Container Home COST! How Much I've Spent (so far)

saving money avoiding a mortgage i think it's a lot it's a big probably a good reason why a lot of people are interested in shipping container homes it certainly is a motivation for me but as i stand here months into this container home build have i really saved that much money compared to a traditional build well today i'm going to be breaking down all of my expenses so far and how much i expect to spend by the time this is all done building my own shipping container home join me on my journey from construction to completion of my mortgage-free home on a homestead [Music] the fact is you can't build a house on top of thin air so let's start with the land first i paid about ten thousand dollars for this one and a quarter acre property it's not in a flood zone there are paved roads and power lines and overall i'm very happy with the property and the area too and there were a few other miscellaneous costs i have them listed on here on screen and the total spent for land was eleven thousand six hundred dollars and seventy six cents if you can't build a house without land then you certainly can't build a house without a design to save money i did as much of the designing process myself as i could things like the number of containers that the house would be made of the layout of the rooms etc i also created a fully fleshed out 3d model of the container home which thanks to sketchup's ability to convert 3d models into a traditional top-down overhead architectural view i was able to generate my own architectural drawings with the click of a button that obviously saved me money on hiring an architect to draw them out but aside from that i hired two engineers to handle the rest of the designing process a structural engineer to handle the structural side and an mep engineer to handle the mechanical electrical and plumbing side all these were required by the county in order to get the building permit the structural plans cost me one thousand one hundred and thirty one dollars and sixty cents they include key details like the foundation column specs ceiling and rafter system door and window reinforcement and on and on these structural plants and drawings are actually available for you to download right now just click the link in the description below to learn more additionally the 3d model i made is also available to download just check out those links below aside from the structural plans the mep plans cost me 1 208 there were some other miscellaneous costs i haven't listed on here on screen and the total spent on the design of the home was 2 844.76 well if you need land to build the home on and you need a design to base the build on then you most certainly need permission from the government to build at all there were a few permits that i had to acquire and pay for a building permit a covert permit and a septic system permit and of course there again were some related miscellaneous costs and the total spent on permits was 1455.24 cents three 40 foot long high cube shipping containers the literal building blocks of my home i paid in total for all three four thousand eight hundred dollars yes they are used with some small dings and dents and rusts but overall they're solid i paid an additional 1953 dollars for a delivery truck to bring them here from 100 miles away which also included a loader to drag them onto my land and the total spent on all three containers plus shipping was six thousand seven hundred and fifty three dollars this is the section i like to call land upgrades critical builds that are just as important to the overall functioning of this home but aren't the actual container home itself we'll start with the culvert this is basically a giant pile of rock compacted to form a bridge over this big trench here without this culvert bridge thing i wouldn't even be able to drive my car onto my land i did a ton of research to see if by sourcing the materials myself and installing the culvert myself that i would actually be able to save money compared to hiring a professional company and it turns out i was barely saving anything for the amount of work it would have required so i ended up paying a local company to install this culvert for 1221 next is the electrical meter pedestal obviously to get electrical power from the local power company's power lines onto my land i built this myself and it cost me 796 dollars and 11 cents and of course next though we have the well here i actually researched knowing me i actually did research to see if there was a way to drill your own well and i heard you control your own shallow well but even then it's not it's not enough for a modern home's needs so i ended up hiring a professional well company come out and drill this 80 foot deep well so i forked out three thousand eight hundred dollars for a well drilling company then install a submersible well pump i'll include in the cost of the well a few miscellaneous items listed on screen next up is the well pump house housing various machines integral to the proper function of a well this includes the pressure tank filters etc the pump house cost me 841.33 and the total spent on land upgrades was and seventy six 6976 and eight cents [Music] as of the making of this video the foundation for my shipping container home is complete this was a massive undertaking and took about 20 work days to complete the list of expenses for this project is pretty big so i'll just run through a few of the obvious ones before revealing the grand total obviously things like the batter boards strings laser level concrete which was the most expensive part steel plates anchor bolts sono tubes rebar and on and on and on and the total spent on the foundation was five thousand dollars [Music] you're obviously not going to be able to build a shipping container home without tools any home for that matter and so obviously i had to put some investments into tools things like miter saws nail guns uh most recently a welder big welding machine and the total spent on tools was 772 dollars so let's go ahead and add up all the numbers so we've got land home design permits shipping containers plus the delivery for the containers land upgrades foundation tools and miscellaneous comes to a grand total so far that i've spent of thirty five thousand four hundred dollars now i know what some people might be thinking you know thirty five thousand dollars and you haven't even got the containers on the foundation yet that's insane that's so expensive and i personally will be happy if this whole thing land included about 10k on the land included cost me 50 to 60 000 i'll be happy with that but you have to keep in mind that so much has actually already been done you have to remember that when i bought all three containers that is the building block of the home the building blocks of the home are already built they're already made yeah we got to get the crane to come in and drop them in but once they're here the outer shell all six sides of the home is already paid for and built you just have to go in and fill it in i've got the whole foundation done which is generally a very expensive part of any home build container home more traditional home whatever that's been taken care of i think when you consider land culvert well the literal building blocks of the home the three shipping containers so in a way you could say the house is kind of already built at least the outer structure i mean if you if you told someone hey you know i got the outer structure of my home already built you'd be like oh sweet you know just you know dry wall it up stud it up run some wire through and yeah it's still a lot of work and a lot of money that's left but hey you got the outer shell of your home that's all right you've made some progress and and really that's that's what that's where i'm at right now once crane day comes and hopefully a week or two these things these suckers put on here and that's it they're in their final place they're not moving so i really feel like uh have i saved compared to others well you know you want to wait to the end of the build you know and i will do an update video when this thing is done um and i will update everybody on the true final cost but yeah aside from that i think i've made a lot of good progress and i'm definitely within the spending that i feel comfortable in and i definitely do believe personally i'm obviously going to be saving a ton compared to a traditional approach traditional route so again i want to say thank you to everybody for watching uh think outside the container new episode is coming soon we are documenting the process of building the foundation the foundation episodes are finally coming out i'm editing those as we speak so stay tuned for those be sure to subscribe hit the bell notification icon down below and click all so you're notified when the next video the building of the foundation for this diy shipping container home comes out thank you guys for watching you

Channel: Think Outside The Container

Views: 111,114

Rating: 4.9046988 out of 5

Keywords: shipping container home, container home, container home DIY, container home cost, how much do container homes cost, are container homes cheap, expenses, diy shipping container home, container home cost comparison, tiny house price, tiny house cost, shipping container home price breakdown, container home homestead, how to build shipping container home, total cost container home, 40ft container home cost

Id: fvL60fNohGw

Length: 10min 36sec (636 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 01 2020