Shipping Container Homes: The complete guide to shipping container homes, tiny houses, and container home plans!

By Andrew Marshall

SHIPPING CONTAINER HOMES
 

Inside this book, you will discover exactly what shipping container homes are, what the benefits are, what permits you need to build one, and how to get started.

Utilizing shipping containers in your building design doesn’t only provide you will a unique looki

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ingram Publishing
• Release date: Mar 27, 2020
• ISBN: 9781761033438

Book preview

Introduction

Thank you for taking the time to pick up this book about shipping container homes!

In the following chapters, you will discover exactly what shipping container homes are, what the benefits are, what permits you need to build one, and how to get started.

Utilizing shipping containers in your building design doesn’t only provide you will a unique looking house. They can also reduce cost, building time, and even make your home even more eco-friendly!

This book takes you step by step through the building process, and highlights the different considerations you’ll need to make in the planning process. Also included are some sample floor plans to give you some ideas as to what features your home could include!

Once again, thanks for choosing this book, I hope you find it to be helpful!

Chapter 1: What Is a Shipping Container Home?

It’s the latest trend, the new wave, and why not?  Shipping containers are environmentally-friendly, and it is almost like taking recycling and giving it steroids!  Why?  Because, there are about 18 million empty shipping containers around the globe for the taking.

You can build a shipping container home for about half the price that you can build a similar wooden house that takes about two acres of trees to construct.  Not only that, but they can meet and exceed hurricane codes in Florida and seismic codes in California.  The fire and safety ratings will be sure to impress any insurance company and code officials.

Shipping containers are massive steel containers that can hold up to 30 tons.  These giant steel boxes have other names like ISBUs, inter-modal steel building units, ISO, or International Standards Organization, containers, cargo containers, conex boxes, storage containers, sea containers, and ship containers.

When they are used to build a home or other building, their name sometimes changes to the likes of Green Cubes and ISBU modules.

The idea of using shipping containers for building is not a new one.  It started several decades ago when the military started using them for makeshift dwellings, medical facilities, and offices.

If you look around the world, you will find that people use them for art studios, dormitories, safe rooms, emergency shelters, and playground structures.

The countries most involved in the shipping container movement seem to be the United States, Australia, Switzerland, Norway, Estonia, Poland, Netherlands, South Africa, Spain, Canada, Chile, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom.

In Los Angeles in 2001, a charitable event production company called Pallotta Teamworks used shipping containers to build its 47,000-square-foot center.

Travelodge has even opened an eight-story hotel near London with 100 rooms made totally out of shipping containers.

Shipping container homes do not face a lot of the problems your standard wood homes face, such as mold, leaks, fires, and wood-boring insects.  After all, termites are not interested in steel.

For people who are fans of going green, reusing shipping containers is a low-cost environmental windfall.  Why are there 18 million worldwide available?  The reason is due to it being cheaper to order new ones from Asia than try to send the empty ones back.

Most shipping containers are eight feet wide, 20 to 40 feet long, and eight and a half feet high.  Some containers are up to 56 feet long and up to nine and a half feet high.  And don’t think they will be dreary, drab, and dark.  They can have areas cut out for windows and doors just as if you were using lumber. 

There are so many benefits of using shipping containers for housing.  Here are just a few of them:

• The millions of unused containers all around the globe are recycled.

• Their use is economical, as the empty containers usually sell for $1,000 to $2,000