Inexpensive Underground Powder Storage

[Linstrum]

Having to abandon fighting a fire or having to tell responding firefighters that there is a large amount of powder in the house or workshop and then having them abandon fighting an otherwise extinguishable house fire because there is powder stored there and consequently lose everything, is a decision I had to make twice and I never want to have to make it again!

For several years now I have stored my powder deep below ground in order to keep it cool and safe from accidental ignition. At one time I used seven-foot deep storage wells dug with a power pole hole auger and lined with 8” corrugated plastic drainage pipe. Where I live now the ground is too rocky to easily excavate holes with my power pole auger, so I dug pits six feet deep with a skip loader tractor and buried stacks of seven or eight 18-wheeler truck tires in the pits. Truck tires are usually 22.5” or 24” rim size, which leaves a pretty big space down the middle of the stack when filled in with soil around them. Most tire stores will gladly give you unusable truck tires so they don't need to pay to dispose of them, but they will usually ask you what you are going to do with them to make sure they get disposed of properly since in a lot of places the tire stores have to account for all tires that get thrown out. I tell them that I use them for driving my bulldozer across paved roads (which I also use them for), which is standard operating procedure for driving Caterpillar bulldozers across paved streets. When filling in the soil around the tires they should be stacked up one-at-a-time and then the soil filled up to the top tire before adding another one to the stack. The tire on top needs to be securely clamped to the one beneath it with big C-clamps to prevent the dirt from pushing the tire off to the side and spoiling the alignment of the stack. It is a lot of work to dig up a tire once surrounded with soil in order to move it over if it gets offset, so clamping it to the tire beneath it in the stack to keep it in alignment is a good idea. The air space inside the tire bodies can be used for one pound powder cannisters if short pieces of 2x4s are inserted between the tire beads to hold them apart and then several water drainage holes cut into the tire walls, otherwise if water ever condenses inside it will collect and pool in the tire bodies. I leave the bottom of the hole open to the ground in case rain ever runs down inside so it will immediately soak into the ground. Soil is normally a bit damp, so the powder containers need to be water-tight plus have the powder designation, date, and lot number written on the container with Sharpie permanent marking pen in case the paper labels ever get damp and the ink runs, which I have had happen. My storage pits are not any worse than keeping powder in a basement since basements are usually a bit damp, too. I never keep my guns or tools in underground storage because they would immediately rust. Primers need to be kept in air-tight steel ammo boxes, if you do that make sure that the rubber lid seals are in good shape. If the water table is just a few feet below the surface where you are, then making a large above-ground mound will also work as long as the mound is big enough to block solar heat that builds up in the soil in the summer months. In the summer, soil temperature will usually reach 85°F at 18-inches depth, which is too hot for powder storage, so above ground mounds need to be substantial enough to provide adequate insulation from solar heat build-up in the soil.

On October 26th of 2003, a huge arson-caused brush fire swept through the area where I lived at the time and all the fire departments in Southern California were so overwhelmed by the whole southern part of the state going up in flames from arson I had to fight the fire myself in order to save my house. Even though I had 200-foot wide fire breaks all around my house and barn it was not enough to fend off the firestorm of burning tumbleweeds that rained down on me from miles around. As I was fighting the 60-mph wind-driven-inferno that was raging all around scorching the paint on my house, all I could think about was the two cases of surplus powder sitting in the normally cool dark storage closet in my work room. I was pondering at what point I should abandon fighting the fire that was burning the east end of my house and leave so as not to get burned to death by the sudden conflagration from 96 pounds of powder if it that part of the house where the powder was kept caught fire while I was around the other side out of view of what was going on there. I know that smokeless does not explode, but it does burn quite rapidly and generate a huge volume of red-hot gas one cannot outrun. Having to abandon fighting a fire or having to tell responding firefighters that there is a large amount of powder in the house or workshop and then having them abandon fighting an otherwise extinguishable house fire because there is powder stored there and consequently lose everything, is a decision I never want to have to make again! Fortunately, I was able to monitor the fire situation well enough to know that my powder stash was safe from outside ignition and I was able to save my house, but I did lose my barn that contained enough stuff to stock a mom & pop hardware store. That hurt! Storing my powder away from the house in a place where it will never, ever, be subject to ignition from an accidental fire in or near the house/workshop solves that problem.

