Hello all, and happy 4th of July!
So I posted a guide a few days ago about safe buying 101, if you missed it you can view it here. In that guide I talked mostly about burglary ratings and very briefly touched on fire ratings. My guide states that for most safes, you can expect a safe’s internal temperature to hit 350 degrees. That’s a cooking temperature for your standard dinner, so the question becomes will my PSA slabs hold up to that kind of heat? Well, I can think of one way to find out…
Setting up the lab.
So it may not be the most ideal laboratory set up, but it’s what I’m working with. For this test we’ll be using a Target exclusive $20 dollar toaster oven and a couple of brave PSA slabs willing to sacrifice themselves in the name of science. Lets go ahead and take a look at them now.
The slabs I’m using are in fact older. However the plastic used between the new and the old slabs is identical, meaning they will have the same melting point, which is what we are trying to figure out.
FIRST ROUND OF TESTING:
So the first round of testing involved placing a slab in the oven for 1 hour at 155 degrees. The reason I choose this time and temperature setting is for a few reasons. Most data safes (don’t worry I’ll be doing a guide on those as well) advertise protection for at least an hour and state that the internal temperature of their safes don’t go past 150 degrees. Adding five extra degrees to the oven extends us past that claim giving us a better margin for error. So lets get cooking…
RESULTS
So, what we can see in the picture is a whole lot of nothing, this is a good thing. After an hour of baking at 155 degrees I decided I would not allow the card to cool down like it would normally in a house fire. I removed the slab and looked for issues, defects, warping, discoloration, burn marks and anything else that might not make the slab as “pure” as it once was. I was very presently surprised to find that it had absolutely nothing wrong with it. It did feel pretty warm to the touch, but I could handle the slab without any real discomfort. So for the 150 degree test for an hour it was a huge PASS.
SECOND ROUND OF TESTING:
So if you’ve read up on fire ratings on UL TL-15 style safes, you’ll notice they give a maximum external temperature allowed on the safe. This number generally bounces between 1700 and 1850 degrees. However the internal maximum temperature always remains at a solid 350 allowable. Since 1850 is extreme compared to the flashpoint on a normal house fire (1100 degrees) I decided for test two I wanted to figure out a more likely internal temperature for a safe running at 1100 degrees. So if we take our maximum settings for both external and internal we get:
1850 : 350 = 5.28 ratio
So if we take a more likely maximum and apply a similar set of ratios we get something more like this:
1100 : 190 = 5.79
1100 : 200 = 5.5
1100 : 210 = 5.281100 : 220 = 5.00
* To be fair, my math skills are limited, I may not have those very rough equations down the way they should be written, but the ratios of degrees are correct.
I was a tad nervous jumping to a 210 degrees in part because I felt that it would be difficult to get my temperature reading to hit 210 exactly (Would kill for a digital read out on my exclusive toaster oven Target!) So I opted for a “cooler” temperature of 200, I could hit that right on the nose no problem.
After letting the oven and slab cool completely I set my temp, and the timer for 30 mins and off I went…
RESULTS
The picture above is what happened after five mins. I let the test continue for another five (total of ten). I removed the slab and noticed a heavy expanding effect within the slab and the card inside altered in such a way that it was not recoverable on a re-grade. The 200 degree test resulted in a rather resounding FAIL.
THIRD ROUND OF TESTING:
Final leg, lets see what happens once I let the oven cool and I throw one more slab inside at a full 350 degrees. Mind you, this is what a safe classified as UL TL-15 or TL-30 WITH added fire protection will max out at.
RESULTS AFTER THREE MINUTESRESULTS AFTER TEN MINUTES
Results speak for themselves really. Venasaur was not recoverable by any means. The 350 degree test ended as a FAIL.
CONCLUSION:
While UL TL-15 and 30 safes will likely remain a favorite among those concerned with burglary losses, the same crowd will be crushed to know the same line of safe protection won’t give them what they need in the event of fires. It’s a huge win for those with data and media safes, and a blow to those who maintain other classifications of safes who need fire protection.
It’s not the end of the world though, if anything testing and gaining feedback is a gift! This testing lets us know as collectors that we need to step up our protection plans for those worried about burglary AND fire protection. In the coming months I’ll be looking at containers that might function in a UL TL-15 or 30 safe as an extra security layer. As always I’ll let you guys know what I find so we can avoid serious misfortune.
should make more.
