What holds a safe depends on the wall you have
In the rampart buildings the load-bearing walls are old, thick and uneven. Building a safe in is often possible, but the chase has to be cut knowing what lies behind: stone, rubble, fill, sometimes an old render that will need making good afterwards. You probe the wall before drilling, never the other way round. Plan thickness and drilled thickness rarely match here.
At Les Semboules and La Fontonne, the blocks built between the 1960s and the 1980s offer concrete walls that hold fixings very well, and also dry linings with nothing behind them. A safe bolted through a lining comes away with the board. Identifying the substrate is the first step, not a detail of the fitting.
In the Cap villas the issue becomes weight and discretion. An unfixed fifty-kilo safe is a two-person carry: the burglar takes the whole thing away and opens it somewhere quiet. Anchoring to the manufacturer's specification is also, very often, an explicit condition set by the insurer. The weight on the delivery note is not what keeps a safe in the house; the bolts through the slab are.
A home that stands empty part of the year
Start with the insurance policy, not the product sheet. It sets the amount covered for valuables kept at home and requires a minimum class under the EN 1143-1 standard, sometimes with the anchoring described precisely. Many policies also cut cover beyond a certain period of vacancy: for a Cap villa shut for the winter, read that clause before settling on a model.
Siting follows two rules: avoid the places searched first — bedroom, dressing room, study — and stay away from damp. In a Salis home shut from November to Easter, a safe in the cellar or the garage will ruin papers and digital media long before any burglar takes an interest in it.
For a shop on cours Masséna or rue Aubernon the logic differs: the safe stays out of customers' sight, in a room with controlled access, its location known only to authorised staff. A deposit slot lets takings go in without opening it, which limits exposure during the August trade. Cash has no business spending the night in the till.
How does this service work?
Techniques, typical situations, standards and things to watch out for: it is all on our safes page. This page focuses on what the service involves in Antibes.