Storing powder underground keeps the powder cool and in the dark, and immune to ignition from outside sources such as brush fires. Properly done without any metal by avoiding steel belted tires it is also immune to lightning strikes, and if you live in a place with a lot of lightning ground strikes or tornadoes, underground storage may be the answer. If you stocked up on a lifetime supply of inexpensive surplus powder while it was available, you can make sure it stays good for decades by storing it in a cool dark place. Another thing that may be quite important is not storing powder in the house or garage even if it is perfectly safe there since fire insurance policies may be voided by its presence in large amounts even though it has nothing to do with causing fires. Insurance companies are always looking for ways to get out of paying off on policies.

The biggest factor in long-life for powder is keeping it cool. A second important thing is keeping it in the dark since the blue-violet end of the visible light spectrum on up into the invisible ultraviolet light spectrum has enough energy to cause decomposition over time since the shorter wave-lengths of light carry the most molecule-damaging energy. Think of getting sun burned, or plastic shopping bags that fall apart when left out in the sunshine for a few days, or the light-sensitive adhesives used in dentistry that are rapidly set-up by intense blue light. When light and ultraviolet light photons run into the valence electrons that hold molecules together, the imparted energy released by the photons to the electrons breaks the molecular bonds created by the electrons and the powder molecules come apart, forming new highly reactive compounds that further tear apart more powder molecules. Heat does approximately the same thing by physically shaking the molecules apart, the higher the temperature the more violent the molecular shaking becomes. This is an over-simplification, but it covers the basics of how powder decomposes from these particular forces.

I have some Finnish 7.62x53R cartridges (7.62x53R is the Finn designation for the Russian 7.62x54R) that were loaded in 1939 by VPT using powder made in Nazi Germany. They are still okay after 70 years because for a good part of their life they were stored in Finland, which has a rather cold climate most of the year, and I have kept them stored cool ever since I bought them in 1964. Being kept cold is a good part of what is responsible for the powder remaining stable for such a long time. Other factors are using preservatives that neutralize the destructive decomposition products.


rl555

[No_1]

Good post and great information.

Robert

[garandsrus]

Linstrum,

Interesting idea... What do you cover the tires with?

John

[MT Gianni]

I am not clear on a couple of things. Do you keep the powder in the tire cavities or stored on the ground in the space between the tires? Do you retrive it with ropes or reach?
Covering the tires with a 4x8 sheet of plywood would help things I imagine. It makes me long for an old time walk in root cellar.

[Linstrum]

Hi, guys: I simply stacked up the tires in the pit and then filled the pit back in, carefully surrounding the tires with dirt. Since it doesn't rain much here I was not worried about water infiltration through the soil into the tire stack. Where it rains several feet per year the stack of tires could be wrapped in a few layers of 10-mil polyethylene tarp before putting the dirt back in the pit around the tires. If done that way, some method of keeping the stack of tires fastened together and lined up vertically like bolting them together with two or three pairs of 1/4” carriage bolts per tire would probably be necessary since the tires tend to slide off to the side quite easily when jostled. If that happens it would diminish the usability of the structure. It is a bit tedious to drill accurately-located holes in tires unless a real long drill is used to go through both side-walls of the tire at once. Holes need to be drilled in the side walls anyway to act as drains in the event that water ever gets inside the tire bodies, you know how hard it is to get water out of a tire! The top of the hole gets pretty hot if the sun can ever shine directly on its lid, so either 18” of soil needs to be put over it or doubled-up plastic trash bags full of R-19 roof/wall insulation placed down inside the top of the hole to block heat from radiating down into the bottom. The powder should not be put in the top two feet of the hole, more or less, since it gets the warmest there. That leaves about four feet of usable storage. I have a battery operated recording thermometer I keep in the powder storage at the highest level of powder in the hole and check it several times a year to make darned sure that the powder temperature never gets more than 80°F, preferable never more than 70°F. The temperature in the hole is very slow to change and if it gets above 80°F it will stay that hot for days before cooling back down, which is unacceptable for the powder to be “cooked” that long.


I cover the entrance with a 4'x4' piece of 1/2” fiberglass-reinforced concrete sheeting like is used for bathroom walls and flashing that goes around the outside of a house in contact with the ground, and then shovel some dirt on top to disguise it plus provide a bit of heat insulation at the top. On top of that I place a planter made from a cut-in-two whiskey barrel with just enough planting mix soil in it to support a few geraniums or some ivy to keep intruders from stepping directly on top of the lid and discovering it. Keep in mind that if the lid is where somebody can walk on it they could fall in if it broke! The covering method needs to be light enough to get off and back on easily and quickly, so the planter barrel needs to be light enough to roll off to the side. If you put the storage hole where no one will ever come in contact with it, just put a bag full of R-19 in the top and cover it over with a sheet of the fiberglass-reinforced concrete sheet, that would be enough.


