it and break it open at another location. But, by following the advice above and always engaging with a safe professional when buying and installing a safe, you can make your safe as impossible for burglars to steal or break into, as possible.