Had a call last year about a bluestone bank building on Sturt Street in Ballarat, built in the 1870s, owner wanted a proper strongroom for a private collection in what used to be the manager’s office. First question out of his mouth was “can the floor take it.” Fair question. It’s the right one, actually, and it’s the one most people forget to ask until the engineer’s already on site charging by the hour.
Retrofitting a strongroom into an existing building is one of those jobs that sounds simple until you’re standing in the room with a tape measure. Twenty-two years doing this and I reckon the failure point isn’t the vault itself, it’s everything around it. The walls, the slab, the door swing, the services. Get those wrong and you’ve either got a strongroom that doesn’t fit, or one that cracks the building it’s sitting in.
The phone call that starts most of these jobs #
Nine times out of ten the client has already picked a room. Usually it’s the smallest one in the building, tucked away, maybe an old pantry or a back office with no windows. Makes sense from a security logic point of view, less exposure, fewer sightlines. But that room was never built to hold half a tonne of steel and concrete plus whatever’s going inside it.
i always ask for the original plans before i quote anything. Half the time there aren’t any, especially with anything pre-1960s, and that’s when you bring in a structural engineer before you bring in a tradesman. Skipping that step is the single most common way these jobs go sideways.
Reading the building before you touch anything #
Old buildings lie to you. A wall that looks load-bearing might not be, and one that looks decorative might be doing all the work. Bluestone, sandstone and old brick construction were never engineered the way we understand structural loads today, they were built by trial, error and generations of trades who knew what worked without necessarily knowing why.
The Australian building code framework, the National Construction Code, still applies to any structural alteration regardless of the building’s age. That’s non-negotiable. An engineer’s report on the existing footings and walls isn’t a box-ticking exercise, it tells you whether the building can carry new point loads without needing underpinning. On the Ballarat job it turned out the internal wall we wanted to line with steel plate was actually load-bearing for the floor above, so we repositioned the vault door instead of touching that wall. Saved about eleven grand in remedial structural work.
Slab loading is where most quotes fall apart #
A decent strongroom door alone can weigh 400 to 900 kilograms depending on the rating, and that’s before you count the walls, the floor reinforcement and the contents. Most older suspended timber floors were never designed for that kind of concentrated load. Concrete slabs on ground are usually fine, but even then you want to know what’s underneath, old sewer lines, sub-floor voids, that sort of thing.
Structural design actions for buildings in Australia sit under the AS/NZS 1170 suite, and any engineer worth paying will reference it when they sign off on your floor loading. If your building’s on a suspended floor and it doesn’t stack up, you’re not necessarily stuck. Sometimes you drop the vault to ground level instead, or you spread the load with a reinforced slab poured within the existing floor void. Either way it’s a conversation to have in week one, not after the steel’s been ordered.
Door swing, corridor width and the bit nobody budgets for #
This one catches people out constantly. A strongroom door with a decent cash or TL rating is thick, heavy and doesn’t swing on a domestic hinge. You need clearance, you need a corridor wide enough to actually manoeuvre the thing into the building in the first place, and you need to think about which way it opens relative to fire egress requirements.
I’ve had jobs where the door itself was never the problem, getting it through a heritage-listed doorway was. One gallery fit-out in Fitzroy had a door frame so narrow we ended up craning the vault door in through a removed sash window before the new opening was cut. Cost more than the door. If you want the detail on what these ratings actually mean before you start pricing doors, our piece on what TL and cash ratings actually mean on a safe is worth a read first, it’ll save you asking the wrong question of the wrong supplier.
Running services without opening every wall #
Power, ventilation, monitored alarm cabling, sometimes fire suppression. All of it needs to get into a room that’s meant to be as close to impenetrable as you can build. The trick with a retrofit, as opposed to new construction, is you’re threading conduit through a building that already has its own wiring, plumbing and structural quirks.
Electrical work still has to comply with AS/NZS 3000, and any intruder detection system installed needs to sit within AS/NZS 2201.1, the Australian standard for intruder alarm systems. I generally run conduit through existing risers or ceiling voids rather than chasing new channels through masonry, it’s slower but it avoids weakening a wall you might need structurally. Ventilation is the one people forget entirely, a sealed steel room with no air movement becomes a problem fast if anyone’s meant to access it regularly, or if you’re storing anything sensitive to humidity.
What council and your building surveyor actually want to see #
Depending on your council overlay and whether the building’s heritage listed, you may need a permit for the structural work even if the strongroom itself sits entirely within an existing room. Heritage overlays get particular about anything that alters an original facade, opening, or load path, so don’t assume internal work is automatically exempt. Your building surveyor will want the engineer’s report, the fire rating documentation if you’re near an egress path, and confirmation the works meet the current NCC provisions for the building’s class.
This is also where a lot of well-meaning owners get ahead of themselves and start talking to their insurer before any of this is locked in. Worth saying plainly, ArtworkSecurity doesn’t sell or arrange insurance and we don’t give insurance advice. If a policy has a security condition attached, missing it doesn’t automatically void a claim, under the Insurance Contracts Act 1984 the insurer generally has to show the failure actually caused the loss. That’s a conversation for a broker, not for us, and it’s exactly the kind of thing worth raising early with the people covered in why a fine art insurance broker is worth finding early.
My honest take on retrofits versus starting fresh #
Here’s the bit people don’t want to hear. Sometimes retrofitting isn’t actually the cheaper option, even though it feels like it should be because the building’s already there. I’ve quoted retrofits that ran higher than a purpose-built panic room would have, once you’ve paid for engineering reports, remedial structural work and getting materials through heritage-restricted openings. If the building’s got real structural constraints, a smaller freestanding vault or a reinforced panic room, like what we cover in what a genuine panic room build actually costs to install, can end up doing the job for less money and less risk to the fabric of the building.
I still think retrofits are the right call more often than not, mostly because moving a collection into a purpose-built structure elsewhere isn’t practical for most private collectors or small galleries. But I’ll say it straight, don’t let sentiment about “using the space we’ve already got” override the numbers once the engineer’s report comes back.
Getting the assessment right before the tools come out #
The standards that govern all of this, structural loading under AS/NZS 1170, wiring under AS/NZS 3000, alarm systems under AS/NZS 2201.1, are all published through Standards Australia and they’re not optional extras, they’re the baseline any competent installer should already be working to. It’s also worth checking your installer holds current licensing, ASIAL’s public guidance on the industry, at asial.com.au, is a decent starting point if you want to know what a properly licensed security contractor should look like on paper.
Every retrofit I’ve done that went smoothly had one thing in common, someone did the structural homework before anyone touched a wall. Every one that went badly skipped that step because the client wanted to move fast. If you’re weighing this up for your own building, get a proper site assessment before you commit to a room, a door or a supplier. We run these assessments as a first step for exactly this reason, you can book a free security assessment and get the structural questions answered before you spend a cent on steel.
Anyway. Measure twice, engineer once.
– Tom Reilly, Vault & Safe Editor