Very heavy filing cabinet

[Martin Pentreath]

VERY heavy. 233kg

's fireproof, but god only knows what they put in it to get it to that weight. Thank god I don't need a four-drawer one.

Two issues arise:

1) Can my floor stand it? It will be in the corner of a first floor room with a conventional suspended floor. Victorian, so probably not the heftiest of joists. The weight will be directly over three joists very close to the point where they're attached to the brickwork (rather than mid-span), and then I suppose spread to a lesser extent over nearby joists by the floorboards. I'm thinking that it's only like three people standing in the corner of the room, but am I fooling myself?

2) Subject to being satisfied that it won't be taking the quick route to the ground floor once I get it in, how the hell am I going to get it up a flight of stairs? I reckon that would need four people, but I doubt you could get four people around a quarter-tonne, two-drawer filing cabinet while you all struggle up a not-particularly-wide staircase. Anyone think a sack-barrow would help?

Cheers!

Martin

[Martin Pentreath]

PS I know that website offers an upstairs delivery service, but I will not be paying =A3929 to take advantage of it. I'm buying a bargain secondhand one, hence the DIY issues.

[Chris J Dixon]

How about one of these?

[Mental]

two wheels climbing up the leading edge of the stairs! Once it is on its base the weight is spread out, but on a trolley the weight is concentrated on the two wheels. M.

[Mary Fisher]

Apart from the price!

I'd be concerned about how much more it will weigh when it's full. Paper weighs a LOT.

Mary

[dvstarling]

The one that Hannibal Lecter used in the film 'Hannibal' was slightly different to the HSS ones was a better design imho! It had 3 wheels on each side driven by a motor and a manual crank handle that Lecter turned to raise Inspector Pazzi! Does anyone else remember it?

[Martin Pentreath]

I'm beginning to think that the whole idea is a non-starter and I shall just have to let it all burn.

[nightjar]

IME the Victorians were good at over-engineering things. However, IIRC as general rule, floors built for domestic use were considred able to take a distribute load of 40-50lbs / sq ft, while offices were generally rated at

80lbs/sq ft. That thing runs to 117 lbs/sq ft empty.

Colin Bignell

[Martin Pentreath]

Hi Colin, thanks for the figures. A quick calculation puts me at over

150lbs /sq ft, I think I'll confine myself to the cellar.

[Owain]

Do you have anything that can't be scanned/photographed and stored on CDROM elsewhere?

Yes, I know it's not the same as having the originals.

Owain

[The Natural Philosopher]

Sackbarrow not what you want. A winch and runners is OK for straight stairs.

250kg is about ten times elfin safety limits for one person*, so you aint gonna lift it without mechanical aid.its about 5 cwt innit?

If it were me, I'd hire one of those hand winch jobbies, and lay some scaffolding planks up the stairs, and put it on a board and winch it up.

With levers, you should be able to 'walk' it across the room to where it needs to go. Use more boards to prevent carpet damage.

250kg is no bigger than a 250 liter water tank. If the joists are sound and its at a room edge. it shouldn't be too bad, but deflections as ou cross the center of the room - if you need to - will be 'interesting'

However 5cwt is only 40 stone. and thats about 3-4 people ..so if your room can take that, it can take the safe..safely.;-)

*35kg these days..

[nightjar]

I suspect you could end up there, even if you started on the first floor :-)

One advantage of the cellar is that the safe only has to protect the contents from falling debris, not survive dropping through a couple of burning floors first.

Colin Bignell

[Martin Pentreath]

OK, I like the winch idea, I guess a tirfor winch would be the sort of thing:

only problem is what to fix it to. It would need one hell of an anchor point to take the weight, and I don't fancy fixing some enormous ugly bolt into the wall at the top of the stairs.

[Appin]

The message

from Martin Pentreath contains these words:

Been there, done that, got the t-shirt (with a 3-drawer Chubb model)

There's a very surprising amount of weight in the drawers. Remove them and you'll be surprised at the difference it makes. Beware, though, these drawers are a two-person lift. Thankfully mine is on a concrete floor at ground level. Rolled into final position on a couple of rollers cut from an old rake handle -- and left on them. And no, it doesn't roll anywhere when you pull out a drawer.

[PM]

It's fireproof, but god only knows what they put in it to get it to

They are normally concrete between the inner and outer walls.

[Bob Mannix]

For a fire safe they would use insulating material rather than concrete. With an inner wall and outer wall of 5mm steel plus drawers runners and bracing, I could get the weight to ~233kg from the dimensions

[Jeremy Nicoll - news posts]

But may also get water-logged.

[The Natural Philosopher]

What you do is use a lump of timber and something like a doorway or window frame, and rope that as an anchor to wherever the winch needs to go.

As long as you can prop the load safely when you need to relocate the winch, progress will be slow, but sure.

Use lots of padding around all ropes otherwise they will cut into anything they touch.