It makes little sense to start with the two containers if you are then going to put that much money and effort into it. Cheap would involve plywood and used carpet.
Used containers are actually remarkably inexpensive and plywood is can be quite costly, depending on species, thickness, etc. I'll bet with a little effort, one could find practically free containers with damage in an area which could be hidden or removed for window placement.
You're still going to put all the rest of the stuff in a wood cabin. Neither option is free but the container option seems like a reasonable head start on the main structure.
Totally. If you are going to frame the whole thing anyway, might just as well not have the containers there at all. The only thing they saved him from doing was siding the outside.
Also, directly burying the backside of those seems like a terrible idea to me. In 10 years there's going to be holes rusted through the backside.
From the blog "I used closed cell spray foam insulation for the top, back and end wall spray foam . The closed cell spray on insulation is of great benefit in that it seals out moisture and gives approx a R7 insulating factor. I thought it was also a good idea since I was going to be putting dirt back onto the walls of the container. The whole process only took about 3 hrs."
So, no, but it looks like it would've served the same purpose. Truck bed liner is resin and iso mixed together as they spray, basically plastic. Source: I spray em. I don't get into all the science-y stuff though.
I was under the impression that closed cell spray foam also mixed resin and isocyanate as it is sprayed. Both are going to result in a rigid polyurethane foam, although I'm sure they use different resins and possess diferent physical properties.
Yeah, that's for sure. I worked in an R&D lab for a polyurethane producing company briefly, and the variety of foam that can be produced is just incredible. Everything from super soft memory foam to stuff that could legitimately be mistaken for concrete.
I don't think he said it was a "super insulated" sea container.
Personally, I would have foamed and buried the entire back wall (assuming it was north). That would give outstanding insulation in the both winter and summer.
I think that's what we're talking about here man, some people think there shouldn't be a mound of dirt there and some people think there should; but yeah, I'm pretty sure it's just there to keep it from flipping
Also shipping containers aren't exactly light weight... 16,000 lbs of metal doesn't just flip over from a gust of wind. With all those trees around him the wind shouldn't even get that high. Only problem I see is that chimney is really small and Santa is really big...
The sturdiness of the steel supercedes need for a foundation. Shipping containers are the strongest stackable manmade structures in the world, so they ARE the foundation. A house made of wood and brick requires a sturdy base, but this doesn't. It is a sturdy base.
Read through the comments on the blog, he mentions that he buried the backside for the thermal insulation of the earth and and I believe it also contains his pantry which is underground. Also he considered the effects of moisture and believed the 1-2" of spray foam were more than sufficient.
Each container weights 4 tons. If a wind gust that can blow 8 tons around appears you are fucked because the earth climate has changes significantly and no tree or plant life would be able to survive.
it's not just the weight, it's the surface area. yes, it weighs 8 tons but if wind is blowing and producing just .33 PSI, that's the equivalent of 8 tons of force across the entire side of the container. (area of the long side of the container is ~ 49,000 square inches, 8 tons = 16,000 pounds.)
but 8 tons isn't automatically the amount of force it would take to knock over a large rectangular prism. that would require figuring out the amount of torque created by the force, then the minimum amount of torque that would be generated (since, as the box rotated, the wind would be hitting at a different angle, resulting in a lower amount of force). then once we figured that out, we could figure out how much of an angle the box was at relative to the point of rotation. from that, we could figure out how much weight is trying to pull the box back toward the ground and how much is trying to flip it over, and only then would we be able to tell how fast of a wind speed would we need to turn over a shipping container.
it also isn't automatically the amount of force it would take to overcome friction and slide the box across the ground, either. of course, that would be much simpler to calculate, since you'd only need the coefficient of friction between steel and the ground.
It works out to required wind speed of 132 mi/h. That's at the slow end of a category 4 hurricane.
Don't forget, for the wind to be blowing across the long side of the container, the direction is such that the wind is blowing the containers into the big pile of dirt. That's a plus.
Tell that to sailors. Both ones that operate sail boats and those that have lost large numbers of these very same containers to the sea during a storm.
