Here in this part of Texas, there are a lot of reasons to add a safe room to a house. With us being in tornado alley the weather would be a primary purpose but another good secondary purpose would be for security or storage of valuables. 

There a lot of ways to add a safe room to a house. You can put it in the garage where it’s exposed, you can add it to a closet to where you can still see it or you can hide it behind a bookcase. 

If you hide it behind a bookcase – like what we have here – you just come to it you open the bookcase up then you have the access. Now notice the safe room door opens to the inside, the secondary door on the outside of the safe room opens to the outside. 

The best practice would be not to have this door on this because if the house falls down the door blocks whoever is in the safe room. The safe room door opens to the inside. Inside the safe room you can have electronics, lighting, and you could have a security system tied in. So if you did have to go into the safe room to hide they can locate you and find you and know that you’re in there.