Coming Home to a Shipping Container | Hacker News Reader

Coming Home to a Shipping Container

nytimes.com

102 pointsedward89 comments

Shipping containers are terrible to use for homes for so many reasons. By the time you stick multiple together to create enough space and cut windows and doors (and then reinforce them to fix the damage you caused to the structure) to make them acceptable and livable, you end up spending more than you would with typical light frame construction to end up with a cramped space a low ceilings and poor insulation.

It really is a fetish. There's no sensible reason for containerized homes (absent maybe disaster zones, but even then no one's really building completed container homes and shipping them; it's still done on-site).

How is closed cell foam poor insulation? It has an R-Value of approx 6-7 R per inch of thickness. 3 inches would provide an R-Value of approx 21 and would also seal the container. At 3 inches of thickness it provides a barrier to moisture. There is no other insulation that even comes close. It also increases the structural integrity of the container by 200%. Containers are incredibly strong and some of the best insulated structures on the planet.

Here is a good link for you to educate yourself about insulation.

http://www.demilec.com/

And another useful link for containers and all the different ways they can be utilized.

http://www.gtgroupinc.com/container-sales/gallery/modified-c...

You realize shipping containers don't typically have closed cell foam in them, right? Obviously you can add it. But you can add closed cell foam to any structure, and you can do it more cost effectively in a structure designed for insulation (and habitation). R-21 is also pretty low for the ceiling/roof in many climates.

Also there's no way closed cell foam increases the strength of the container by 200% unless you're just talking about dent resistance.

Adding foam as a moisture barrier is pretty amusing since moisture resistance is one thing shipping containers do have by default.

Refrigerated ones do generally have foam in them, of some sort.

Shipping containers are not typically refrigerated, though. At that point you need an electricity supply and you're getting away from the primary point of shipping containers, which is essentially "stack them and stick them on a boat for a month". Obviously refrigerated containers exist, but I think they're a pretty small minority and I don't think they are typically chosen for container home construction.

As someone who used to drive trucks, they're actually quite common, and similarly proportional in numbers to refer trailers vs dry vans, which I want to say is 5-20% of the industry.

Interesting. I wonder what percentage of shipping containers actually reaches trucks though. A lot probably go to trains or get unloaded at the shipping yard.

Basically 100%

You need a way to convey the can from the port (or railhead) to the receiver, and that is 100% by road, as you cant unload a can while its on the rail - cans are made to be put into a truck dock like a trailer.

Also, everything I've read about building one advises against using a refrigerated container - something about the lining that could lead to respiratory issues. Can't find a source at present, but was a big no-no when I was looking a few years back.

I don't think you understand that shipping containers are not moisture proof unless they are refers. There is a large percentage of containers that are already insulated.

Like I said take some time to educate yourself about the container industry.

I didn't say shipping containers were "moisture proof". I said that they are moisture resistant. Shipping containers are designed to preserve cargo during shipping. While many shipping containers might not be 100% weathertight, they will be pretty close. Steel walls are absolutely water-impermeable, so the only areas needing a moisture barrier would be the doors and any incompletely-welded joints. The biggest concern is probably with condensation [1], not exterior air infiltration.

I kind of get the impression you're trying to present yourself as an expert but don't have any meaningful knowledge in this area. The "educate yourself" condescension is a telltale sign. People who actually have knowledge and take the time to comment generally use the opportunity to actually share knowledge.

I'd really like it if you could point me to some supporting info for your impressive claim that 3 inches of closed-cell foam will increase the structural integrity of a shipping container by 200%. Here's a chance to share your expertise.

[1] http://pentalvercontainersales.com/waterproof.html

>you end up spending more than you would with typical light frame construction to end up with a cramped space a low ceilings and poor insulation.

And what is that amount?

That depends entirely on what you want to build. The less cramped and shitty you want your container home to feel, the more it will cost relative to traditional construction.

I'm trying to understand the estimates that you based your comment on.

The article mentions one particular build as costing around $3000 to purchase and install.

$3000 to plop a container on her property, paint it, and redo the floors. It's not a livable space. No windows, no insulation, no plumbing, no electricity, no heating or cooling. She calls it a "glorified tent".

But yes, if that's what you want and you can get a good price on the raw shipping container and don't mind doing all the labor yourself, the final price isn't too bad.

