Some droll comments from an expert on shipping containers may dissuade you from building a supposedly eco-friendly shipping container house. First off, the shipping container needs to be sandblasted to get rid of whatever yuck it maybe have been hauling. Then you’ll need to insulate it well, else you’ll bake in the summer and freeze in the winter. Insulation should go on the outside, since space is at a minimum on the inside.
What to do with abandoned shipping containers? Make houses out of them? The greenies love this8. They call it “adaptive reuse”. I am sure it gets you a LEED point and it makes the polar bears happy. Never mind that the economics of doing this are questionable unless the shipping container is “free” and you don’t have to move it very far. Make note of this.
A week does not go by without our office getting a call asking if we have a design to make energy efficient homes out of shipping containers. Our first comment is: “Do you really want to do this? What is wrong with a nice wood home?”
However, shipping containers can certainly be used to create stunning spaces, like Container Park in Las Vegas, assuming you have the money, time, and design and buildings skills. It’s a small mall built from shipping containers.
