What is a Saferoom?

A saferoom is a small windowless room, either completely encapsulated in concrete - walls, ceiling and floors or is a prefabricated steel structure located inside the home in order to provide occupant protection from severe weather.

Saferooms can be made from:

  • Rooms already existing in the home, such as a closet or bathroom,
  • May be constructed in an otherwise unused portion of the garage or basement
  • Or, may be built as a "stand-alone" structure.

While the idea of saferooms isnt really new weve all seen Dorothys family in The Wizard of Oz take shelter in the farms root cellar, todays self-contained saferooms are as at home in the suburbs as they are on the farm.

The saferoom concept has come about as post-storm inspections of homes affected by severe weather such as tornadoes and hurricanes showed that in many instances a small room in the central portion of the house remained standing even when the house was severely damaged or completely destroyed.

From that revelation came the idea of physically strengthening such rooms to provide maximum occupant protection, since constructing an entire home to be immune from high winds and wind-blown debris is seldom practical. An additional advantage of a safe room over something like Dorothys root cellar is that the safe room can function year-round as a usable area, such as a bathroom, closet or utility room.

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