container details

It occurs to me that someone might be interested in a few more details about containers. For example, they come in two standard sizes, 20ft long and 40ft long, plus what are known as high cube containers whose inside height dimension is about a foot greater than that of a standard, which is about 7ft 10in. You can also obtain what are known as garment containers, that have only had garments shipped in them, hence they are extremely clean and have never had anything that might be considered toxic, such as an oil product, shipped in them.
All of them have a floor made of a very hard 1 & 1/8th in. plywood, screwed to steel joists that are on 12in spacing. The 20's are the most in demand (I think because the military uses them), and they therefore command a price only slightly lower than that of a 40 footer.
There are more factoids stored in my brain if you are interested.

crawl space

Thinking about the plumbing, it fits here to mention the lack of a large crawl space under the house. This will be what our engineer called a conditioned space, which means that it will have no air exchange and be sealed off, thereby allowing the air temperature in the space to slowly arrive at the same ambient temperature as that of the interior of the house. This means that it is more difficult to deal with anything that must pass under the house such as plumbing, and all such issues must be thought out and dealt with early on. The alternative would be a standard stem wall with a standard crawl space. That would use more concrete, but facilitate the resolution of other things such as plumbing.

Some rough plumbing

As we got a couple of dry days again, we decided to try to get the rough drain plumbing under the floor of the container and into the space that will be the bath. We wanted to do it in the dry because it means me (Fred) laying on my back in the dirt partially under the container to connect everything. Not an activity for rain and mud. Also, if we do it now, we are that much farther along when we need to pour the slab and work on the bath.

About the bath: we had originally planned on 2 baths, one up and one down, but the height or level of the septic tank relative to the floor level of the containers ended up making it impossible to get the drains under the far (20ft) container where the bath would go. The long and short is that we decided to move the bath and only have one, on the ground floor, which we like a whole lot better, is much simpler, and allows the possibility of having the hot water heater quite near both the bath and the kitchen.

grounding

We visited an electrical contractor to check on any oddities that we might need to be on the watch for. He said (as I suspected) that the thing will be quite well grounded since it is all welded together and welded to the plates that are set into the concrete piers that serve as a foundation. He did say that we are required to have a ufer ground anyplace that we have a continuous foundation, which would mean the kitchen/living area where there will be a slab. But it is simply a 20 foot piece of #4 re-bar that extends up out of the footing that you can tie into the panel, to connect the whole thing together. Quite simple, really.

lumber and humidity

As you might imagine, if you load a bunch of lumber into a water tight container like we have done, there will be a certain amount of moisture given off, with no place to go. Anticipating that, we bought a dehumidifier and 250 ft of 12-2g wire (which we will later use to wire the house) and connected the "cord" to the power at the well house. Sure enough, the marvelous machine began to suck water out of the air at a great rate. We hope that over time the lumber will dry out nicely.

Rainy Fall

With the weather turning cold and damp we are now going to take advantage of one aspect of the containers: the instant storage they offer. Since prices in the construction industry are as soft now as they have been in a while, we are going to load them with lumber, windows and cabinets so that we have what we need to continue the project next summer.

I guess, however, that we won't try to load anything into the upper container. I don't think our old muscles will quite be up to the task.

One piece of advice. Don't bother to mix 26 sacks of premix by hand if you can help it.

Since the sun is still shining, we got a 10 inch fir log from the neighbor and peeled it so that we could use it for a support column under the corner of the upper 20 footer. We debarked it with a draw knife and a broad axe.

Then we stood the post over a vertical steel plate with 2 holes in it, and secured it with 10 inch bolts.

After a few days wait the self loading log truck arrived to position the containers. It had a 15,000 lb capacity, but that is when the arm is close to the truck. Therefore it was necessary to move the big one one end at a time (it weighs about 8,500 lbs).

The smaller ones (4800 lbs) could be moved in one swing. Here the last one is being positioned up on top of the two others, where it will be welded in place. It will then need a support column underneith the corner, so we put in some temporaries with jacks to hold it in the meanwhile.

Then, things started moving faster. Three days after the pour, with good weather, the first

container arrived, that one being a 40 footer.

The containers were delivered on a special trailer that had an axel that could move forward or back a total of 15ft., as well as a chain winch to offload the containers. It was quite slick.

Then the ready-mix truck arrived and after some attempts, the driver told us the obvious - it was wet and he couldn't back up to the place of the pour.

Fortunately several friends had arrived to attend the festivities, so we all jumped in and did it with wheelbarrows.

Here you can see the end of the 12in. culvert that will bring in air to the vegetable cooler from the shaded gully.

moving along

So, after receiving the permit, the forms for the pads that would hold the containers went in. That's Pam checking the plans.