Tips You Need To Know Before Building A Shipping Container Home

One of the more niche trends in sustainable design of the past few years has been the re-use of shipping containers in order to create the structure of a building. Due to their convenient size, shipping containers are well-suited for use in houses and their appeal lies in their apparent simplicity: you get a room delivered in one piece, and you can stack them together to make multiple rooms or join them up to make larger rooms.

But of course, things are never so simple, and using shipping containers to make a house is still fraught with challenges – particularly as the idea is still relatively new, so there are few people with the expertise required to build one without a hitch.

That’s why the folks over at Container Home Plans reached out to 23 experts from around the world – designers and owners who have overcome the challenges to build their own container houses – to ask them what they wish they’d known before taking on this challenge. Here are 11 tips they put together when looking to buy a shipping container.

1. Make Sure You See The Containers You’re Buying

2. Or, Spend A Little Extra On A One-Trip Container

“I wish I had known that it doesn’t cost that much more for a One-Trip container and they are like brand new.”
– Larry Wade, seacontainercabin

3. Read Up On Your Local Rules

“ Every country has its own set of rules and standards. This means a container hour is US does not look like a container house in Denmark. That is something most people do not think about. The container is a generic product, but climate, fire regulations etc are not…”
– Mads Møller from Aarcgency, designer of the WFH House

See the Remaining 8 tips and more images from archdaily.com HERE