Shipping Container Houses the Ugly Truth NEW VERSION

[Music] from our meeting with the land use office we learned what we can and can't build here now we have to consider what we want to build we have the luxury of looking to the Past for inspiration and we can look at the contemporary vernacular also as we learn from the land use office we can't build a tiny house because they're not on a fixed foundation and they're too small brand earth walls they are beautiful by mixing dirt with cement in forms while being compacted into random layers the walls achieve great thermal mass the issue to consider is as I will be building in the dead of winter the freezing temperatures would undermine the integrity of the slow-drying walls did somebody say earth ship so what is an earth ship an earth ship is a type of off-grid house that originated by necessity in the high desert outside of Taos New Mexico they work by using walls of thermal mass of recycled tires bottles and cans they can be labor-intensive even with free labor compacting dirt into the tires they tend to cost the same per square foot as most typical houses and can take two years to collect and put together by adding three thousand feet in elevation to a colder climate it freezes up the water harvesting system and wouldn't be appropriate for this location a straw bale house while I have only worked on one straw bale house I remember the appropriate materials were hard to resource the site was outside Roswell New Mexico where it is very hot and very dry and most likely very appropriate but it did seem very difficult to protect it from inclement weather I only know of one straw bale house in the area a great looking house but it has never been finished so how it would perform is still unknown as this location has much higher humidity levels my main concern would be condensation mold and rot now when I say building a cabin I know you can't help but think log cabin they're awesome they're beautiful they're solid they're traditional and by tradition we will keep building them as they are aesthetically pleasing now the log cabin council reports that soft woods have an insulation r-value of 1.47 per inch that means in order to achieve the r-value I'm looking for the walls would have to be 30 inches thick for me to fulfill the promise to my wife to build a very livable and comfortable house that means it has to be a warm house to conform with energy codes and an airtight house a log cabin would be cost-prohibitive well why don't you just build the same thing that everyone else has and fit in with the neighborhood that quintessential house style certainly makes a statement and we have the opportunity to make a different statement I like to have a sense of humor about that I like a house that makes me smile when I Drive up and for my guests I know it when you get their house truly as I get older I would like to avoid that awkward circumstance of going in the wrong house [Music] now locally there are many existing homes that are inspiring to my modern aesthetic there's even a master plan development almost entirely of homes that share my interest let's explore another alternative option Barnum in iums Barnum in iums are a metal building turned into living quarters the idea took off in Texas and I explored this in depth 15 years ago it's a lure is a low cost structure to skirt tax laws Texas is without state income tax so most of its funding is from high property taxes and land it has a lot of a barn or shop is taxed at a much lower rate so people started building a house inside the taxman cut onto this and started looking for plumbing vent pipes and then knew it was being used as a residence and thus taxed the full rate Bardhaman eum's and shipping containers share a lot of the same issues and attributes except for the confinement issue first you build a metal structure then you build a house inside by building it twice you don't save any money but you're still trapped in a steel can seems best to just do it right the first time now let's get to the ugly truth about building houses out of shipping containers let me first say that I once did design shipping containers for emergency relief temporary housing in Haiti for a magazine that twelves on modern design with the abundance of containers from the relief effort it made for a perfect solution to multi residential housing but conversely it required no modification to the shipping containers the reductive method to open up a space to make it livable seems like such a waste of material that you started off with at some point it becomes a diminishing return as you replace what you bought in the first place well don't get me wrong I love shipping containers we use several of them for storage on almost every jobsite matter of fact I even bought one myself national code states a minimum of 100 square feet per bedroom that would be a seven by fourteen foot roam plus a closet after you build out the walls and add insulation when you consider that space with a full sized bed wouldn't comply with fire code egress standards what would you do EA compliance oh I can hear you saying just cut it open and put them together now I can weld and I have a plasma cutter sawzall and grinders but once you start cutting you destroyed the asset of using a shipping container by diminishing its integrity I could go off on a tangent about integrity lawyers cops judges that lie so living in a box you're gonna have to have windows so choose where you want the windows and get the cutting if you take it away you have to replace it if you cut open a container you have to now reinforce the structure most likely with steel and Steel's heavy and expensive I vowed to make this a very comfortable livable house for my wife frankly a seven and a half foot ceiling is not what we call very livable shipping containers are made of metal metal beam highly thermally conductive to heat and cold for a space that is only eight feet wide I would want the highest r-value of insulation that I could get just eight feet wide to live they gave you more room than that in this old jail cell closed cell foam is the highest r-value insulation that you can get also the most expensive and considering the remote location the logistics for on-site application would be very expensive building a home from shipping containers that first sounds very responsible to the environment even romantic if you will when I witness examples of spending more on reinforcement steel than what my entire house should cost to build it doesn't sound so responsible or romantic even with an unlimited budget it's not responsible when you consider all the replacement and waste and extra man-hours that go into building a container house it seems to be self-defeating like driving a Prius to reduce air pollution but you smoke cigarettes as you drive down the road yeah watch for it I am reminded of the Stone Soup story you heard as a kid where they add everything else and take out what they started with for the final product to me that sounds like a shipping container house now let's shut the door on shipping containers as a viable option for a livable comfortable living environment [Music] now the building [Music] you thanks for watching the video now if I have opened up Pandora's box contrary to your opinion and experience I want you to express it in the comments down below I know everyone says to subscribe and as I learn more of how YouTube works I find that they don't recognize your channel until you have 1,000 subscribers so help others like yourself and subscribe and there won't be any spam or anything like that sent to you you can be preaching the Word of God but if you too doesn't promote it then your video will never see the light of day I make these videos to help other people and help them in their lives if you've ever been helped by googling for it like I have then help the next in line and pay it forward thanks see you next week thanks for watching the video go ahead and put your comments and questions down below and go ahead and click on this subscribe like and share and that little bell it'll keep you up to date with the series and the lake's videos go build it [Applause] just eight feet wide in a shipping container that's not living I got more space than that in this jail cell does that make any sense [Music]

Channel: Gobuilditbetter

Views: 839,930

Rating: 3.5531857 out of 5

Keywords: barnhouse, blue heeler, cabin, cabinporn, design builder, go build it better, gobuilditbetter, homesteader, how to build a house, integrity, modern cabin, off grid, owner build, self build, self reliance, shipping container house, the ugly truth, tiny house, wonderful wild, wood work, barn house, honest, truth, shipping containers, DIY, home stead, Colorado, luxury, contained, Modern house, Modern architecture, Modern home, Mountain modern, modern container, life uncontained, farm, how

Id: cYQYhK-bFEM

Length: 12min 14sec (734 seconds)

Published: Sat May 04 2019