Recycled Container Homes from a Long Term Perspective
When building a recycled shipping container home you are investing in something that is going to be a part of your life for decades. Choosing how your home is designed and built will impact how comfortable it is to live in, how expensive it is to run, how much maintenance will be required and what condition it will be in 20-30 years from now. Understanding the impact your design choices will have from a long term ownership perspective will help inform your decisions.
Maintenance
The biggest consideration for long term maintenance in a recycled shipping container home is the condition of the steel. If the steel is adequately protected and coated it will be fine for decades. However if the steel isn’t adequately protected it will corrode over time and as the protection begins to wear away, so will the corrosion rate.
Your maintenance plan should include regular checks of the steel in areas that are easy to get to such as underneath the containers (areas with ground moisture build up), at the junction between the container and foundation (where water management is key) and where the exterior coating has been damaged.
If any coating damage is found then it can be repaired which will prevent the increased corrosion caused by the coating failure. This is much cheaper to fix a small amount of coating damage.
Checking your insulation system regularly will ensure it is still performing as it should. The most likely places to find failure in the insulation system would be where there is penetration or junctions. If the spray foam has delaminated in a small area then the steel will be exposed to internal humidity. If the window/door flashings have failed water will enter and cause build up behind the insulation.
Flexibility
One of the key features of recycled shipping container homes is their flexibility. The steel containers are strong and durable, and whilst modifications are made during the conversion of the containers into a home, these are mostly easily reversed. More containers can be added to extend the floor space, partitions can be added or removed to create different rooms and new openings can be created.
This makes the container home a good option if you know your space requirements might change. For example, a young couple may decide to build a home using 2 containers but when they have children may wish to add a third container. A family with growing children may wish to add partitions to one of the container modules to create a rental unit. As the steel provides a good base, future modifications can be made much easier than a light frame build.
To ensure your recycled container home is flexible over time, it’s important that your original build had good documentation. If you know how your structure is set up, where the load bearing parts are, what capacity your foundations have and what modifications can be made to the existing structure without extra engineering, then you can design your modifications efficiently. If you don’t have this information then you’ll have to investigate the existing structure to see how much you can modify.
Value when Selling
The value of your recycled shipping container home will depend on how well it was designed and built, as well as how well documented it is.
If your container home has full engineering documentation then it will be clear to the buyer. The buyers engineer can look through the documents to confirm that the structure was engineered correctly. The buyers lender can also confirm that it is permitted and to code. You can also show them that inspections and permits were carried out.
If your container home doesn’t have this documentation then the buyer won’t be able to confirm that the structure was adequately designed by their engineer. The buyer’s lender may also be reluctant to lend for a non-conventional structure as they won’t have confirmation that it was adequately engineered. Selling is harder and the value could be impacted.
Investing in proper engineering and full documentation will help to increase the future marketability of your property.
Environmental Benefits
If your home is engineered so that it is comfortable to live in without using too much energy, durable to last 50+ years without major structural modifications and was engineered carefully to reduce waste and materials used, then the recycled aspect truly means something.
The recycled steel containers have low embodied carbon as they aren’t being remanufactured and emitting carbon. Instead the carbon that was emitted at the point of manufacture and transportation is being used. The materials added to convert the containers are kept to a minimum due to the efficiency of the container. The operational carbon of the container home will be lower due to the insulation and efficient mechanical services.
These are real and achievable benefits. To achieve this you need to make sure that the thermal performance of your home is taken into consideration. This includes having good insulation to prevent thermal bridging, mechanical services sized to suit the insulated loads and energy compliance documents that reflect the actual performance. The structural engineering should also be good so that the build is durable and long lasting.
A recycled container home that has achieved this is truly one of the more sustainable options for residential builds. This relies on good engineering to make sure the sustainable aspect is a reality.
