Shipping containers are designed to be incredibly strong, however, only when used in certain ways. And some people are under the impression you can do this with regular shipping containers, fresh off the truck. If you’ve watched the video above, you can see that it is certainly possible to build an underground bunker out of shipping containers. Some have been inspired by Steve Rees, who built the first underground shipping container home in California, which we previously wrote about here. We’re often contacted by people wanting to bury shipping containers to create an underground home for either possible energy savings or security reasons. Myth 3: Shipping Containers Can Be Buried As-Is Therefore, if a primary reason for your interested in constructing a shipping container home is eco-friendliness, you should plan to build with used containers. However, these benefits aren’t necessarily universal, and they also can’t negate the problems presented by using new containers. There are a number of container construction benefits that apply equally to both new and used containers, and many of them are related to ecological and environmental issues. That benefit really doesn’t make sense when you’re talking about new or one-trip containers. Something that is otherwise left to rust until it becomes unusable, or melted into new steel at a considerable cost of energy and emissions, can instead be used for housing. One of the best reasons to build with used shipping containers is the good that comes from repurposing. But, don’t think that using a new container is doing a huge favor to mother nature. After all, we use new things all the time in our everyday life. To be clear, it isn’t terrible to use a new container. If you repurpose a new container into a home, the global economy still needs high-quality containers for ocean shipping, and another new one has to be created to replace it. Newer containers ( One-trip containers) are necessary and/or desirable for certain situations, but they are not as eco-friendly as used shipping containers. Why not? It starts off with the actual containers themselves. While the exact criteria of what exactly constitutes being ‘green’, ‘sustainable’, or ‘eco-friendly’ is hard to pin down, we do know that some container homes clearly are not tipping the scale in the right direction. One is that it is commonly thought that all shipping container homes are Eco-friendly. Shipping containers are a popular building medium these days for a variety of reasons. Myth 2: All Shipping Container Homes Are Eco-Friendly To sum it up, although we do prefer ccSPF insulation for the majority of container homes, it isn’t always necessary and worth the added expense. Check out our condensation article for more information. Or, if you’re not building in an area where it never gets cold, condensation is less of a concern for you meaning that the vapor retarding benefits are again not as useful. Also, the benefit of the built-in vapor retarder isn’t as useful, because you don’t need to be as concerned with keeping conditioned air away from the container’s corrugated walls. However, to pick the right insulation, you need to understand both your design and your climate.įor instance, if you’re planning to insulate the OUTSIDE of your shipping container, you have plenty of space to work with, and a high R-value per inch isn’t as important. To begin with, there are a multitude of insulation options, all of which have various pros and cons (Refer to our article on techniques to insulate your home for additional ideas). It performs double duty as a vapor retarderĭue to its ability to also serve as a vapor retarder, there is a myth that it is the ONLY type of insulation that should be used with container construction.It has a very high R-value per inch, effectively giving you more insulation with less material (and therefore requiring less interior space).The popularity of ccSPF is primarily due to two reasons: In fact, we recommend closed-cell spray polyurethane foam (ccSPF) for most people and circumstances. Spray foam insulation is definitely the most popular option for shipping container insulation. Myth 1: You Should ALWAYS Use Spray Foam Insulation Join us as we go through all seven myths we’ve identified and explain why they are false. In this article, we’re calling those themes we’ve identified “myths”, as they meet the dictionary definition: a widely held but false belief or idea. We’ve spotted and been asked about a variety of topics that have this information at its root, and we’ve seen several themes emerge. Unfortunately, not all of that information is helpful or even factual, despite what are probably good intentions from the people who write it. If you’ve been interested in shipping container homes for any length of time, you have probably noticed that there is a tremendous amount of information online.
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