Making a gun room ?

[reloader54]

feo with a bit of common sense will look at security measures as a "package, ie, starting from when he arrives at the property, location of other houses, alarms present, dogs ready and able to defend perimeter, location of cabinets/gunroom within house,hidden or in view, and so on, any security can be overcome "eventually" the trick is to make as hard as possible to allow it to happen. succeed in that and he will look upon your measures favourably. good luck.

 

[Klenchblaize]

There's an argument that a fully monitored intruder alarm is worth inches of steel and concrete.

 

[Woodsmoke]

There's an argument that a fully monitored intruder alarm is worth inches of steel and concrete.

There's also an argument that having a police force actually prepared to get off their arse and turn up to an activated alarm is worth something too

 

[gonzo]

I agree, that it would be overkill unless you have a number of guns. But I was getting cheesed off with having too many guns, crammed in safes all around the house. And someone said something they shouldn't and gave me a silly idea. And it seemed like a fun project.

In my case, the room was available and the old lath and plaster needed replacing, so pre-lining with steel mesh, was an easy interim step.
The security door was delivered as a complete unit and really easy to fit, and the window shutters were home made.
Total cost.... £750? And a lot of work.

The big advantage, now that room has a locking door, it can't be used as a crap dumping ground by anyone else in tne family!

I have a friend who is looking at my build, with a view to converting his whole study into a gunroom. As he was looking at getting yet another safe, and this could be the cheaper option.

 

[gonzo]

If you have a type A ACPO approved monitored alarm, then you get an specified response time.

Having more CCTV around the house, than the police station seemed to impress the FEO, too.

 

[reloader54]

There's also an argument that having a police force actually prepared to get off their arse and turn up to an activated alarm is worth something too

totally agree, people I work for got burgled some time back despite having a "silent" alarm direct to police,,,, by the time they actually decided to turn up not only had the robbery taken place but the cheeky ****in'crooks drank the bloody milk on the doorstep,,,, an action which proved to be their undoing as they removed their masks to access their gobs,,, muppets stolen painting recovered a week later and a nice little holiday at her majesties pleasure.

 

[gonzo]

Before home CCTV was a popular thing, I helped friends, installing covert CCTV. Using video recorders with wires bodged in to operate record buttons etc...
Over the years, those have given 4 naughty boys some time to contemplate their deeds.

But a type A system, should have an agreed response by the monitoring station and police. The police will have to agree to that response. I would espect they would agree a quick response to a property with lots of guns.

 

[nun_hunter]

Before home CCTV was a popular thing, I helped friends, installing covert CCTV. Using video recorders with wires bodged in to operate record buttons etc...
Over the years, those have given 4 naughty boys some time to contemplate their deeds.

But a type A system, should have an agreed response by the monitoring station and police. The police will have to agree to that response. I would espect they would agree a quick response to a property with lots of guns.

Response will be a standard Grade 1 (blues and twos) and will be happily taken by any response officer for two reasons. One, catching a burglar in the act is something every officers wants and two its minimal possible grief compared to a racially aggravated homophobic assault or domestic incident. Out of hundreds of burglar/intruder/attack alarms I've been to less than a handful have been anything other than false alarms but that doesn't stop the desire to get there asap.

 

[Pedro]

Response will be a standard Grade 1 (blues and twos) and will be happily taken by any response officer for two reasons. One, catching a burglar in the act is something every officers wants and two its minimal possible grief compared to a racially aggravated homophobic assault or domestic incident. Out of hundreds of burglar/intruder/attack alarms I've been to less than a handful have been anything other than false alarms but that doesn't stop the desire to get there asap.

The problem being some forces have a non-attendance policy for automatic alarms, unless there is some other positive indication that a crime has been committed/is being committed. Would the controllers differentiate?

 

[twg1]

If they have it recorded on file that there are firearms stored you will get a fairly robust response to an alarm signal. I know thanks to a couple of false alarms !

 

[Edinburgh Rifles]

Reasonable precautions.......

None of this is written in stone.
You are delaying the worst case, you can never stop someone who is prepared to risk all to get in. Hatton Garden shows that.


Monitored systems for a house are not responded to like monitored systems for firearms dealers....
Not all houses with firearms that get burgled have firearms stolen.
All Gunshops that get broken into have guns stolen

 

[CarlW]

I agree, that it would be overkill unless you have a number of guns. But I was getting cheesed off with having too many guns, crammed in safes all around the house. And someone said something they shouldn't and gave me a silly idea. And it seemed like a fun project.

In my case, the room was available and the old lath and plaster needed replacing, so pre-lining with steel mesh, was an easy interim step.
The security door was delivered as a complete unit and really easy to fit, and the window shutters were home made.
Total cost.... £750? And a lot of work.

The big advantage, now that room has a locking door, it can't be used as a crap dumping ground by anyone else in tne family!

I have a friend who is looking at my build, with a view to converting his whole study into a gunroom. As he was looking at getting yet another safe, and this could be the cheaper option.

