Shipping containers are now such a thing that in Denmark, they are putting them in glass cases. I have had a troubled relationship with shipping containers since I was ten, when my dad went into the container biz. They were made in the USA and Canada then and were really expensive; you wouldn't think of living in them. But every now and again he would get sent a photo of some shipping container in Africa that fell off a truck and had windows and doors cut into the walls.
If you want to learn more, please visit our website container homes in hawaii.
Lloyd Alter
I had some fun with them in University, designing a summer camp for temporary use that folded out of a forty footer. Because you would never actually use a container empty; the dimensions are lousy for people and the flooring was treated with insecticides and the paints were designed to last through ten years on the high seas, so are seriously industrial. It may have been a really bad career choice not sticking with containers, but my moves into modular construction and tiny homes were not too successful either.
The Issue With Shipping Container Housing
Perhaps the lesson is that when it comes to housing, technology, or lack thereof, is not the fundamental problem. After watching all the coverage of shipping container schemes with some bemusement, I asked Does Shipping Container Architecture Make Sense? But now, in response to an architectural competition, Architect Mark Hogan of OpenScope Studio comes up with his own list of questions.
He speaks from some experience, having actually built a container project, and notes that "For sites where on-site construction is not feasible or desirable, fitting a container out in the factory can be a sensible option." But for housing? On his personal website, Mark makes some very good points. Here are some of the most interesting.
Shipping Containers Have Structural Problems
Housing is usually not a technology problem. All parts of the world have vernacular housing, and it usually works quite well for the local climate. There are certainly places with material shortages, or situations where factory built housing might be appropriate- especially when an area is recovering from a disaster. In this case prefab buildings would make sense- but doing them in containers does not.
Here I might argue that the great genius of shipping containers is not the box but the handling systems; there are ships, cranes, trucks and trains all designed around them. So if you do want to deliver stuff fast after a disaster, there is no better form than the shipping container. He then goes through the fundamental problem of width, which is just too narrow really, Insulation, which is a huge problem, and for once, somebody understands about structure:
Ganti & Associates
You’ve seen the proposals with cantilevers everywhere. Containers stacked like Lego building blocks, or with one layer perpendicular to the next. Architects love stuff like this, just like they throw around usually misleading/meaningless phrases like “kit of parts.” Guess what- the second you don’t stack the containers on their corners, the structure that is built into the containers needs to be duplicated with heavy steel reinforcing. The rails at the top and the roof of the container are not structural at all (the roof of a container is light gauge steel, and will dent easily if you step on it). If you cut openings in the container walls, the entire structure starts to deflect and needs to be reinforced because the corrugated sides act like the flange of beam and once big pieces are removed, the beam stops working. All of this steel reinforcing is very expensive, and it’s the only way you can build a “double-wide.”
They Present Challenges for Utilities
And then there is one that I have never thought about but is important:
In a large building, you’ll still need a lot of space to run utilities. Because of the problems with insulation mentioned above, you will need to install a very robust HVAC system to heat and cool the building (that Mumbai tower shown above would literally be a deathtrap without cooling). You will have a hard time taking advantage of passive strategies like thermal mass if you maintain the container aesthetic. You’ll also end up with low ceilings, as even high cube containers are only 9-’6” (2.9 m) in overall exterior height, so any ductwork or utilities start cutting in to headroom.
OpenScope Studio
They Waste Space
Finally Mark mentions the issue of recycling. I have looked at this in the past, with the Upcycle House which had " the ambitious goal of being the first house build only from upcycled and environmentally sustainable materials." I did a calculation to determine if using two shipping containers as the structure of the house was actually the highest and best use:
An empty 40' shipping container weighs 8380 pounds. A galvanized steel stud weighs a pound per linear foot. These two containers, melted down and rolled and formed, could have been upcycled into 2,095 8' long steel studs. Framing the walls instead of using shipping containers would have used about 144 of them. Using shipping containers as structural elements for a one storey building is downcycling and wasting of a resource.
