Safe
deposit lockers are used by people who want to protect important documents,
expensive items like heirloom jewellery, or emergency money reserves, among
other things. Storage lockers are most commonly located in bank vaults, and are
rented to banking customers. A safe deposit locker is usually protected by at
least one lock, often more, and is generally made of indestructible material.
The term “safe deposit
locker” is primarily used in Great Britain and current and former British
Commonwealth countries, including Australia and India. Most North Americans
would refer to the same concept as a “safe deposit box.” The term nearly always
refers to a safe that exists as one unit among many, usually in the vault of a
bank or other financial institution. Hotels occasionally will also maintain a
bank of safe deposit lockers for guest use, particularly if room safes are not
available. Sometimes personal lockboxes in homes and offices are referred to as
safe deposit lockers, but most of the time, freestanding units are simply
called safes.
There are a number
of features or characteristics which may vary in lockers. Because purchasers
will need to specify what they want in each of these when ordering, it is more
common to order a particular configuration rather than buy "off the
shelf" in a shop, although certain very common configurations can be found
in shops fairly easily. These features include:
·
Bank size: This specifies the number of lockers wide a unit is. It does not necessarily
refer to the total number of compartments, but rather the number of
compartments wide the entire cabinet is. So a bank of three may contain six
lockers, for example, if they are two-tier lockers. In short, the total number
of lockers is the bank size multiplied by the number of tiers. Sometimes the
term "bay" is used instead of "bank", although
"bank" appears to be the more standard term; on other occasions,
"bay" refers to a single locker width within a bank, including all
tiers of locker directly on top of each other.
·
Tiers: lockers may be specified as single-tier (full height), two-tier,
three-tier, etc., meaning that the lockers are stacked on top of each other in
layers two high, three high, etc. Tiers are commonly up to eight high; on
occasion, even more tiers may be found, in the case of very small lockers for
such purposes as storing laptop computers. The most common numbers of tiers
found in lockers are, in order, one, two, and four; three-tier lockers are
rather less common, and other numbers such as five, six, or eight even less
common still - seven almost non-existent. Since locker cabinets are most
commonly 6 feet (182.9 cm.) high (although there are exceptions), the
height of individual lockers varies according to how many tiers are accommodated
within the cabinet. The height of individual lockers is usually approximately 6
feet (182.9 cm.) divided by the number of tiers, so that two-tier lockers
are about 3 feet (91.4 cm.) high, three-tier lockers 2 feet (61 cm.)
high, four-tier lockers 1.5 feet (45.7 cm.) high, and so on. Standard
features often vary according to the number of tiers: single-tier lockers
usually include a shelf about a foot (roughly 30 cm.) from the top, and a
hanging rail (sometimes with one or two hooks) immediately underneath that, at
the top of the large compartment beneath the shelf; two- or three-tier lockers
usually lack the shelf, but include the hanging rail; lockers with four or more
tiers usually have none of these fittings, but consist of just the bare
compartment.