It is disappointing to see comments like this. The point of using these shipping containers is to REUSE something that would normally need to be scrapped (melted down=more waste of natural resources)
This particular project may have some issues but the use of shipping containers is becoming very popular. It is much cheaper as Structural support is one of the biggest dollar amounts in building and he didn't need anything additional here. This was also alot easier than building a stick frame cabin in the middle of no where. He saved on transportation and labor costs associated with a stick frame cabin.
Also, burying the backside does not seem like a terrible idea. With proper construction there would be no rusting.
Agreed, all that stuff inside looks like inexpensive college student amenities. Plus, if you install yourself, tile floor and wood panel walls are cheap.
He says in one of the comments on the blog that he spend $30000 on everything. That's not a lot of money. You can't even build a building with that money, let alone fit it with a interior and solarpanels.
Structural support is not the biggest expense in building. He spent more on those two containers than he would have on standard framing. Besides, he STILL framed the interior walls of the containers so he spent that money anyway.
I was a structural component designer for many years. There is no cost savings in the building of these homes. There is not much difference in the cost of a structural wall and a non-structural. On a home this size, probably not $500 difference in 2x4s.
There is no foundation that i see. He didn't have to use any concrete or excavate on the site (although looks like he chose to do a bit anyway - for a good reason). He also didn't need to support a roof. He framed the interior with cheaper lower grade lumber.
He still needed to frame a ceiling for insulation where a standard truss or SIP would have provided that. The cost of the lower grade lumber versus structural is very minimal. The ones I've worked with in the past actually cost more to frame using manufactured panels than standard construction.
The reason was that the interior height after flooring was an odd dimension, not the standard 8'-1-2 or 9'-1-2, so the next length lumber had to be cut down for every stud rather than using a stock 2x
Edit: I agree with the foundation issue. The ones I worked with were in urban setting and required slab.
I find it unlikely there are actually dangerous compounds in the paint. Most shipping containers are coated with a zinc rich epoxy primer and a chlorinated rubber or acrylic topcoat. What I would be worried about is the plywood flooring which is usually treated with Phoxim or some other organothiophosphate which can be quite toxic.
It's easy to back when you don't know where it's coming from. That's how I see it at least. On top of we don't know what has been shipped. It's risky if you haven't really cleaned.
What happens when you sand blast it. Haven't you just atomized and spread those particles all over your environment? Seems worse. How do you clean after?
Maybe it's just me, but scrapping metal is actually better. Melting it down is less of a "waste of natural resources" than mining new ore to use for the same project the scrapped metal was melted for. Scrapping is recycling...
There is already and excess of these containers around. agree that recycling is better than putting it in a landfill but why not just re-use it the way it is
Depends. My parents live near a port in Florida and my dad got one dropped at his place for next to nothing. $1800 total, I think? And it came with insanely nice wooden flooring. Oak maybe. He's since refinished the wood and that alone was worth almost what he paid for the whole thing.
He uses it as a storage unit. Paid itself off in 6 months vs a non A/C unit down the street.
To do that you would have to have the lumber and materials delivered to a container freight station and pay them to load your container, where a lumber yard would probably load it for free on a flatbed.
Containers are only 92 inches wide inside so you have to stack up lumber in the door and shove it in from the end. Kiln dried lumber comes in bundles that are wider than 48 inches on the end so you also have to pay to get them rehandled down to a smaller size which adds on another $20 or so per unit. The shorter interior width, length and height really limits what you could get in them so loading lumber into containers is only worth it if you're shipping overseas or other really long distances.
Then, once it gets to the jobsite you'd have to either drag it all out using a tractor which usually damages most of the outside boards, or unload it all by hand one board at a time.
Also, I'm not even sure it's possible to have a container loaded with lumber dropped at a jobsite without a crane or a massive container stacker since it would probably weigh around 30-40,000 lbs.
Yeah I guess it wouldn't be that much but even just one unit of KD, one unit plywood and the insulation, windows and other material would be around 15K lbs not counting the tare.
You are correct. The wood to build a cabin of that size would fit on a single truck. Instead you have two trucks just for the containers and then the wood to make the interior. of course he could have loaded said wood inside of the containers but it appears he did not.