Edit: Actually, they have a lamp, so they must have some sort of electricity supply.

I lived as a student in one of these things [0] for 3 years. It had a small shower with toilet room, a kitchenette, electrical ariconditioning 9with heating), a large window on the head side and totaling ~21 square meter. For a student, this was just perfect. I only missed an indoor/safe bicycle storage solution.

[0]: http://www.ndsm.nl/en/location/tijdelijke-containerwoningen/

The link you cite shows them stacked. If that was your circumstance, how did you find the noise level?

My long-standing issue with any living space: I don't need a lot of space nor luxury, but I do (desperately) need peace and quiet, when I am not deliberately socializing.

The noise levels were great. I'm generally not very sensitive to it, but from what I remember is that I don't remember any noise leaks. Quite a difference from the 60's apartment complex I live in now, which has single-pour-concrete floors.

Thanks! Not what I would have expected -- so, useful.

I wonder how those actually compare to something like this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gr%C3%B8njordskollegiet#/media... in terms of lifetime costs and comfort?

Not to mention, depending on what they were shipping they're lined with pest/fungicides that need to be removed.

Nothing a good sandblaster can't remove, most of it is in the floor anyways (https://www.containerhomeplans.org/2016/10/should-you-remove...). Rip out and replace the floor (which you'll want to do anyway as it looks ugly and damaged in most cases), sandblast the walls until clean, repaint them, done.

You can also leave the walls alone and only do the floor, or epoxy/concrete the floor to cover the toxins, depending on your budget.

You cannot leave the walls alone, typically the paints are not something you'd want in your home. I believe the solution is typically spray-foam insulation to prevent off-gassing instead of sandblasting.

Some choose to cover the floor instead of removing it, however this makes the low (8.5') ceiling even lower.

These processes increase the expense and waste involved in conversion.

I think this article goes into it in more detail: http://markasaurus.com/2015/09/01/whats-wrong-with-shipping-...

I'm not an expert, and don't have an opinion on container homes being a good idea or not. But the linked article seems more focused on why containers are not a good idea for multi-family apartments, affordable housing or hotels. It doesn't speak much to why they're not a good idea for single family home and non-stacked residences.

Commercial container homes are just another type of prefab, and they share many of the advantages of that style, including typically being cheaper in both materials and construction costs and having easy assembly (days instead of months). Being made of steel, they are also more durable and rot/mold resistant than the typical wood-framed houses found throughout much of the US. Many prefab container homes are double-height meaning they actually feel less cramped than a framed home with standard ceiling height.

There are pros and cons to all types of building, but I don't think shipping containers are "terrible to use for homes for so many reasons".

There's a sort of fallacy that repetitively grabs ahold of people, when it comes to housing. Common sense tells us that walls and a ceiling held together with structural integrity is much of the way to a house.

It;s not. There are plenty of building techniques and materials that produce "shells" for cheap. Going from those shells to acceptable housing is a lot more expensive than the shell.

I've always wanted to build a home out of shipping containers (ideally a micro-house from one 40ft one), but I fully appreciate that it's more from a romanticised dream of it than from a purely functional perspective.

In much the same way there's no sensible reason for thatched cottages, tipis, wattle and daub, or other different ways of building in 2017, it doesn't have to be for a logical reason.

There are of course good use cases for them, especially in regards to temporary accommodation (such as SnoozeBox). Part of the appeal is also in their iterative nature - you can get to weather proof quickly and they can be made secure for starting internal fit out faster, but concede the benefits rapidly decrease in other ways.

Not everything when it comes to personalised construction of a home will be rational.

> In much the same way there's no sensible reason for thatched cottages, tipis, wattle and daub, or other different ways of building in 2017, it doesn't have to be for a logical reason.

Of course, and if someone wants to build a house out of shipping containers, I don't care. I do care that it is presented as some sort of sustainable, affordable, smart option when wealthy people graft 15 shipping containers together into a McMansion made of steel. If you want to build a home out of shipping containers, or VW vans welded together, or whatever, totally fine by me. But don't do it and then write articles about sustainable design or tell me this is how we should be building homes.

