Safes
Safe opening Novelda, for the shop safe and the one in the wardrobe
A till safe whose code walked out with a former employee, a keypad that died in a house left empty since summer, the safe in the office of a stone works. The safe is opened in the gentlest way it will allow, and a new one can be bolted where nobody can carry it off.
Open 24 hours · 7 days
- Shops, works offices and homes
- Proof of ownership first
- Price agreed before work starts
In Novelda
Three places the safes are
Behind the counter
Shops in the centre that keep the day’s takings in a small safe until the bank opens. Here the problem is usually people: a code set by someone who no longer works there.
In the works office
The units of El Fondonet and Santa Fe, many of them in the stone trade, often keep papers, cash or small valuables in an office safe. The rest of the work on business premises is on the page for works and units.
In a wardrobe, out in a partida
Country houses that stand empty for weeks at a time. A battery-powered keypad left alone for a whole season is the most common reason a safe will not open.
Whose safe is it?
Paperwork before the safe door moves
The person standing next to a safe is not always the person it belongs to, so the question is asked every time, politely, before any tool comes out. For a home, an escritura, a rental contract or a recent bill for that address does it. For a business, the registration of the company or the lease of the unit, or the owner ringing to confirm. When the papers are inside the safe itself, which happens more than you would think, other proof of the address is enough.
By the kind of lock
Keypad, dial or key: each one is opened differently
A photo of the front of the safe usually tells which of these it is.
| The safe has | What usually went wrong | What is tried |
|---|---|---|
| A keypad | Flat batteries after months shut away, or a code nobody remembers. | Power through the outside contacts, then the hidden emergency key, then the lock itself. |
| A combination dial | The numbers went with a former owner or employee. | The lock is worked by hand. It is slow, careful work and leaves no mark. |
| A key only | The key is lost, or bent from being forced. | The lock is picked or decoded; failing that, it is replaced once the door is open. |
Drilling is never the first idea with any of them. When it is the only one left, you are told before anything is done, and the hole is small, at one exact point, and the lock is then repaired or replaced so the safe keeps working.
New safes
Fitting a new safe: where, and fixed to what
The weight printed on the box matters less than what the safe is anchored to. Expansion bolts go through its base into the floor slab, or through its back into a load-bearing wall; the thin brick partitions common in flats of the 1960s and 70s are not enough. As for where: somewhere you can reach without moving furniture, and that a stranger would not try first.
After a break-in, start with the doors, because a safe only helps once the house is hard to get into: see making a forced door secure again. If it is the front door that will not open rather than the safe, doors are opened without damage here; new cylinders for the house are booked on the lock change page. Every place covered is on the partidas and villages page, and the ways to reach us on the contact page.
Running a small shop and wondering where the takings should spend the night? There is a short note on deposit safes and hidden ones.
Questions
What owners of a shut safe ask
The employee who knew the shop safe code has left. Can it be opened?
Yes, as long as the owner of the business asks for it and can show it is theirs: the business registration, the lease of the premises, or the owner confirming in person. Once it is open, a new code is set by whoever you choose, and nobody else needs to know it.
The keypad of the safe in our country house is dead after the winter. Is everything lost?
Rarely. A dead display usually means dead batteries, not a wiped memory: the code is stored without power. Many safes have two small contacts or a battery box on the outside for exactly this, so it is the first thing checked.
Does opening a safe ruin it?
In most cases it goes back into use the same day. Of the ways in, only drilling leaves a mark, and then it is a single small hole that is plugged once the lock has been repaired or replaced.
Can a safe be fixed into the wall of a flat built in the 1970s?
Into a load-bearing wall or the floor slab, yes. Many interior walls in flats of that age are thin brick, which holds a picture but not a safe, so the fixing point is checked before anything is drilled.
Often next
Work that tends to go with a safe
Door notes that lead here
Your safe shut and the code nowhere?
A WhatsApp photo of its front and of any brand plate is enough to say which way in is likely.
Open 24 hours · 7 days