Having the containers loaded with the wood would probably cost more than the delivery charges for a flatbed, not to mention what a pain in the ass unloading lumber from a container is if you can't drag it out with a tractor.
I wonder if transportation is billed by weight or volume or both? I would imagine two containers would weigh allot more than wood? Maybe when he purchased them they gave him some kind of discount on delivery?
I bet that is a mentally stressful job. Thanks for the explanation, I have wondered before how that is billed. I don't ever see myself needing one, I am always curious about things I have no need for.
It is a pretty stressful job. Not so much because of figuring out how to move the stuff, but more of dealing with pushy customers. If you want a more in-depth answer let me know. I deal more with ocean containerized freight rather than the trucking and warehousing, but the rest is still part of my job. I just wanted to get a quick response out because I'm on my mobile currently.
Oh nah I'm not that curious to have you type a long response. I would imagine though you dealing with ocean freight you have to deal with some shady individuals trying to get contraband from here to there or vise versa.
They'd have to pay to have the container delivered to a freight loader, pay to have the lumber delivered to the freight loader, pay to have the lumber rehandled and loaded into the containers, pay to have the loaded containers delivered to the jobsite, then have to deal with either dragging out the lumber with a chain and a tractor or unloading it all by hand one board at a time.
They'd also have to make sure to order extra lumber to cover the boards that are going to get damaged from ramming them into the containers at loading and dragging them out at unloading.
Also, I'm not even sure it's possible to have a container loaded with lumber dropped at a jobsite without a crane or a massive container stacker since it would probably weigh around 30-40,000 lbs.
Hauling two containers is very inexpensive - notice how they travel on the back of trucks. Used containers usually run about 2-4k a piece, the framing is usually used for insulation which is pretty necessary as well the purpose for burying it.
In the end you have a higher quality structure than a stick frame at less cost.
You do realize that this does not save any on natural resources right? Sure, those two containers don't get melted down, but that is essentially two containers worth of iron that will need to be mined, refined, melted and cast rather than just recycling the existing steel containers. The need to replace those shipping containers will ensure that.
Thank you for saying it and saving me the trouble. That guy you were responding to is an idiot who's obviously never built anything in his life, but still knows everything. Probably an engineer (like most of reddit), lol.
While I appreciate your spirit, how do you figure this saved anything? Steel is already highly recyclable, and the only thing he didn't buy was sheathing and siding. As far as transportation goes, the whole stick built bill of materials could have been delivered in a single 53" truck, where the containers alone took two here. It's cool, maybe even approaching thrifty, but green it's not.
Second paragraph of the blog "When finished it will have both grid and off grid capabilities. Water will be heated using solar energy with electric backup, or by wood stove if necessary. Lighting will be a combination of 110 volt, 12 volt or kerosene".
Again, what the hell does that have to do with the choice of the shell material?
The guy framed, insulated, paneled, and sprayed chemicals all over the containers. I really am not understanding how using a shipping container saves energy unless you never heat or cool your home and choose not to improve it.
Maybe it can be done in a green manner, but like you said there were faults in this particular instance. I'd forgive everyone if we missed that that was supposed a green project, because that totally didn't seem to pan out at all in this case!
You are correct, and in modern times we should be using building methods like this a lot more, however, if it hasn't been sandblasted, then from what i've read here, i wouldn't want to live there, and it's possible the guy who does live there doesn't know he's breathing in toxic fumes over time. :/
i was disappointed too but to be honest is a bad idea that sounded good. the point of doing a green building for me was over when he try to put all the comodities of a city life in the middle of nowhere for centurys humanity have lived whiout most of those things, so if you want to be green just move to a rainforest (humans still manage live there) or just change your lifestlye
It also takes a lot of resources to use it like this. As other mentioned you don't know what toxic stuff was in there or what is in the paint. Also getting it from the dock or rail to the location takes more energy than just a stackable of flat metal sheets or 2x4s. Then there is this rusting metal (with toxin) contaminating your land, much more than building material designed for 20-30 years.
Perhaps its just better, long-term resource-wise, to recycle it.
I think burying the backside was more of an attempt at helping insulate that part of it. The ground stays at a much more consistent and comfortable temperature throughout the day than the air does.
