01-27-2011, 03:40 AM
I have gone back and forth with this idea. One thing that is not as good here as it is on the mainland is that there are not as many excess shipping containers here and consequently they are not as cheap.
My design philosophy is that you should take advantage of those characteristics that shipping containers have that other methods of construction don't, such as:
They can be cheap.
They can be strong.
They can span 40'.
Containers have the following negative characteristics:
They can rust.
They are NOT strong in certain ways. The roof and sides are like the roof and sides of your car. A 200 lb man can sit on the seats but if he sits on the roof he will dent it. I have stood on the roof of one and it was bouncy like a trampoline. It was also full of dents. A guy who works with them said that that is usually from tree limbs while they are being transported on the road.
They are highly engineered and they are no stronger than they need to be. They were designed to be stacked and supported at the corners although they can also generally be lifted with a forklift along the bottom. If you cut too much out of the side, they are no longer strong.
They are skinny. It's hard to lay out a good floor plan unless you are putting a couple side by side.
So, if you intend to combine them in creative ways, you have to cut and weld a lot. You lose the advantage of an off the shelf box and you lose the strength so it is more like building a house up from metal sheets than building down from a functional box. The challenge is to not compromise the positive characteristics as you work around the negatives, or you might as well start from scratch.
I'm an engineer and also rather an AR guy. I was sort of hung up on the challenge of making a permitted house of a single container. I would elevate the container by supporting it at the corners so as to get a full 8' x 40' covered area underneath, since the container doesn't care how high you hang it. The cranes lift these things 100' up while they are full of 50,000 lbs of cargo, lifting from the corners. I am now of the opinion that a single container is just too little space to make it worth the hassle of permitting. Putting two side by side and cutting out the adjoining sides makes them not strong and not portable. I'm not saying it is not worth doing, just that you give up some of the original advantages of containers.
I am now working on outfitting a 40' container with minimal accomodations in one end and the 10' with the big doors walled off for storage. The living quarters will have a regular door and some small windows. This will obviously be substandard as housing but will be quick, easy, portable, and relatively secure.
My design philosophy is that you should take advantage of those characteristics that shipping containers have that other methods of construction don't, such as:
They can be cheap.
They can be strong.
They can span 40'.
Containers have the following negative characteristics:
They can rust.
They are NOT strong in certain ways. The roof and sides are like the roof and sides of your car. A 200 lb man can sit on the seats but if he sits on the roof he will dent it. I have stood on the roof of one and it was bouncy like a trampoline. It was also full of dents. A guy who works with them said that that is usually from tree limbs while they are being transported on the road.
They are highly engineered and they are no stronger than they need to be. They were designed to be stacked and supported at the corners although they can also generally be lifted with a forklift along the bottom. If you cut too much out of the side, they are no longer strong.
They are skinny. It's hard to lay out a good floor plan unless you are putting a couple side by side.
So, if you intend to combine them in creative ways, you have to cut and weld a lot. You lose the advantage of an off the shelf box and you lose the strength so it is more like building a house up from metal sheets than building down from a functional box. The challenge is to not compromise the positive characteristics as you work around the negatives, or you might as well start from scratch.
I'm an engineer and also rather an AR guy. I was sort of hung up on the challenge of making a permitted house of a single container. I would elevate the container by supporting it at the corners so as to get a full 8' x 40' covered area underneath, since the container doesn't care how high you hang it. The cranes lift these things 100' up while they are full of 50,000 lbs of cargo, lifting from the corners. I am now of the opinion that a single container is just too little space to make it worth the hassle of permitting. Putting two side by side and cutting out the adjoining sides makes them not strong and not portable. I'm not saying it is not worth doing, just that you give up some of the original advantages of containers.
I am now working on outfitting a 40' container with minimal accomodations in one end and the 10' with the big doors walled off for storage. The living quarters will have a regular door and some small windows. This will obviously be substandard as housing but will be quick, easy, portable, and relatively secure.