I'm 6'-1” tall and weigh ~175 pounds and I can climb down and squat inside the hole no problem when it is empty, and I can reach into all the storage space inside the tire bodies without difficulty if there aren't any jugs placed on the bottom of the hole. The one pound powder containers I put in quart or gallon zip-lock freezer bags with long nylon or polypropylene strings (rot-proof, don't use cotton, jute, or sisal!) tied securely around them in case they get dropped, and then put them inside the tire bodies where the air goes; and big one-gallon jugs I set on the ground on the bottom of the hole. When the bottom of the hole is covered over with jugs, I put more jugs down the hole by putting them in heavy-duty draw-string plastic kitchen-size trash bags and hang them from the inside of the hole suspended by the tire beads using wire hooks made from coat hanger wire. I lower and hang the jugs using a “shepherd's crook” made out of a six-foot length of 1/2” PVC plastic water pipe with the hook made out of 1/8” steel welding rod inserted through 1/8” holes drilled through the sides of the PVC pipe with one end of the wire wrapped around the pipe for security and the other end forming a V-shaped “crook”. I store the shepherd's crook down the hole so it is always handy.


Something like a walk-in root cellar would be ideal! For the time being in my particular situation, I had several constraints I needed to observe. The price for making a concrete-block-lined underground root cellar big enough to stand up in with a roof strong enough to park a car on top of was out for this project since I don't own the land where I currently live and I had to keep in mind having to abandon what I built, so the size of this project was kept small and the cost of materials was kept pretty close to zero. I also had security in mind because of nosy neighborhood kids, it is just unthinkable what would happen if a 12-year-old kid got a hold of 8 or more pounds of powder! A truck tire-lined “spider hole” was what I came up with that was quick and easy and could be made quite secure by disguising it. My previous method of digging several seven-foot-deep shafts with my power pole hole auger and then dropping in 8” diameter by seven-foot-long corrugated plastic drainage pipes was very quick to create and quite secure when covered over with 18” round concrete stepping stones and then those covered over with several shovel-fulls of soil to hide them. For the storage shafts I simply lowered-in or pulled-out the one-gallon jugs of powder with a shepherd's crook. I kept the top jug at least 18” below surface level with a plastic shopping bag stuffed full of more plastic shopping bags as heat insulation so it was within the “cool zone” down the hole.

The ultimate in storage is a new never used commercially-made steel re-bar reinforced concrete septic tank, those you can park a car on top of no problem and they are absolutely water tight if the sewer inlet, outlet, and inspection lids are sealed up good with RTV silicone rubber caulking material. Those you can climb down inside of like a root cellar. The cost, though, is prohibitive unless you've got a few spare bucks for such a thing!

The photos are pretty much self-explanatory, the last photo of bare earth in the foreground is the 6'-6" deep hole with the lid on it and disguised with a few shovel-fulls of dirt thrown over it.


rl557

[Linstrum]

Here are two more photos. I took the lid off and removed all the powder so the inside and the bottom can be seen.

It really is six feet six inches deep, I climbed down it in and I had to look up to see out!


rl558

[Storydude]

Around here a 6 foot deep hole would have 3 feet of water in it inside a week.

Great idea for recycling tires, or off-the-grid construction though.....

:drinks:

[quasi]

around here powder in a 6 foot deep hole would be frozen 6 or 7 months a year.

[jh45gun]

I would think an OLD refrigerator would be a lot easier

[BD]

That looks like a good solution for the hot, dry climates. Were I live in Maine it would be called a shallow well.

BD

[mold maker]

That looks like a good solution for the hot, dry climates. Were I live in Maine it would be called a shallow well.

BD

Here in NC it would be a red neck mud bath pit, this year.
I use a discarded upright freezer with magnetic (no latch) door seal, in the basement.
I have powder from the 60s that is good as new.

[Linstrum]

I realize that I wrote an awful lot and it takes time to read everything, and consequently the most important, poignant, part of my thought process may have been skimmed over and missed. To quote myself from above, it is:

"Having to abandon fighting a fire or having to tell responding firefighters that there is a large amount of powder in the house or workshop and then having them abandon fighting an otherwise extinguishable house fire because there is powder stored there and consequently lose everything, is a decision I never want to have to make again!"