There is a lot more steel in a shipping container than you actually need for a building; that's so they can be stacked full nine high and get tossed around the ocean and thrown on trucks and trains. It's really being wasted when it's put into a house. And as Mark notes, you can probably build it faster and cheaper than bringing in a welder and mucking up a shipping container.
Relatively untrained people can build a room that size of simple wood framing in a day without needing to rent a crane or learning how to weld for about the same cost (or less) than buying a used container.
Shipping Containers Don't Make Good Homes
Don't get me wrong; I love shipping container architecture that moves, plugs in, that takes advantage of the tremendous infrastructure. I agree with Mark that it is terrific for temporary or emergency uses. But does it make good housing? I don't think so. Perhaps after all these years I am still missing something.
Lots of people come to our site and see shipping container homes and fall in love with how incredible they look and also how affordable they are. But they always want to know if living in a shipping container home is safe.
We get emails from mothers asking if a shipping container home is safe for her family to live in. We also get emails from people who want to build a shipping container cabin to use in the wilderness and want to know if it’s safe from people breaking into it.
So today we’re going to look at exactly how safe shipping container homes are and whether you should be thinking about living in one.
Do Shipping Containers Contain Harmful Chemicals?
The most common safety question people ask is whether shipping containers have toxic chemicals? Many of these concerns come from a well-written article by Brian Pagnotta at Arch Daily on the advantages and disadvantages of living in a shipping container home.
For more information, please visit customized expandable container house.
The article highlights two key concerns:
- Wooden floors used in the majority of shipping containers are treated with hazardous chemicals such as pesticides
- Some shipping containers are coated in paint which contains harmful chemicals such as phosphorous and chromate
Brian rightly raises these concerns. But, like most things, there is more to this than first meets the eye.
If you are purchasing and building your home with new shipping containers, and you’re ‘ordering them direct’ from Asia, then you don’t need to worry about these concerns. You can just specify to the manufacturer that they don’t treat the floors and don’t coat the shipping containers with hazardous paint.
However, using new shipping containers to build your home does increase the cost. It also depletes the environmental kudos you would gain through constructing with used shipping containers.
Now we need to address second-hand shipping containers. If you purchase your containers second-hand, then there is a good chance that Brian’s concerns hold true for your containers. They will very likely have been treated with these harmful chemicals. What, if anything, can be done about that?
First, you can contact the original manufacturer of the container and inquire whether the floors have been treated with hazardous chemicals. To do this, use your shipping container’s unique identification number to track who manufactured the container. For more information about that, read this article here.
If your flooring has been treated with toxic chemicals, what can you do?
We spoke with Larry from Sea Container Cabin who converted his used shipping containers back in 2010. To protect himself from the chemicals sprayed on the wooden floor he used a non-breathable flooring underlayment (see below).
Courtesy of Larry Wade
This underlayment was laid straight over the original wooden flooring. The tiles were then positioned on top of the underlayment.
If you want to be completely sure, you could even remove the original wooden flooring and replace it with marine plywood from your local hardware store.
Harmful Paint Coatings
Second-hand containers could possibly have coatings with chemical components that are toxic to humans in certain quantities. These coatings are used to protect the container from extreme elements, like years of direct sun and saltwater exposure while they are in transit across the ocean. It’s vital for containers when they are being used to transport cargo, but obviously not great when you are using containers to build homes.
The danger is usually not from off-gassing but from physical contact with the coating. However, container coatings are not universally problematic and you’d need to find out what was actually used to determine potential risks.
If possible, you can attempt to contact the container manufacturer and find out exactly what coatings were used, then find the MSDS for them. In many cases, that’s difficult to do, and a lot of people just assume the worst in an abundance of caution.
