A lot of people dream of walking down the stairs to their private vault in the basement to retrieve that special vintage bottle of wine. Others imagine walking into a vault that displays their entire collection of firearms. I personally would like both of those, and another discreet vault hidden behind a secret bookcase door for my stash of silver and gold.
These desires drive many to build their own vaults. In many cases if you’re building a new home or performing major renovations, adding a vault to project is a doable project. Concrete can be poured like a conventional basement with an additional concrete slab above. If you’re going to all the work to build a vault, however, you will eventually need a vault door.
Vault doors range from small pre-made steel models, to 40-ton stainless steel behemoths locked locked up in basements of incredible banks around the world. Cost is generally a factor in residential vault installs, so customers tend to favor the entry level door kits made of steel that start around $1700-$2500. These are walk through doors with steel frames, generally about 6″ thick with fireproofing built in.
Doors shown here are made by the same manufacturer of the self-filled concrete doors in the article.
There is a new low cost vault door that makes shipping, handling and installing the vault door much easier. It’s the self-filled concrete vault door. This door is shipped as a 750 lb steel vault door with hollow areas in it. Once the vault door is mounted, the customer pours concrete into the top of the door turning it into a 1750 lb 4-hour fire vault door.
Sportsman Steel Safes offers these doors, starting at $799. The door is 5″ thick, with an 8″ overall thickness. I haven’t seen these in person, but they seem like a good overall value and a perfect entry level vault door for the do-it-yourselfer.