I had that happen to me TWICE, once in 2003 and again in 2005, when firefighters were so overwhelmed by a multitude of arson-set fires in my area that it caused me to totally re-think how my powder and primers are stored when firefighters were unable to fight the fire threatening my house and I had to do it myself. Having my powder stored where there is just about a zero chance of having it ignited is my solution to owning more than a few pounds of powder. I'd dearly love to be able to keep my powder in an old refrigerator or freezer, but that didn't work out for me. Also, purposely not telling firefighters that there is a situation that is potentially deadly to them is morally unconscionable. However, I do not want ANY government officials, firefighters or otherwise, to know that I have a large amount of powder, and storing it in a manner where I do not NEED to tell firefighters about it is my solution to the problem.

East of the Rocky Mountains and in the Pacific Northwest, having this kind of underground powder storage is totally out of the question because of the large amount of rain and snow that will infiltrate into the underground storage area. There are other parts of the country where it is totally feasible, though, and here in New Mexico is one of those places.

[Bad Water Bill]

Many years ago I was told a fridge or a 3/4 plywood box would be very good so I got a junk fridge and lined it with 3/4 plywood still working good even with 100 tropical fish tanks in the basement :drinks:

[TAWILDCATT]

a large septic tank or have a concrete pit cast on site and water proofed.seems the best way.course moving would cure it all.but I know that is not the idea.
other salution would be death sentence for fire bugs.:coffee:[smilie=1:

[Shiloh]

Nice post!! Great photos!! Explains things well..
Thanks!!

Shiloh

[grumman581]

Interesting idea... Might even be able to use something like this for a single person tornado shelter...

[Three44s]

The wet side of the PNW may well be out of the question for this sort of construction but with a little ingenuity, one could make it work in eastern WA and our fire potentials keep growing as well.

Good work Linstrum

Three 44s

[zxcvbob]

Also, purposely not telling firefighters that there is a situation that is potentially deadly to them is morally unconscionable. However, I do not want ANY government officials, firefighters or otherwise, to know that I have a large amount of powder, and storing it in a manner where I do not NEED to tell firefighters about it is my solution to the problem.So do you tell them about propane and gasoline and starter fluid stored in the garage? How about welding tanks? Pesticides? Smokeless powder and loaded ammo is far less dangerous. (Guns with loaded chambers that can cook-off, and large stores of blackpowder are dangerous.)

[M-Tecs]

One gallon of gasoline has more BTU's than your 96 lbs of surplus powder. Propane and gas tanks are far more dangerous.

[Heavy lead]

I would never, ever bury anything in this environmentally green messed up political backwords world, especially here in Michigan. Just as soon as some new plat punched a well and the nitrates tested high the DEQ and their band of nazi's
come and dig it up wearing haz mat suits and send me a bill for 1.5 million dollars. That would be par for the course with the eco nazi's here in Michigan for just some concetrated nitrogen fertilizer. But all the more power to you, if that's what you want, great, don't think here in the much wetter midwest it would work well.

Then again the hazards (especially fire) are totally different in New Mexico as well as the potential to have underground storage than it is here in the relatively damp midwest.

[dsmjon]

Just don't grab a scorpion or rattler while you're going after a lb of powder. :)

Have you looked into getting fire gel to protect your house from the wildfires?

[grumman581]

Have you looked into getting fire gel to protect your house from the wildfires?

I would think that designing your house with a good exterior sprinkler system would do wonders for slowing down a wildfire approaching your house. Put multiple sprinklers on top of the house so that the roof stays wet and then other sprinklers slightly away from the house and aimed towards the house to keep the walls wet. Combine that with some sprinklers aimed away from the house to slow it down a bit more... Of course, we're not talking about your typical lawn irrigation sprinklers here since plastic pipe and sprinkler heads might not be all that great in a fire. One advantage of this would be that the sprinkler heads on the roof could be used during other times during the year to reduce the attic heat and subsequently cool the house a bit. The problem becomes will your water supply handle it though. If you have a swimming pool, then you have a readily available water supply to supplement any municipal water supply.

[dsmjon]

The gel to which I refer simply plugs onto your hose, you spray down the house. Basically the same gel used to protect actors/stuntmen when they set themselves ablaze. Pretty much the material used inside of diapers that solidifies the liquid. Works much better at absorbing heat than just water, which will quickley evaporate in a brush fire scenario.