I've watched a lot of shipping container home builds on Youtube (everyone ranging from amateurs, to professional housing contractors doing their first shipping container builds). The people who spend a lot of money seem to be the ones who want to make a shipping container feel like a traditional house. The people who build them affordably respect that they're living in a shipping container, and integrate the container aesthetic in to their home.

I'm wondering where the building regulations are so relaxed that a shipping container can legally be converted to an apartment. Definitely not in the parts of Europe I'm familiar with, but then again the weather conditions in most of Europe probably wouldn't allow for it anyway.

At least in the U.S. when dealing with building inspectors you describe your house as a "prefab steel-frame building." I've seen container houses in the E.U. also, so certaintly they have some kind of regulatory framework for dealing with these too.

From what I can tell these things can pass building codes if constructed correctly, and also when communicating with the government clearly. The bigger problem is them passing zoning / architectural review that many local governments requires to keep a certain aesthetic in the neighborhood.

Wattle and daub is still a 'thing', especially for sustainable building. Wattle is usually hazel sticks, produced from coppices (hazel grows fast!); and daub is simply locally sourced clay.

Ben Law's house (http://ben-law.co.uk/portfolio/the-woodland-house/) is an excellent example of old and new technologies working together.

>> There's no sensible reason for containerized homes

What about trailer parks?

Built from scratch trailer homes make more sense.

I have no real interest in ever trying to live in one, but as an outside observer, I find the question of turning one of these into a cheap habitat to be a fascinating question. Kinda like the whole Tiny House thing ("How are they going to fit a bed, dining room, computer desk and composting toilet in the same 6x5x6 space?"), except the shell of it is cheap enough that when one falls off of a container ship no one cares and now you have the question losing x inches of wall to insulation. It's a total ship-in-a-bottle kind of thing.

So yeah, it's the ultra esoteric functional programming language of housing solutions. Not as useful in the real world as you'd like and it may only have worth as an academic question, but it gets the creative juices flowing.

I'm aware of one and only one shipping container residence that makes sense: the container can still be shipped: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPgjndFqqwY

I think it started as an affordable alternative to stick frame construction in a few instances where the containers were readily available, but I agree it's become something people want to do even when its not cost efficient in their area. On the other hand, why shouldn't building a house be as simple as joining two or three prefabricated, easily transported, container-sized modules together? It just needs the right price point.

[edit] There's a company called Bone Structure that has a modular steel building system that's almost a hybrid between pre-fab and on-site custom. Still expensive though.

Quite a lot of Finnish houses are build from prefabricated elements. One would typically just build a foundation and trucks would bring in the wall structures (not sure about roofs) and raise them. After that it's only about hvac, outer walls and interior.

Also, Finnish construction standards are quite high, not only because of climate :)

>On the other hand, why shouldn't building a house be as simple as joining two or three prefabricated, easily transported, container-sized modules together? It just needs the right price point.

That actually exists already. Here is just one example.[1]

[1]https://www.ritz-craft.com/floor-plans-and-options/floor-pla...

I suspect that modern prefab are far cheaper, greener and more flexible then containers, even when packaged 4 to the size of one container.

There is a certain kind of trash to house narrative that's incredible popular among a usually fairly well of segment of the population that make the whole container housing as the future of sustainability story too good to fact check for most news outlets.

The potential that containers aren't actually trash and might serve much better purposes in the trade or re-smelted then as hard to isolate houses. is one of those things you better not actually mention when writing about container housing.

I think I agree for permanent homes, but given recent disaster events, shipping containers would definitely seem much more interesting as inputs to rapidly build disaster shelters... they're already built to ship, and transport on the road, you can fill them with disaster supplies, so as long as you can offload and place them it would seem like a nice modular unit for disaster logistics (extending it's original intent for cargo).

In fact, there is an important difference between "container homes" and "container-sized" homes.

And nothing really new about the idea either at least not if we look to more dense cities instead of the suburban American experience https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nakagin_Capsule_Tower

As I've pointed out before, if you want a metal box building, there are good components for that. Butler Buildings and their competitors make them in the US, and they're everywhere in rural America. You can get insulated walls, windows, and doors. They're not pretty, but they're weathertight and strong.

One of the companies in that industry, General Steel, now offers house kits.[1] The main problem is that many municipalities don't like houses that look like industrial buildings.

