Rashad Will DDS
Some people balk at the idea of living in a shipping container home, but if designed correctly and smartly, you can end up with a beautiful, unique home you’ll be proud to inhabit. With a little bit of creativity, paneling, flooring, and siding, from the street you’d never be able to tell that a container home is made from large steel modular boxes.
Another very powerful incentive for creating your home from shipping containers is strength.
Container homes are also very energy efficient in almost any environment with some creative and inexpensive design.
Shipping containers are the perfect choice for Off Grid living and building! Shipping containers are the PERFECT base to start building your off grid home or cabin.
With container homes, you can easily upgrade an existing home by simply adding another 40′ container, which adds an instant 320′ square feet onto your total living space. When you turn a used shipping container into a home, you’re helping contribute to the betterment of the world. The design is so simple, it uses just two ISO shipping containers spaced 16 feet apart to form a grand entrance and living room/dining room space which is 640 square feet, with 12-foot vaulted ceilings. It’s not shown, but you could take and cut out half of the inside wall of one of the containers and form a very big kitchen, which opens into the dining room/living room common area, basically giving the whole place a very big “feel” inside.
The addition of the large glass wall in the back is simply to give it a more open feel. The rear of the house doesn’t have to be a glass wall, but I like it because it just looks nice, and will give the interior space a large feel opening onto the back patio.
1280 square feet is a good size to start out, and even if you were to splurge a little with more expensive materials you could double the cost to $20k and still have one very affordable, and very nice, home. Spread the containers apart just 8 more feet and you increase the square footage to 1600 sqft.
Throw in another $5000 for a small solar panel system and you’re ready to go. (NOTE: The price only includes the shipping containers, building materials, basic electrical and plumbing.
It does not include land, installation, permitting, septic system, or foundation.) 1280 Sqft Ranch Style Container Home Design
Notice the solar panel array on the southern side of the home. The bottom back glass wall faces west to catch the afternoon and evening sun, and the top deck is for viewing those beautiful desert sunsets over the mountaintops. Adding more windows to the south-facing side of the home will also capture more of the sun’s energy.
This is a more complex design than my first $10k 1280 Sqft Ranch Style Container Home using two shipping containers, however the cost of extra materials to complete the railing, upper decks, and extra structural materials needed to support the added weight should still have this shipping container home coming in under $40k including the solar panels. Since the building parts/materials cost are kept to a minimum, the idea, of course, is to maximize the emphasis on solar and wind power systems for off the grid living. Making the roof flat allows the space to be used for the power system array, OR it can be the base for a third story later, which would cost no more than about $10k (2 containers + flooring/roofing materials) to add to the home, thereby increasing the square footage by 1280 square feet from 2560 to 3840 sq ft.
Structural integrity is preserved and actually strengthened by adding another level. (STRAWBALE/MUD PLASTER INSULATION LAYER): Here’s a very basic draft of the concept I had. This means you can probably place these in the desert anywhere in the world and still stay cool in 100-120 degree heat.
Pretty cheap considering that’s a total of 2880 square feet of floor space. If you shop around you can buy an acre or more of land for about $30k-$40k here in southern California. Not bad for a 3 story 3000 square foot house… This is cutting it close, and we can fine tune these numbers, but this whole system is very doable for under $100k.
All have 4 large helix wind turbines and a solar panel array. 4 Stories, consists of 18 40′ shipping containers forming a ring around a central atrium like vertical space 32 feet tall by 40×40 (1600 sqft) wide in the center.
The four stories total a square footage of 5120 sqft not counting the 4 40′ towers at each corner of the castle.
There is a 10 foot round dome skylight on the roof which lets in plenty of sunlight to grow many species of plants and even trees INSIDE the castle. Total cost to build this 4 story container castle? – 20,000 Watt Quad Vertical Helix Mag-Lev Wind Turbine System = $50,000
So I tried to keep costs below $25k for this next 2 story 2560 square foot Container Home. The primary idea of course being affordability and simplicity, plus the added benefit of a good sized 3 bedroom home design.
Front and rear walls can be built for less than $1000 worth of lumber and materials. Flooring/Wall covering will be scavenged remnant/recycled materials, or purchased at manufacturer cost.
PRICE: Approximately $25,000-$35,000 (not including water well, heat/ac, or the solar/wind power systems). This 2720 square foot workshop could be built for about $25,000 including foundation, roof, and electrical.
Here is a simple yet practical design I made that accents the simplicity of the shipping container, yet is paneled and sided such that it’s indistinguishable from a traditional contemporary home design. The pricing presented here are for BARE BONES materials, does not include freight, moving, crane rental, or any amenities.