[Linstrum]

Hi, guys, one time I did have a great big vinagaroon that was living under the lid to the underground storage, but I haven't seen it lately. Vinegaroons are ugly with a capital UGLY, :veryconfu they look kind of like a crawdad crossed with a scorpion, but aren't poisonous. Just real ugly. :bigsmyl2:

Yeah!:) I did research fireproofing my house within my financial means. Back then I was living way far out in the boondocks in Southern California about 50 miles north of Los Angeles near the California Condor Sanctuary area. After the first fire I did put sprinklers on the roof and they did a good job of cooling the house down in the summer, too. The second fire was driven by hot 100 mph winds and the sprinklers had a hard time keeping up with evaporation and the spray getting blown away from the house before it had a chance to soak it down, but it still worked well enough to keep my house safe. The fire overhaul crew that came out to mop-up hot spots in my area said my house was the only one they had ever seen out there with fire sprinklers on the roof! You'd sure think with the problem of wildfires driven by the stiff Santa Ana Winds every year that everybody would have them. I didn't install sprinklers at first because I had lived there for over fifty years without ever being threatened by arson-caused fire like that, it is a new thing.

There is a private firefighting company in that area that does use some kind of gel spray to cover a house. When a fire is in the area they send a crew out to gel-spray the houses owned by the people who pay them for protection. I don't know what it costs, though.

To answer zxcvbob, absolutely I would tell firefighters about any gasoline, welding tanks, propane, etc if I had any of that stuff and it was in a burning building! I have no reason not to tell them and on top of that I couldn't live with myself if a firefighter got injured because I didn't make it extremely clear to them that there was hazardous stuff in there. I think my earlier statement that you quoted: "purposely not telling firefighters that there is a situation that is potentially deadly to them is morally unconscionable" is pretty self-explanatory about what I will do in that scenario! What makes you think I wouldn't tell them about any hazards?


rl616

[swheeler]

Linstrum; good post, geat pictures and lots of good information in there. I am visualizing it igniting, biggest roman candle ever invented hurling 8 pound flares towards the heavens! Happy fourth of July!

[Linstrum]

BIG Roman candles! You bet! When I dug the storage holes I made sure that they were either pointed straight up or over toward the two or three square miles of adjacent vacant badlands so if something happens they wouldn't lob a jug onto somebody's roof half a mile away. The houses out where I am right now are pretty far apart, though.

Actually, I don't keep a lot down any one storage hole, I am adding holes as fast as I can collect old truck tires so that I will eventually have just one or two jugs down each hole and have the holes spaced far enough apart so that if something (but I can't imagine what - they are pretty immune to outside ignition, even lightning) ignites any of it that they won't "chain fire" from one hole to the next like a badly loaded cap and ball revolver. I keep a recording thermometer 6-feet down at the bottom of one hole and the hottest it has gotten after a few weeks of real hot weather was only 78°F.

Some reloaders have mentioned that they keep their powder supplies out in their garage or shed where it can get pretty hot and even though powder isn't even close to igniting at 90°F or 100°F, it drastically shortens its shelf life, especially single-base powders. From what I have been told by others, IMR4064 seems to have the shortest shelf life, although I have IMR4064 that is 20 years old that is still okay. If you keep your powder where it gets hot, keep it on the floor since it can be somewhere around 10° - 20° Fahrenheit (5° - 10° Celsius) cooler than up high on a shelf.


rl618

[ilcop22]

Really cool construction project! Be a long time to complete with a shovel though. :)

Be nice if something like that was practicle (or possible) here in the midwest. Where I live, come the spring I'd have bottles of powder floating past my house. :groner:

[Linstrum]

Hi, ilcop22, yeah, a lot of precipitation is a problem and I mentioned that up above somewhere. The solution to storing powder where there is a lot of wet weather or the water table is real high up is to make a big pile of dirt on top of the ground where water won't pool in either a rainstorm or when the snow thaws in spring and then keep your powder stash in it. If a pile of dirt was about 4-feet high and angled the way it slopes naturally by itself when just dumped in a heap (about 33° from horizontal for loose sand and soil) it would work okay. You could start by laying a 10-foot long by 8" diameter black corrugated drain pipe on the ground and pile the dirt on top of it in a tall windrow. Get end caps for the ends and you would be in business. Just lay your powder jugs on their sides with a plastic rope tied to each one to pull them back out, and shove them on into the pipe with a pole. If there were pesky neighborhood kids around you'd need some way of preventing them from getting into it, though, especially if they saw you putting stuff inside the pipe under the dirt pile. I have annoyingly nosey neighbors here, so I only put stuff in or get it back out after dark.


rl628

[Linstrum]

One gallon of gasoline has more BTU's than your 96 lbs of surplus powder. Propane and gas tanks are far more dangerous.

