How to build a NBC safe room in your home or apartment

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 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 and blast shelters in residential dwellings and commercial 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 airborn toxic free areas must comply. These standards dictate the differential pressure (overpressure) 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.

What you need

A Safe Cell
Click on image to go to the Safe Cell information page - optional equipment shown above

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

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

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

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 blowing outward from the protected space. This will not allow airborne toxins from migrating back into the room and your lungs.

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 moisture, heat, 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 - see the Safe Cell page for specifications
The number of anticipated occupants - see the Safe Cell page for specifications
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? See the register duct kit page for more information
What you do if the power fails? The Safe Cell has an onboard automatic battery backup system, and for extended power outages - see the emergency hand pump page for more information