Choose Your Container Wisely
It should be evident that an essential part of this type of home is the shipping container itself. While images of several shipping containers stacked on top of each other might make a home look like a piece of modern art, these homes are going to be much more expensive because of the welding involved. Unless you understand the art of welding, you will most likely have to contract a welder to connect the different containers used in your home. The more containers that make up the floor plan of your home, the more welding that will be involved, and the higher the overall home cost.
If the philosophy of tiny homes appeals to you, one 40-foot shipping container comes out to be 320 square feet of livable space. The “high cube” containers add an extra foot of height for a total interior height of almost eight feet. This extra foot height can be important, especially when floor and roof insulation marginally reduces your interior space. One high cube, 40-foot shipping container costs between $2,000 and $8,000, depending on its condition. One-trip containers will be slightly more expensive because of their newer condition but might save you money in the long run because they shouldn’t have any dents or other structural damage.
When searching the web for shipping containers, look for suppliers that are relatively nearby your region. The farther away from the source your shipping container is, the higher the shipping costs and carbon footprint attached to getting the container to your construction site. If you opt for a home built from a single container, you could have the basic structure of your home for only a couple of thousand dollars.
Two DIY Foundation Types
Once you have chosen your shipping container, you need to build a foundation for the container to sit on. Most home contractors vastly over-spec the foundations for the homes they build by laying substantial concrete slabs that increase the house's price (and the amount of money they make). Fortunately, a homemade from one, 40-foot high cube container does not necessarily need a large slab foundation.
Concrete piers are the simplest (and most inexpensive) type of foundation for your shipping container home. These concrete cubes are reinforced with rebar and metal mesh wire. For a forty-foot container, you would ideally purchase between six and eight of these concrete piers to place at the corners and evenly spaced along the long side of each side of the container. Make sure to put these concrete piers on solid ground (subsoil, if possible).
If you don’t have solid ground to place these concrete piers, another type of simple DIY foundation combined with the concrete pier technique is the rubble trench. A rubble trench is simply a ditch dug out along the perimeter of your shipping container walls. You will have to dig down below the frost line (perhaps impractical in northern states, cut certainly feasible in parts of the continent with mild winters). The ditch is then filled in with gravel leaving you with a solid foundation to cement your concrete piers in place on top of the trench. This foundation offers you a solid foundation, optimum drainage underneath your home because of the thick trench of gravel, and excellent ventilation since your home will sit up off the ground.
To get your container onto the foundation, you can either hire a crane (the easiest, though more expensive option) or rent a rough-terrain forklift for a couple of hours.