~:+/&\:~:+/&\:~:+/&\:~:+/&\:~:+/&\:~:+/&\:~:+/&\:~:+/&\:

You are close about the gasoline, 96 pounds of double base powder has about 1.25 times the BTUs of one gallon of gasoline - but ONLY when mixed with air and ignited. The cook-off temperature for smokeless powder is somewhere around 375°F or 400°Fand I will gladly sit right next to a gallon of gasoline that is heated to 375°F (and contained in a pressure tank since at 375°F gasoline is boiling and would have a vapor pressure of about 50 psi), but I would not want to be anywhere within two or three blocks of 96 pounds of powder similarly contained at the same temperature. Gasoline requires about 14 or 15 times it weight of air in order to burn and release its full energy potential, so the actual weight of a gallon of gasoline along with enough air to provide a complete chemical reaction is pretty close to the weight of powder that has a similar energy release. Gasoline weighs about 6 pounds per gallon and requires a weight of about 90 pounds of air to burn completely, that comes out to 96 pounds total air with gasoline, the same weight as the powder in question that actually has about 25% more energy!

Yeah, when my pine trees burned in the first brush fire, I had a 1/3-full 5 gallon propane bottle that was sitting under the trees and when it exploded from pressure build-up in the tank, it flew a few feet off to the side and made a fire ball that rose about 50 feet up in the air. It didn't go far because the top of the tank let loose and the propelling forces pushed it down instead of up. If the bottom had let loose it probably would have gone 200 feet straight up.

rl658

[SciFiJim]

Currently using an old ice chest with a layer of lead ingots in the bottom as a heat sink. This ice chest is in an out building with other stuff stored around it to make it more difficult to steal and easier to hide from snoops.

[wgr]

i have some barrels that seal. they were used to store garden seed in. the lid is about 12/14in wide. all i have to do id bury theses. never worry about water you could store theses things in the river

[Shiloh]

Around here a 6 foot deep hole would have 3 feet of water in it inside a week.

Great idea for recycling tires, or off-the-grid construction though.....

:drinks:

Same here.

It would be in a drier environment in the house.
Great for arid or semi-arid climates though.

Shiloh

[mold maker]

Around here, the only hole in the ground that gets dry is called a well. I've had to drill 625' to get steady water year round. But then if you want it dry, it fills up from the surface.

[9w1911]

I like the idea of an old fridge, there is one for free right down the road. I also like the idea of the sealed plastic barrels.

[30calflash]

Several good ideas along with the OP's posts.

Maybe have more than one storage area to help prevent a loss or minor catastrophy? Just thinking in print.

[9w1911]

Yea I am still mulling this over, the "help" didnt show today so I am not sure I will be digging anything today.

[Mk42gunner]

Makes me rethink cleaning out the old cellar and installing a sump pump, since the drain is pretty clogged.

As a plus, it is even almost shaped like an igloo magazine.

Robert

[Frank46]

Here in Louisiana that would be called a snake hole, most devoutly to be avoided. Frank

[Mal Paso]

Concrete Block building, wood framed roof. solid steel door and push 4-8 feet of dirt against the outside of the non access walls all the way to the roof. Door faces away from your house. ;-)

Your supposed to have partitions between so many hundred pounds but there's a start. :D

Oh and you know why you bought a bigger gun safe than you needed at the time. Same thing.

[winelover]

Concrete Block building, wood framed roof. solid steel door..........





You just described my ICF house.8-)

Winelover

[matrixcs]

Great writeup I love the idea... unfortunately if I dig down 18 inches in my back yard the ocean runs into the hole.. and that is at low tide.
I am still looking for a storage method that works and does not cost an arm and a leg...

[Col4570]

I have thought for while that a false Sewage Drain installed in an inconspicuous place would make an ideal storage for Powder etc.The Hole usualy about 2ftx2ft with a Cast iron cover would be overlooked by thieves and would be absolutely safe storage.The area surrounding the cast Concrete lining could be suitably Tanked with a water resistant membrane prior to casting the lining.With a little ingenuity a Locking system could be devised.