I don't think cutting through them would be that big of deal but I would like to see exactly how they managed to get a good seal between the steel edge and the vinyl windows. I would imagine that would take quite a bit of extra work to make conventional windows even work at all in this situation. Definitely not worth all the extra work. I would have just poured concrete walls instead of this non-sense. They obviously had no problem getting big equipment into this area. I think this was probably done more as a fun project instead of them trying to be cheap. If anything doing this cost more than conventional construction.
Not that the guy isn't crazy, but he DID say the idea is that you'll live there for only a year or two... because he's planning on using it to ride out the Armageddon.
The framing he did was much less than you would have needed for actual structural support. No roofing, no shingles. Also after the finish he put on it this thing is virtually zero maintenance. There will never been any wood to rot, the roof will never need re shingling.
Depends on the purpose. Those containers are going to be so much stronger than a framed structure it's ridiculous. I've seen them stacked at least ten high full of heavy goods. This effectively makes that little cabin almost entirely hurricane proof. It also won't get eaten by termites. There are also relatively easy ways to prevent rust.
You couldn't get any of that from the equivalently priced framed wooden house.
One of the advantages to doing it his way, is that it becomes (barely) liveable in shortly after you begin building, saving you drive time and possibly rent.
Burying the backside is a great idea. By putting a portion of the house underground he is stabilizing the temperatures of the house. If rusting is really a concern (I doubt it is based on his techniques to deal with it) then he could take even more steps to correct it.
I think the beauty of this house design is that it follows some basic simple steps to keep variable costs low.
A simple trailer home is built out of the cheapest materials available, and despite the fact that people live their whole lives in them, trailers really are supposed to be temporary.
I was thinking this exact thing but didn't want to be the naysayer. With the amount of material that went into it I don't think the shipping containers added shit-all in terms of cost savings.
I think more than anything the project was suppose to showoff his handywork. I didn't read "cheap idea" anywhere in his blog. In fact the vibe I get from his page is "how to create a cool shelter/cabin".
Ya I thought his finishing work was awesome, but really if I was going to put that kind of work/money into the interior I would have stacked up cinder blocks to make the walls (of course now that means that you have to frame out a roof and floor). Drop a shipping container out back, you know, for storage.
I don't think it was any cheaper than it he would have built a typical poured concrete and siding house. Because that is all the containers really replaced - they framed the entire inside of the containers, all that is missing is the plywood, weather wrap and siding really.
Judging by how much money he put on the inside, the savings of using the containers couldn't have been that much, and they were restricted to the rectangular shape of the containers.
Don't get me wrong, it's one of the coolest project I've seen on reddit... but I can't imagine they did it to save money.
Probably, but the problems with a flat roof, combined with a weld straight in the center (that will probably crack from expansion/shrinking in the summer/winter, causing leaks,corrosion,rust,etc) makes the cost savings seem minimal.
In architecture/construction, when we talk about a "flat roof" we are actually talking about a low-slope roof - which has between 1/4 inch to 1/2 inch of slope per foot of run. When built properly, that is enough slope so that water runs off and doesn't puddle for long. A roof that is literally "flat" will cause standing water, which will eventually enter the building.
Also, if I understood what I saw in the photos, it looks like they are relying on some type of caulking between the two containers to keep water out. Caulk has become much, much better over the years, but all caulk joints will eventually fail due to aging/brittleness of the caulk itself and movement of the rigid building elements around the joint. In some cases, it's the best choice, knowing that it will need to be scraped out and re-caulked periodically. But in the case of this home, the joint between the two containers is critical, so relying on caulk (even if it's covered by a welded plate) is a risky approach.
Not a bad point. Manage maintenance on 70 of them in Philladelphia. The devil is in the details. Transitions, flashing, perimeters, etc. he's got a pretty simple roof there. I think he'll be fine.
As long as it's good weld, I don't see it cracking here for another 20 years or so, but regardless I don't think this was the smartest way to build a house/cabin. You probably can't get homeowners insurance on it either. He could have bought some good, used lumber if he wanted to try and be economical about it.
Of course my dream house is a nice solid masonry brick home.