[1] https://gensteel.com/steel-building-kits/houses

How do these houses stay warm in the winter? Shipping containers have 2mm thick walls, and at the very least the orange home pictured in the article looks like it has walls that are just the container wall.

For a metal wall it wouldn't even really matter how thick it was. I think the bare wall pictured in the article is interior though, so it wouldn't factor into heating and cooling so much.

http://www.steelehouse.net/livingstonmanor/

Taking a close look at the living room photo, the orange wall on the right behind the sofa looks like it may just be a facade over what is presumably a thicker, insulated wall like those drywalled exterior walls visible on the other side of the room. Specifically, the way that orange wall overlaps that slightly dropped section of the ceiling makes me think that it's not actually the exterior wall of the container.

It could be the portions of the container wall that were removed for doors and windows.

I link the designers product page for the house in the thread. It's clearly a side wall of a container, it's just an interior wall of the structure.

Looking at the pictures of the inside it looks like the exterior walls are finished with drywall and they come in a few inches which probably allows for some insulation. Expanding out would remove the modular benefits so any insulation would have to be done by reducing the space on the interior.

I recently made a sales call to an individual who built a man cave of sorts out of two containers. He paid a bit extra to purchase containers that were originally refrigerated. There was a fair bit of insulation sandwiched between two pieces of steel. It was quite impressive from an energy and noise standpoint. It was eerily quiet.

Shipping containers can come insulated. They use a 2 lb closed cell foam which is an incredible insulation and water proofing product. R-21 at 3" thickness. You can heat the container with a candle and cool it with an ice cube.

Humans give out a fair bit of heat. I seriously doubt an ice cube will cool any small room that contains a human.

That's what I was thinking too. You have to have decent air exchange with the outside or you're going to suffocate or poison yourself.

If you want it to blend in, usually you'd wrap the outside of the container in insulation, and then clad it. Or, do it on the inside and lose a bit of internal space between the steel and your drywall. Adds expense of course.

One thing I'm not sure of - are these containers new ones so benefit from cheap mass manufacturing - or cheap old ones that are too rusted/bent to be used any more? I'm not sure why containers are more effective than mass produced modular houses.

Containers aren't cheaper than a modular (manufactured) home, they are just trendier. That's why you haven't seen containers replacing manufactured homes in trailer parks.

This is kind of like the tiny house movement. It's not actually cheaper than existing options, but it is disassociated with the "white trash" connotation from living in a mobile home. Rich people will pay extra to not look poor.

I think you mean middle class people will pay extra to not look poor.

Or better, poor people will pay extra to not look poor.

>pay extra to not look poor.

Tragically, it looks as though actually the majority of household expenditure in the USA is to not look poor. Well, if not, we certainly don't know what it is for: it isn't making us any happier.

Status, not wealth, is linked to happiness.

Better put: "Spending money you don't have for things you don't need to impress people you don't like."

Source: content.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1974718,00.html

There is a shipping container surplus in the US due to the large trade imbalance between the the US and the far east.(1)

It's my understanding that it's generally cheaper for the far east to manufacture new containers than pay to ship empty containers back. Like you mention, there are also a number of containers that age out.

1. https://people.hofstra.edu/geotrans/eng/ch5en/appl5en/ch5a3e...

You can buy containers that are new, one trip, or well-worn. Usually the one trip containers are significantly cheaper than new, and well-worn are somewhat cheaper than that. But it varies, and I've occasionally seen new ones be cheaper for odd sizes.

The "used once" category is most popular among container home enthusiasts.

If there is a large market of one trip containers, that must mean there are companies that buy new containers, use them once and then sell them. Who does that and why?

Production cost in one location vs near-new cost in another perhaps? If you can produce one new in X for $1k, and sell a near-new one in Y for $2k, you might as well make cash on the shipping by carrying goods (if it has to travel to Y anyway, it's going to get beaten up in transit whether it's full or not).

My guess would be trade imbalance. If you can't find something to put in it, re-using the container means paying to ship it empty.

Yes, they are from US - far east trade imbalance. Regurgitated from my reply above: https://people.hofstra.edu/geotrans/eng/ch5en/appl5en/ch5a3e...

The minimum price for a container is set by the local scrap price for steel e.g. a 20 foot container weighs 2,300 kg.

The one-trip containers use thinner steel.

