Papers and documents char at temperatures around 405°. Guns are damaged from temperatures exceeding 500°. To protect documents and other possessions during a home fire, the internal temperature of the safe should remain below 350°. This is why we include Phoenix Fire Protection standard on all models--so your safe's contents won't end up cremated.

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Examine fire test claims made by safe manufacturers can be confusing and misleading. Unfortunately no universal standards exist for fire testing in the safe industry. Each manufacturer tests its own products at different laboratories to varying standards. Furnace ramp-up times, thermocouple placement, the addition of water, safe position (vertical vs. horizontal), and use of shields can all be used to produce more favorable ratings. Some companies test to half hour standards while others test for longer periods of time. Of course, the longer the test, the more it indicates about the quality of a safe and its fire protection. Half hour fire tests don't measure the endurance of a safe and provide for minimal ratings. Here's why. Up to half of the test is spent ramping the furnace up to the desired temperature--the safe is not subject to the full intensity of the fire and heat for the full test. Then the heat transfer gradient must be considered. Very little temperature change occurs inside a safe during the first 10 minutes of a test--maybe 10° or 20°. It takes time for heat to transfer. Obviously, 30 minute fire tests don't reveal very much about a safe's fire resistance.

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Regardless of the confusing claims of "proprietary insulation," "Double-wall," "Triple-Wall," or "Quad-Wall," most home security safes use basically the same type of fire insulation--gypsum or sheetrock. Yes, the same stuff found in your home. Why is gypsum used over other materials? Because when gypsum is heated over 262°, it releases water vapor--cooling the safe's interior. Until the moisture is baked out of the gypsum the interior of the safe will stay in the 200° to 300 ° range. This is why gypsum is the best fire insulation for safe applications.

There's no magic involved in fire testing. How well a safe performs in a fire test depends on: the amount of gypsum in the safe, how well it is installed (no cutouts hinge pockets), door rigidity and door seal effectiveness.

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Four of Champion's standard production line safes-- Sport, Trophy, Victory, Triumph 25, and Crown 30 were placed vertically inside a Certified Fires 12 million BTU furnace. Four unshielded temperature sensors, positioned near the top and bottom of each safe, were connected to two separate temperature recorders to verify internal temperatures.

Within 5 minutes of ignition, 6 natural gas fired burners, with flames blazing 15 feet long, heated furnace to over 900°--a much faster ramp-up time than a home fire. The test continued for two hours--heating the steel exteriors to cherry red. Afterwards, when examining the burned safes we found intense heat had buckled and deformed the safes' shells but the door on all four safes remained straight and sealed.
 

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