shipping container homes under construction in hollywood florida

The insulation of a shipping container home can make or break the entire build.

With that in mind, this article provides an overview of the 7 most important stages of building a shipping container home. There is no sense in spending most of your budget on external cladding and having to cut back on key aspects such as insulation and rust prevention. Knowing these key stages also helps you prioritize where you should spend your time and budget. They have the capability to make or break your entire build. These ‘key stages’ of construction should be carried out carefully. A new look is planned for the near future, with the entire exterior painted several different shades of gray.While no stage of shipping container home construction should be taken lightly, certain stages are definitely more important than others. They’ve left the exterior of the home as they found it-steel in a grooved configuration, still in its fading industrial colors. And there’s plenty of storage in the kitchen. “We pared way down to a small footprint,” Bill says. The new house does not have much storage, and they want to keep it that way. They got rid of most of their possessions when they moved to Florida. The Birkholzes have not just a new house but a whole new lifestyle. (Windows are standard stock sizes.) Air conditioning is supplied through a mini-split system. A welder was hired to cut through the steel for the window and door openings. The plumbing system is also conventional. The home is fully insulated and the interior walls are drywalled. Bill, along with his father, had done remodeling before, and he was able to design the electrical and plumbing systems himself. Reaction of the neighbors to the strange new industrial-looking structure has been mostly favorable, Kathryn reports.īill and Kathryn did much of the construction work themselves. The arrangement also allows for several step-down terraces that provide outdoor living areas-an important element of small home living. One prong contains the entry and kitchen, the other prong houses the bedroom and bath, and in the middle, where the containers line up to create a 24-foot wide section, there is a living/dining area.Īlthough some container homes are set on a concrete slab, the Birkholzes’ is set on concrete piers, providing a crawl space underneath to access mechanical systems. The couple finally decided on a “tuning fork” shaped configuration. Arranging the containers into the best configuration was like playing with a giant Lego set, Bill says. Each of the three containers was 40 feet long, 8 feet wide, and 9 and a half feet high, for a total of 960 square feet of living space. They purchased the used containers at $1,200 each from a dealer in Bradenton and had them trucked down to the lot they had purchased on a quiet residential street in Englewood.

Shipping container homes under construction in hollywood florida