I wonder about the longevity of these container homes. Assuming you keep the steel from rusting they should last a good long time. Mobile homes usually start falling apart after 20-30 years.

There was an amazing, upscale home built from multiple shipping containers featured on Grand Designs. Here's an article about the house itself, sadly the episode doesn't seem to be on youtube:

http://www.archdaily.com/593806/grillagh-water-house-patrick...

I think this is the episode: http://www.channel4.com/programmes/grand-designs/on-demand/5...

hehe,

> The overall aesthetics and forms of the house which is sculptural like marries beautiful into completely rural setting and with this very modest size house of just 1236sqft. provides everything that’s required to have a prefect family home.

That episode is on Netflix, in case anyone wants to watch it there. It's Season 12, Episode 4 "County Derry": https://www.netflix.com/title/80160755.

Considering the build cost on an Adobe Dome home is 6k, I always wonder why they are not popular compared to a shipping container.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2582344/Home-sweet-d...

Considering the size of that home, you could probably build a similar home out of almost any material for about the same price. You could probably pay a contractor to make you a traditional wood-frame home of the same size for the same money in less time. Still, that's an interesting and remarkably practical home that guy built for himself.

It cost him that much, we don't know what options he chose, labor, did he do the work himself etc. Then, what is the purpose of the house? Had he added, say $3000 more, he might have made so even his kids could grow there. etc etc.

Seems like it would be better to build pre-fab housing modules with maximum building envelope 469"L x 88"W x 98"H, and use those 40' high-cube containers to ship them. At the destination site, build the foundation, docking racks from structural steel, and a climate-appropriate roof and insulated outer shell.

The pre-fab is built in a factory, shipped to the site, rolled off the container truck with a ramp and a forklift, and rolled into the rack. Each one is essentially 250 sq.ft. of shotgun house.

Alternately, make a pre-fab "core" that consists of all the essential plumbing, HVAC, and wiring for one house, and erect a piecemeal house around it using traditional methods and local materials. You can fit one core for a 2-story house inside a 20' standard container, or two in a 40' container.

The extensive on-site modifications required to turn a standard shipping container into a decent house necessarily preclude isotainer homes from being economical or ecologically sound. The advantages of container-based shipping are best exploited by using the containers to ship factory-built things.

In Bristol, UK we're into shipping containers in a big way. We use them as restaurants and shops[1], we put startups in them[2], and Massive Attack house the homeless in them![3]

I've heard that the startups are boiling hot in the summer and freezing cold in the winter. Hopefully the homes for the homeless are better insulated.

[1] http://wappingwharf.co.uk/retail-at-cargo

[2] https://www.bristoltemplequarter.com/boxworks-the-launch

[3] http://www.bristolpost.co.uk/news/bristol-news/explore-new-s...

Reminds me of Neal Stephenson's book "Snowcrash"

yeah this seems pretty homey to me!

I'm reading this one now; great book!

It's been a decade since I read it, but I thought he lived in a self-storage unit, not a shipping container?

You're correct. Hiro lives in a U-Stor-It by the LAX airport.

Shipping Container...great for a shed with some tweaking.

Why reinvent the wheel? These cute solutions in many cases exceed the cost and never fulfill the stated desire. After spending all that money, it's still a container house, and almost 100% is sunk cost.

Well at least we can all agree that "Coming Home to a Shipping Container" is still preferable to "Coming Home in a Shipping Container" </snark>

An experienced New Zealand architect once suggested to me that one of the best features of modular homes was their deployability by helicopter to remote locations.

it's a fine idea... but man, get that box insulated!

Can they withstand earthquake as per CA's standard, if one is built in CA?

If the roof designer spent more than a nanosecond trying to regain some of the rigidity lost by cutting the roof off then yes. The ceiling is already ~8ft with the stock roof so there's plenty of space for bracing. In stock form you can roll an empty one over and not hurt it much.

If you're in an earthquake, you don't want your house to roll over.... I'm assuming the container is attached to a foundation to prevent movement. If you are worried about an earthquake, bodily injury from glass windows breaking is probably your biggest concern.

Shipping containers are designed for stacking on ships, which can have quite a bit of movement when at sea. If you engineer the house correctly, it's not a problem. I'd be much more concerned about living in a soft story residence than a container.

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