Quote:
Originally Posted by Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)
It's a interesting looking house, but what does using shipping containers add to it? (I would also think the metal would be terrible insulation in the summer, but maybe they've sandwiched a bunch of insulation between two sheets of it).
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They use a paint developed by NASA for insulation. I think there are three or four coats on the outside, and the cost is about the same as it would be for cladding the inside and shoving insulation between the cladding and the steel wall. This particular house is really, really well sealed, and has a
high efficiency AC system that lowers relative humidity. The owners keep the thermosdat at around 78 in the summer and are more than comfortable.
The shipping containers add a few things. First, they're recycled, unlike traditional framing materials. Because of the trade deficit, there are a lot of empty shipping containers in the US, and they're not really expensive (between 1500 and 2500 depending on size and quality). And because a good hunk of the structure is already put togeher, jobsite waste is reduced considerably. There wasn't a dumpster on the jobsite or at the warehouse, and the whole project threw away ten contractor bags worth of waste.
Second, they're not going anywhere. Those suckers are designed to be stacked nine high on shipping vessels and get knocked around quite a bit. In places where structural integrity is an issue, they're awesome.
They're also easier to pre-fab off site, so the construction time is reduced quite a bit. The gallery they built took 53 days from conception to completion. This house took about four months, mainly because no one had ever done stuff like this (at least in our area) before and there was a bit of a learning curve on a lot of the fit and finish details.
Lastly, they're easy to dismantle and recycle once the useful life of the house is done. The gallery (which I can't find good pictures of) is on leased land, and whenever the landlord decides that he wants to build something else there, the gallery owner can dismantle the building and move it somewhere else with about 5% waste.