Response will be a standard Grade 1 (blues and twos) and will be happily taken by any response officer for two reasons. One, catching a burglar in the act is something every officers wants and two its minimal possible grief compared to a racially aggravated homophobic assault or domestic incident. Out of hundreds of burglar/intruder/attack alarms I've been to less than a handful have been anything other than false alarms but that doesn't stop the desire to get there asap.

My own experience is as you describe. My place is pretty isolated. I have had two false alarms in the past five years and the police have been on site within no time on both occasions. I have been very impressed by the response. Similarly, they always attend sheep-worrying incidents in good time. Easy to whinge about the police but we get a top-quality service from them here in Herefordshire.

Best,

Carl

 

[nun_hunter]

The problem being some forces have a non-attendance policy for automatic alarms, unless there is some other positive indication that a crime has been committed/is being committed. Would the controllers differentiate?

Not something I've ever personally heard of but maybe it is done differently elsewhere if the alarm company doesn't guarantee a police response.

 

[carlisleredneck]

I built a gun room in to a new extension i was getting built. Brick walls, no window and a lathams gun room door in a 6 panel design to keep in with the rest of the internal doors. Think the door cost about £400 but i sold my old cabinet for 200. The police man was very happy with it and it is way better than a cabinet. I would recommend it to anybody whos thinking of having it done.

 

[gonzo]

It seems to be one of those things that people assume is difficult and a long winded process.
When you look into it, it actually turns out to be very feasable.

For a convertion to a gun room, rather than a newly built armoury, there is not requirement to do anything to the floor, if it is an upstairs room. Having an older house, the thickness of the joists and wooden floors was considered enough by itself.

And you only need to do something to the ceilings, if the space above can be accessed. Through the loft, for example. That could be to steel mesh line it, or just to alarm the ceiling and/or space above. All that you are bothered about is protecting against a prolonged attack on that point. And having the alarm sound, the moment the attack starts is deemed to be sufficient. If, for example, your ceiling was only accessible from the roof, and there was no sensible way to attack it, other than off ladders, this could be acceptable as it is.

In my case, I added the same spec mesh as the walls. Because the ceiling needed replacing and it was little extra work.

A monitored alarm to type A spec, is where an accredited monitoring centre has a formal arrangement with the police and an agreed response. If you get more than a certain number of false alarms, the police may degrade the response to attending only after there has been a human confirmation that a real alarm has occured. eg, remote chjacking of cctv/microphones, or a keyholder attended. Though I suspect their thinking here is that the business/householder can suffer the loss if their alarm is faulty and they do nothing about it. In the case of firearms, there is a public safety consideration.

There are type B monitored systems. Which are all that are not type A. Some alarm installers intimate that having any type of monitored system will get a police response, which the ACPO guidence says is incorrect. And something thay they are concerned about.

(You can tell, I've done a lot of reading up on this!)

 

[Sylvanius]

A place I worked at when I was young was a sawmill set in an old quarry. As a result, we had a standalone explosives store from its quarry days. So the owner had a steel door about 1/2 inch thick made - this thing was so heavy we had to use the hiab to lift it into place. So that was where all the chainsaws were stored. Now obviously through the day there were various visitors, wagon drivers, reps and all sort fo folks coming and going, and someone must have sussed what it was used for - so they came along one night and since there was an excellent lock on this steel door... put a sledghammer through the brickwork and stole all the saws.

Some years ago at one point I only had a .22 on my licence and I had a PC visit (before you had proper FEOs) who wanted an monitored alarm system on my house for one .22! We had a "slight disagreement" shall we say and they dropped that requirement. Talk about overkill.

 

[gonzo]

There was a cadet armoury that got broken into a few years ago ('twas on the news).
The scrotes sledge-hammered a hole in the wall, reached in and grabbed as many rifles as they could reach within an arms length.
Have a feeling they won some 22lr bolt actions, without the bolts.

The HO guidance is, that there are three levels of risk, and each has recommended security options. And the recommendations are pretty sensible. But unfortunatly these are not binding for the police, and some have a tendancy to make it up as they go along.

From memory:
Low risk would be, for example, one shotgun in a private house in a low crime area. So gun clamps or a safe.
Medium risk, a few guns. BS safes, out of sight, possibly an alarm (non monitored) would help the case, depending on the area.
High risk, would be high numbers of guns, 10+. Risky area, or location with some extra risk (a RFD with a shop on an industrial estate somewhere). They can ask for things such as, monitored alarm or other mitigating precaustions, such as storing guns in different safes to spread the risk.

In my area (dorset) they ask for the house to have an alarm when you get above 10 guns. Though they suggested to me that just the safe could be alarmed. But mostly the FEO's seem to be interested in the domestic situation. Who is in the house with quiet access to the locked safe, could go hunting for keys etc. Or any other issues in the family, which could cause a problem.

 

[K333ROE]

Why not have a large gun cabinet built into the wall of a normal room ??

(Edited )

 

[simonl]

Why not have a large gun built into the wall of a normal room ??

and hope the deer walks past the right spot?