Category Archives: Containers

Today’s post hopefully adds more details to what we did in the past and as the data starts coming in we should be able to answer some of the questions we left off with from last week. Our goal going forward is to collect as much data as possible and then through the scientific method,ContinueContinue reading “Sun Angle and it’s effects”

The questions we’ll try to answer in this episode are broad and vague because sometimes you don’t even know what questions to ask. But that’s okay. Often times you’ll discover a different “answer” and wonder to yourself, “What question was a really asking then?” And that’s half the fun. That and the fact that onceContinueContinue reading “More Sensors…More Data”

After a lot of Googling it appears there’s not much out there on shipping container temperature studies. Not to the level of detail that we need. ContainerHomes.net did a page and video on the subject with spot temperature checks and it’s not a bad comparison. See https://containerhomes.net/articles/how-hot-do-shipping-containers-get/. But it looks like I’m gonna have do this with a lot more of the scientific method in mind and completely from scratch.

There’s an old saying, “Texas has four seasons. Drought, Flooding, Blizzard and Twister.” Which isn’t far from the truth. Texas is best described simply as the extreme ends of bad weather. So before we consider thinking about building a home using a shipping container I thought it might be a good idea to see how they do in the Texas heat. I had already bought the red 40′ high cube container for storage so I had something to run tests on. So shortly after we had our first day of 90+ degree temps with no clouds I decided to brave the heat at midday with an instant digital food thermometer and a pair of oven mits.

It’s not the worst idea I’ve ever heard, building your home from a shipping container, but it’s certainly not the norm. Or is it? Some companies, like ContainerHomes.net (containerhomes.net/) and Honomobo (honomobo.com) in Canada, are using shipping containers as the “bones” for building modular, easily shipable, prefabricated homes. After all, they fit on existing trailers and are only as wide as the semi truck trailer is normally. But more and more, have you noticed companies are striking out in new ways to build tiny homes, modular homes, minimalist layouts, all with the same construction techniques they already know? Reinventing the shipping container’s “bones” instead of starting with a container in the first place.