Vault Construction Details

[Chubby]

One very good way of beefing things up is to get a supply of the TC bullets from the old APDS anti tank rounds. Use something of the sort to replace some of the aggregate in the concrete mix. Old broken drills, taps, dies, files etc are all old friends too.

[Safeone]

One very good way of beefing things up is to get a supply of the TC bullets from the old APDS anti tank rounds. Use something of the sort to replace some of the aggregate in the concrete mix. Old broken drills, taps, dies, files etc are all old friends too.

Would corrosion of files, drills, taps etc that get thown in the mix cause eventual weakening of the concrete ?

[Chubby]

Would corrosion of files, drills, taps etc that get thown in the mix cause eventual weakening of the concrete ?

No more than any other reinforcement.

[Chubby]

Sort of bumping this one a bit.

Does anybody have any thoughts about block construction v poured construction?

[safeman]

Sort of bumping this one a bit.

Does anybody have any thoughts about block construction v poured construction?

Hello again Chubby,
The decision as to block v instu is really a matter for the structural engineer and architect and dependent on the the site situation, access, cost etc.
The customer's requirements are linked to the Risk Assessment and can be adjusted either way by increasing the specification of thickness, compressive strength, additional protection such as the use of fibre or Wirand additives for additional tensile strength.
One major consideration however is water tightness. A pre-cast block construction will never meet this requirement in basement installations. Another is quality control. Pre-cast blocks can be tested more effectively than cast on site concrete where cube tests have to be taken and tested for every mix long after the pour has taken place. Similarly the vibration of the mix for effective penetration of the reinforcement be more efficicienty carried out on individual blocks than in situ.
Here endeth my thoughts.

[Chubby]

BTW, Doug, was the mud poured in situ, or preformed into blocks?

[Gary Stephenson]

Roy Saunders once told me of a vault he had to open in Africa with a serious door but rubbish walls. Also a diamond mine vault that could be flooded or submerged in case the site had to be deserted in a hurry.

[Huw Eastwood]

I reckon all they had to do to flood that diamond mine vault was switch the pumps off!

[Chubby]

I once read a very old article, it might have been in "The Gentleman's magazine" about a sr in London. That had a corridor round all 4 sides and one part of the security system was that the corridor could be flooded.

One I had to shoehorn a small book-room into a rather nice up market Barratt house. It had the old 1/4" Chubb door. The owner wanted it, I think, largely to protect the outside of his Banker's Treasury. It wasn't an insurance spec. job. So he had some latitude on design. He was on site every step of the way. He wasn't behind the door when brains were handed out! One wall was the wall of a garage which was made out of some very hard brick. We could actually drill our blocks more easily than drilling those bricks. Any road up, to economise on space he wanted steel plate bolted to that wall. We ordered stock sized sheets of steel. At that stage the floor hadn't gone in, so he asked us to run the sheet down to the then ground level. Thus the floor was in part holding the steel in place. The same thing happened with the roof. I was going to bolt the steel in place in the normal way, but he had some brackets which had to be bolted against the steel, so acting on his suggestion, we anchored those in situ but used longer stronger fixings than were needed. Those pretty well anchored the steel as well as it needed to be, especially as he had a Banker's Treasury at 1,250 Kg next to it as well.

Not to let out any secrets, you don't know where it is, when the construction side of the team had left he asked me if I would do him a small favour. He calmly produced a S & G lock, with a spy proof dial, and an AED and asked if I could fit those to the door to provide dual control with the existing key lock. Of course it was simplicity itself. He tipped me magnanimously for that.

Anyway the point is that he had some quite unorthodox ideas and ended up with a very nice little room. I have often wondered why a SR and a BT in a domestic home, and what he kept in there It is probably better not to know. He can't have been a gangster as the local Police crime prevention officer came round at one stage and they were talking in a very friendly manner. I also learnt a good trick for when laying the big blocks.

[Huw Eastwood]

Here's a couple of 1970s Fichet testing pictures showing the random pattern that twisted spiral reinforcement, in this case, Tordbar, presents to the attacker. Highly effective against mech chisel, hammer and oxy-arc: