According to the U.S. Department of Justice, every year there are close to half a million violent crimes involving handguns that happen in or near the home. The number of residential break-ins and forced intrusions is even higher. To help you protect your loved ones and your valuables against intrusion, we converted an ordinary closet in our Project House into a safe room. We built the safe room with some secrets hidden in the walls to show you how you can safeguard your family (and your valuables) against unwanted intrusion.

We chose a closet in the owner's retreat for our safe room. It's on the second floor, directly above (and accessible from) the master bedroom suite on the first floor. Since the safe room is on the second floor, it's important to understand exactly what types of protection this room can (and cannot) offer.

Our goal is intruder deterrence. The safe room offers a secure haven within the home in case an intruder breaks in. The idea is not to create a "bomb shelter"-type room for extended use, so the room doesn't have to be large to be safe. It has to be just large enough to hold your loved ones and any valuables you want to safeguard until danger passes or help arrives. The walls, door and ceiling of the room are reinforced to resist any forcible attempt to break into that safe room. The safe room will be wired for a phone line so you can notify the authorities of an intrusion.

Our second-floor safe room offers no real protection against violent weather. You would want to be on the ground floor (or in a basement) and, as far inside your house as possible in case a violent storm strikes unexpectedly. So this is not a safe room to protect you from tornadoes and hurricanes, but a room to keep you safe from intruders, and a place to keep your valuables locked up where even your kids can't get to them.

Step 1- Intrusion Deterrence

The walls and ceiling of the safe room are protected with the Secura Room system (a system of heavy-gauge steel mesh, fasteners and frame plates) made by Amico. The FBI and ATF both use this steel mesh system to secure their holding cells against escape attempts. They also install the steel mesh system as a safety feature within office walls to protect law-enforcement officials from intrusion in their field offices and headquarters.

The heavy gauge steel mesh is fastened directly onto the wall studs before drywall is installed. Amico installs the steel mesh with diamond-shaped steel fasteners driven into the wall studs at close interval. This fastening system further stiffens the steel mesh and increases its resistance to intrusion. Eventually, drywall will cover the mesh.

The door to the safe room (once installed) will eventually be reinforced with steel frame plates. The plates can handle a door with dead bolts like you'd see on an exterior door. The door itself does not have to be specially built (we did choose a special door for our safe room, but we'll get to that later). You or your builder can choose a standard door. You can select a steel-faced exterior door or a solid-core wooden interior door. Your safe room contractor will then fit the steel reinforcement plates onto the frame around the door you've chosen.

The Amico steel mesh system costs about $650 for the Project House safe room, materials and installation included. We chose a small closet for our safe room. A standard 8' by 8' room would cost about $1500.

Step 2 - Bullet Resistance

We designed our safe room to withstand more than an attempt at forced physical entry. After the steel mesh system was installed, but before drywall went up, we installed bullet-resistant ArmorCore fiberglass panels (made by Waco Composites) for further protection against violent intrusion. We lined the floor, the walls and the ceiling of the safe room with these bullet-resistant panels for the greatest possible resistance to gunfire.

Waco Composites manufactures their bullet-resistant panels out of layers of woven fiberglass cloth. First, the cloth layers are "bathed" in resin. Then they're hydraulically compressed (at 1500 pounds per square inch) and heated to 150 degrees for at least an hour. The resin gets stiff and brittle as it cures, so the finished panel is literally hard as a rock. It's the same kind of fiberglass material used to manufacture boat hulls.

The panels come in four levels of thickness for four levels of protection against gunfire. The only difference between panels is the number of layers of fiberglass that are compressed to form a panel. Underwriter's Laboratories (UL) has very specific guidelines for testing and certifying bullet-resistant materials. Waco Composites certifies the resistance of its ArmorCore panels according to UL standards in this manner: Level 1 panels are 5/16" thick. A 4'x8' panel weighs 96 pounds.

Level 1 is designed to resist 9mm bullets - that's a muzzle velocity of 1175 feet per second. Level 2 panels are 7/16" thick. A 4'x8' panel weighs 144 pounds. We chose level 2 protections in the Project House safe room.

Level 2 is designed to resist .357 magnum bullets- that's a muzzle velocity of 1250 feet per second. Level 3 panels are 1/2" thick. A 4'x8' panel weighs 160 pounds.

Level 3 is designed to resist .44 magnum bullets - that's a muzzle velocity of 1350 feet per second.

Level 4 panels are 1-3/8" thick. A 4'x8' panel weighs 432 pounds. Level 4 is designed to resist .30-caliber rifle fire, at a muzzle velocity of 2540 feet per second. That bullet will travel nearly a mile in two seconds.

When a panel "resists" a bullet, it actually stops the bullet within the layers of fiberglass in the panel. The bullet compresses and imbeds itself within the panel. In technical terms, the panel "absorbs and defeats" the energy of a passing bullet. Each layer of fiberglass absorbs a little more energy from the bullet as it passes through the panel. That energy transfer de-laminates the panel (that means it forces the layers to separate from one another to some extent) and stops the bullet.

Here's an added benefit of the bullet-resistant panels. Texas Tech recently tested the Level 2 panels and rated them as capable of stopping penetration of a 2x4 stud traveling in excess of 100 miles per hour during a Level 5 Tornado. This protection would serve you well in a ground floor safe room. Keep in mind, our 2nd-story safe room cannot offer protection against severe weather in the Project House.

To complete the envelope of bullet resistance, our installation crew attached small strips (or battens) of bullet-resistant fiberglass over the seams between adjoining panels, so a bullet has no point of entry "between the cracks".

A 4'x8' sheet of Level 2 ArmorCore costs about $380. Protection from gunfire cost about $3200 for the materials in our safe room.

Our bullet-resistant safe room by itself does not offer much safety without a bullet-resistant closet door.

Step 3 - Sealing the Secure Environment

Sun-Dor-Co manufactures custom-made, classic stile and rail doors. In the classic door-building tradition, the basic pieces of a door are the rails (the horizontal pieces), the stiles (the vertical pieces at either edge), the panels (the decorative interior pieces - usually square or rectangular), and the munitions (the interior vertical pieces that separate panels). Sun-Dor-Co partners with Waco Composites to build beautiful stain-grade natural wood doors that completely encase a hidden ArmorCore panel. We chose a solid mahogany door that was built through a very precise process of gluing individual pieces of the door to the panel. So they basically build the door around the bullet-resistant fiberglass. Sun-Dor-Co can match any panel design so the bullet-resistant door will look like every other door in your house.

We've now completed the bullet-resistant envelope. We'll complete the intrusion-deterrent envelope when we fit Amico's steel reinforcement plates onto the frame around the Sun-Dor-Co mahogany door.

The solid mahogany door, with the hidden panel of Level 2 ArmorCore, costs about $800. So the total price for the secure room is roughly $5000 for material and installation. Now that the room's complete, it functions like any other closet.

For roughly twice the price of a good-sized room safe, you can build a safe room in your house with the capacity to permanently safeguard many more valuables than a room safe can hold. More important, that safe room can hold the most valuable things in your life - your loved ones. Nobody will ever see the secrets hidden within its walls. Hopefully you will never have to use it. But if danger ever arrives at your door with no warning, this could easily be the most important room you build in your new house.

Contact Information:

Alabama Metal Industries Corporation (Amico)
Secura Room System (Heavy-gauge Steel Security Mesh, Clips and Frame Plates)
(800) 366-2642

Waco Composites Inc.
ArmorCore Bullet-Resistant Fiberglass Panels
(254) 776-8880

Sun-Dor-Co
Custom Natural Wood Stile and Rail Doors
(800) 835-0190