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Safecastle: owned & operated since 2002 by your
 Victor Rantala
M. Brooks, 1/20/12: "I figured the 'lifetime membership' offer was too good to be true ... I began to order products and am absolutely amazed! The service is incredible; each time I have contacted Mr. Vic, I get an immediate response. He has always been kind and considerate and very professional and stands behind his word. The membership perks are phenomenal. Because we are at such a critical juncture in our world, preparedness has become big business and there are a lot of folks in it just for the money and provide substandard products and services. I believe Safecastle is really a ministry to those trying to prepare ... It is truly a first rate outfit, selling quality products at a reasonable price, owned and operated by a man who has a servant’s heart."
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Home > Apartment Installations
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Home
and Apartment Safe Rooms
Collective
protection for civil defense
A nuclear, biological, and chemical (NBC) safe room protects its
occupants from inhaling harmful or deadly airborne toxins such
as very fine particles of radioactive fallout, biological toxins,
and chemical agents. In the past, the United States Government
has poured extensive
resources into providing the best information (at the time)
for the protection of its citizens from NBC warfare agents. This
is not the case today.
For
protection of the U.S. population we have the government website:
www.ready.gov. It suggests
duct tape and plastic, then wait for further official instruction.
Although the tape and plastic method would offer some immediate
short term protection from low level toxins at low concentrations,
it would be, at best, a short term solution. Most governments
tend to only recommend emergency procedures that can be afforded
by all their citizens.
As
a contrast to most governments, both Switzerland and Israel require,
and subsidize the cost of, NBC safe rooms in apartment buildings.
They have strict standards in place governing both the construction
of the room and the ventilation equipment protecting the room.
For
protection of some of our military personal and government officials,
the U.S. Department of the Army - Corps of Engineers has standards
by which NBC airborne toxic free areas must comply.
These standards dictate the differential pressure in the safe
room (protected space) as well as the design of the NBC filter/ventilation
system.
The
main reasons why an un-pressurized room will not protect the occupants
for very long is that the room "breaths" - in other
words, it leaks air both in and out through the cracks as the
external atmospheric pressure fluctuates - due wind or other atmospheric
variables like temperature, and barometric pressure swings due
to approaching weather fronts. Air constantly tries to
normalize its pressure and temperature between different variants
- as it does this, it brings with it whatever that air contains.
Also, in a sealed room, there is no accommodation to replenish
oxygen and expel the exhaled carbon dioxide of the occupants.
In
order to create and maintain
overpressure as well as give the required air exchanges to support
the air supply needs of the sheltered occupants, a safe room must
be equipped with true positive pressure NBC filter/ventilation
unit and a means of a metering the exhaust air out of the protected
space.
American
Safe Room filter/ventilation equipment and related components
are designed and manufactured specifically for
this purpose.
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What
you need
A
Safe Cell
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Options:
How air is let in
1. Wall
mount flange:
Do-it yourself with the included
wall mount flange
2.
Through
the wall kit:
Use our easy-to-install kit to make
a simple, clean installation
3.
Register
duct kit:
Easily attach your intake hose
to an existing register duct
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Options:
How air is let out
1. Use the existing structure: Air seeps out the cracks under doors and
around windows - this is perfectly acceptable, as
long as you maintain overpressure
2.
Overpressure
relief valve:
In a very well sealed protected space
you will need to meter the outflow of air
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Options:
In an emergency
1.
Emergency
hand pump
For long term power outages, you can
draw safe, breathable air into your protected space
through the filter banks of the Safe Cell
2.
Auxiliary
blower
This will automatically refresh the
air in your protected space when you are not using
it - and - it can double as a backup blower for your
Safe Cell
3.
Replacement
filters
These can be installed after an event
when your existing filters have done their job and
become less effective because they are clogged with
particles and gases that would be in your lungs if
they were not captured by the filters of the Safe
Cell
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What
you need to know
A
safe room consists of an envelope (a room) that has
a true NBC filtration/ventilation system
installed that will maintain more air pressure
inside the room than outside of it (overpressure)
in order to constantly keep air bowing outward from
the protected space. This will not allow airborne
toxins from migrating back into the air you breath.
With
the right equipment, standard residential
construction - homes and apartments - can be a perfectly
suitable envelope to keep out airborne toxins. Absolute
sealing of the room is not necessary - as long as
you have achieved and maintain overpressure.
Even
if you are inside a hermetically sealed container,
you need true ventilation - air in
and air out. This ventilation continually removes
heat, moisture, and carbon dioxide that is exhaled
by the occupants while bringing in a fresh supply
of oxygen-rich air.
This
air must be filtered in order to make it safe and
breathable. The best filter combination
is a bank of pre-filters, an individually DOP scan
tested nuclear grade HEPA for radioactive fallout
and a nuclear grade carbon adsorber that will adsorb
radioactive iodine.
All
of the component necessary to do any kind of installation
of a safe room is right here, waiting for you.
Critical
things to consider
- Room
selection - inside rooms offer more distance (one
component of protection) from radioactive fallout,
but outside rooms offer more surveillance of outside
your safe room
- Room
size in volume
- The
number of anticipated occupants
- How
well the room is sealed - if the room is well
sealed, then the air must be allowed to be metered
out with an overpressure
valve
- What
pressure the air is that is being drawing into
the room - is it being drawn from static air or
from a central forced-air system?
- What
do you do if the power fails? The Safe
Cell has an onboard automatic
battery backup system
There's
more:
the Pusher Mode
The
Safe Cell has the ability to quickly and easily be
mounted in an adjacent closet or under a cabinet.
We call this the "pusher mode" because it
is "pushing" air into your safe room (protected
space).
Normally,
the Safe Cell is mounted inside the protected space
and the only hose required is the intake hose that
connects to the bottom intake port. This allows you
to quickly attach the emergency hand pump to the top
output port and start manually drawing in filtered
air - without leaving your protected space. This is
a simple schematic of a normal installation:
But
sometimes, you may wish to have a more discrete installation
- hiding the fact that you have military grade protection
from airborne toxins. That is why we made this simple
kit that allows you to mount the Safe Cell
in a closet or other adjacent space. This is a simple
schematic of a pusher mode installation:
In
the pusher mode mode, it is possible to mount the
Safe Cell outside of the protected space,
but we do not recommend this type of installation.
All of our military sales and research into protected
spaces used by militaries worldwide has shown that
it is imperative that the occupants be able to have
access to the filtration equipment from within the
protected space. Access to the Safe Cell allows you
to change filters, use the emergency hand pump, and
quickly attach the auxiliary blower - if needed. It
also gives you visible and audible feedback that the
Safe Cell is functioning. Here's how a "pusher
mode" installation looks:
Shown
above is a Safe Cell mounted in a wall of one end
of a walk-in closet in a bedroom. The air is drawn
from outside the residence through the hose at the
bottom left and expelled into the bedroom through
the 90-degree fitting and the hose at the top right.
This
entire installation took about a half-hour - from
out of the box to hitting the "on" button.
Anyone can do this with a few simple hand
tools.
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