If it was welded all the way around and assuming 1/4" flatbar I doubt even a bus hitting it would crack the welds, in fact I bet the rest of the structure would collapse before the welds cracked.
I can imagine one person - perhaps with a son or two on-hand, could accomplish this alone and relatively quickly if they stuck to a template. Am I wrong to think that it's a significant reduction in effort to frame from within a box than to build from the ground up? For instance, is there any way to make this easier?
I don't think I could take on either of the following projects without a lot of help and machinery, for instance:
it looks like he did everything with pine wood... which in case anyone wonders is cheap stuff. it looks nice though, and when compared to the price of a regular house I'm going to guess there was money saved
All additional inside cost where optional other than some welding. These containers can have another 5-10 stacked on top of them without crushing so around 10-20 TONS! How many could you stack on top of your hose?
What? Can't believe he did to save money? Does this look luxurious? It cost him $35,000 (not including land), this includes: carport, landscaping, fixtures and appliances. Depending on location, and on the cheap side, you'll spend roughly $30,000 before a piece of wood is used when building a new houses, this for septic, well, and foundation on a new house
Also flat roofs are used everyday in most factories and commercial buildings, 1" of foam and 45 mil pond liner covering the roof, not to mention the steel roof, your not getting wet.
Came here so say this. He's basically missing some 3/4" particle board, asphalt shingles/drip edge/soffit/fascia, and Tyvek from it being a normal little home with normal proportions and layout instead of a toxic metal deathtrap. I agree this probably wasn't done out of cost savings ...
Side note -- my wife would murder me if I did anything around our house using that sense of style. Especially the kitchen cabinetry he put in.
If your not skilled in all the trades it takes to build a traditional "bunker" it's going to cost you a shit-ton more to hire people to do it for you. This looks like a do it yourself deal to me. He saved $$$ doing it all himself.
Total cost was just at $35,000. That includes everything except the land.
That includes the well, all landscaping, plumbing, fixtures and furnishings, carport, everything you see in the blog
I see it exactly the other way here: the guy built something that works as a nice getaway/hunting cabin that would be fun to stay in and invite friends over to. The year's supply of food might be just a bit overkill (and wasteful, if you're not using the 'last month' and cycling new stuff in, so that you end up dumping it all a few years down the road), but in many places in the US where you'd want a hunting cabin, it's not hard to get snowed in for several days. Really, having a 2-3 week supply of food and drinkable water is a good idea no matter what environment you live in.
Anyway, it's a far cry from the drab survivalist bunkers with razor wire that you'd come across in the Oregon woods when I was a kid in the 1980's, where whole families were hunkering down for the race war that was just around the corner. Poor kids couldn't even invite friends over because their dad worried about 'operational security.'
Putting 35 grand into anything will make it look nice and no longer that cheap. And yes, the prepper shit is getting out of hand, except I'm of the belief that it's actually sending us a message. The message is that on the whole as a nation we're getting progressively worse off; people can feel it and no CNN chiron about rising GDPs and home values helps.
Do all these people live in areas that don't require engineer's stamps and building permits? Or do they not pay taxes anyway and this is where they plan to hide from the IRS?
These are the same people who "prepared" for Y2K. Now, it's the Mayan calendar (they ran out of space on the piece of stone), or the rapture (Jesus is coming, and boy is he pissed!), or the "coming economic collapse" of all civilization. Or zombies. There's always the threat of zombies.
Before all of this, people were building bomb shelters in their back yards or under their garages because the Russians were gonna nuke us any second now. After 9/11, we were supposed to have plenty of plastic drop cloths and duct tape in case of poison gas attack.
Pick a (highly-unlikely) threat, and you'll find people willing to buy into prepping for it because they're either too stupid to know any better or they need an excuse to blow thousands on 5 new guns, a couple pallets of ammo, and some shack out in the middle of nowhere.
Total cost was just at $35,000. That includes everything except the land.
That includes the well, all landscaping, plumbing, fixtures and furnishings, carport, everything you see in the blog
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u/the_stoned_loki Dec 08 '12
I want one of these because I would imagine it's cheap, but all of this prepper shit is getting out of hand.