Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Gun safe in an un-heated garage

Looking for voices of experience.... Has anyone used gun safes in an unheated garage? What are the problems. It seems that the temperature swings would not be good for them. I am in Wyoming so vary between -15 and 110 degrees over the year. I do not want to put a safe in my basement due to the tight access and stairwells. I also do not want to put one upstairs without having the floors reinforced.

Leave it in the garage. Store an acetylene torch and a worm-drive Skil 77 nearby and have an abrasive disc already installed on it to save the crooks precious time. A big red ribbon on the safe would be a nice touch.

If the crooks are willing to work, and you are not, guess who'll win?

Moving your guns to the garage is often an indicator it's time to trade in the wife as well.

Add a dehumidifier unit in the safe as a minimum. Keep all metal well oiled. I would also add a couple desiccant boxes that can be reactivated.

rethink this as already posted above....All good point to consider
add in... the outside of the safe will suffer as well.I would never do it in this part of the country.My garage will have 90% humidity in the summer

We moved tried to give the safe away, buyers of home did not want it. So we had a bunch of buddies over to try to drag the dad gum thing out the narrow basement. A big fat feller who looked unfit for the job showed us how to take the door off! Just lift! Easy peasy. New house no room for safe put in the garage, wife filled it so full of valuable [bleep] I cant put many rifles in it. Gonna reinforce a closet. And NO I aint trading her in.....she is the one for me! I insulated the garage thought about a insulation sleeve around safe & and a light inside safe but I think a better door in the closet would be more cost effective. On the Savage collectors forum there is an excellent thread on corrosion protection.

Mine's well secured in my unheated garage. But I live in a low humidity area, and although we'll get into the triple digits in the summer, winter is not severely cold. Didn't even have the dehumidifier hooked up for the longest time.

I personally don't see the problem, but my risk level is pretty low here:
- I live in a pretty low-crime area.
- We're almost always home.
-We live in a cul-de-sac and any traffic is out of place.
- Lots of neighbors around 24/7.
- Safe is not easily visible.

Oakster: I strongly advise against the storage of firearms in an unheated garage!
Hopefully you can make room for things in a corner of your home somewhere.
Best of luck to you.
Hold into the wind
VarmintGuy

I've had a safe in an unheated garage for a long time, like 20 years or so. no issues here. I do live in a semi desert though...

I did it probably about 20 years ago. I don't get quite the extremes in temperatures but do have 100% humidity much of the time. I haven't had any problems. I had to check the firearms more often and keep them clean and oiled, but never had any serious problem. I moved the safe upstairs in my office space when I could and just put it over a wall downstairs. It hasn't fallen through yet�

Two safes in the garage....uninsulated garage. Not much humidity here, but each has a dehumidifying rod. They are bolted to the slab. If somebody wants them that bad.....they can have them.

I have a few gun safes and one is in my unheated garage, I have never had a problem with it but I always check my dehumidifier and wipe my guns down at least once a year, I also keep most of my powder in this safe.

Living in Gillette Wyoming I have no doubt you can be -15 but I have never seen even close to 110 outside of Phoenix or Vegas. In Wyoming you could convince me of 110mph winds but not temps

My father tried that once. I am still re-finishing firearms involved in that experiment.

Out west you may get by with this type of storage , but in the east they would be rust buckets

When I was a kid my dad kept a cheap .22, purchased for the purpose, in the barn when we were having trouble with skunks and raccoons coming in to sample the molasses in the rolled oats we kept there. We did wipe it with an oily rag now and then, but it got no special treatment. Within a year the surface rust had noticeably pitted any steel parts, which on that rifle was mostly the barrel and magazine tube. Interestingly the bore remained good...whatever lube was on those .22 bullets protected it quite nicely. This was in eastern Montana.

Bluing is a process of Oxidation and I believe it has a tendency to attract more rust than normal steel would. I have seen rust appear much quicker on blued guns without some oil protection on it...

One source has the record high for Wyoming at 115 at Basin, Wyoming. Gillette saw official temps at 107 in 2012. I saw unofficial temps of 111 in Thermopolis.

Texas Gulf Coast,check 'em often and keep a Golden Rod in it.No problems so far.

Thief's will be in for a big surprise and an even bigger BOOM if they try a cutting torch on my safe that's in the Garage! Mine has a big sticker that says,

"Warning!!! This Safe contains Black Powder!!! The use of a cutting torch will result in an explosion / death!!!"

Build a large, well insulated closet to hide the safe, and add a small electric heater, or even just a light bulb or two