For those who are concerned their containers may have been coated with harmful chemicals, you really have two choices: removal or encapsulation. Removal is just what it sounds like, removing the paint, typically with an abrasive like sandblasting. It’s a labor-intensive activity, and you’ll need a lot of safety gear to do it correctly as the coating is most dangerous when it’s being pulverized and removed.
Your other choice is encapsulation, which is essentially covering up the coating with something else. Encapsulation is already a common, proven commercial remediation technique for things like lead-based paint and asbestos.
With encapsulation, you’re essentially covering up the questionable coating with another coating so you’ll no longer be prone to touch it. It doesn’t require disturbing the coating underneath, so it’s much faster, easier, and cheaper.
For most people, we recommend encapsulation if you’re concerned about shipping container coatings. Check with the manufacturers of any products you plan to use for encapsulation to ensure they will bond appropriately, etc.
Are Shipping Container Homes Hurricane Proof?
We’ve received emails from several people who live in natural disaster hotspots, asking if shipping container homes can withstand hurricanes.
These questions are no doubt inspired by the photos we have seen of previous hurricanes, like Hurricane Katrina. In the photos you see wooden homes which have been completely annihilated by the wind; however, lying on top of the wood are completely intact shipping containers.
Shipping containers are designed to be stacked when fully loaded with over 26 tons of cargo in each container. It’s not surprising these containers stood up to a hurricane.
While we are not currently aware of any shipping container home which has faced a hurricane, we do know that shipping containers are better positioned to withstand hurricanes than many other types of construction.
We have already spoken about Todd Miller’s shipping container home in our Graceville Container House Case Study. For those of you not aware, he decided to build a shipping container home using 31 containers!
The home was placed on nine-meter deep micro-pile foundations, the piles were capped with concrete piers and the containers were then anchored down on top of these concrete piers. The house was featured on Grand Designs Australia. While it’s hard to say any structure is completely hurricane-proof, as we never know the extent of future ‘super storms’, this home is very hurricane-resistant due to the foundations and anchoring used.
What is also interesting about this example is that he built his home in known flood plains in Queensland. The local planning authority approved the home to be built in this area because Todd’s plans showed that the home was floodproof.
Are Shipping Container Homes Secure?
We have received this question a surprising number of times. Often, the future owners are planning on using them as a cabin in the wilderness. Hence, they want to be able to leave their shipping container home for months on end without having to worry about whether someone has broken into it.
To answer this question, consider what a shipping container was originally built to do. Shipping containers are made to be an airtight, impenetrable storage solution used to transport goods around the world.
In fact, when shipping containers were first used in the 1950’s, the amount of lost or stolen cargo dropped significantly, as we discussed in A Complete History of the Shipping Container.
Before shipping containers, goods were placed on ships as break bulk cargo. This essentially means goods were either in sacks, crates or barrels. Light-handed laborers were known to steal these goods. At the time it was known as the cost of shipping. However, when shipping containers came on the scene, the number of stolen goods dropped massively. This was because shipping containers could be locked by the owner before they were even loaded onto the ship.
Shipping containers are one of the most secure storage facilities you will come across. However, when people convert the container into a home, they often cut away metal and change the structure of the container, which does lessen its security value somewhat. But a shipping container converted into a home is just as secure as a traditionally built home.
If you want to make your shipping container home even more secure because you plan to use it in a remote location, you should leave the original structure of the container intact.
To do this you would need to fit windows and doors behind the original shipping container doors. This way when you leave your shipping container home, you can also lock the original shipping container door to seal your container up.
When you are staying over in your cabin, you can leave the original shipping container doors open to let light in, yet you will still have your retrofitted windows and door closed, like a regular house.
Now that you know how safe shipping container homes are to live in, what are you waiting for? Let us know what you use your shipping container home for in the comments section below.
The company is the world’s best portable expandable container house supplier. We are your one-stop shop for all needs. Our staff are highly-specialized and will help you find the product you need.
Comments
All Comments (0)