The fantastic building material, and when used appropriately, they offer several advantages over traditional construction materials and methods.
In this article, we’re going to cover the main benefits of building your home with shipping containers. We’ll also cover how to maximize each of these benefits.
Flexibility (Off-Site Construction)
If you are planning to live in a remote area, building on-site comes with numerous challenges: contractors are difficult to find or expensive to have travel, shipping your materials and
supplies is expensive, and the availability of electrical power and water necessary for construction can be limited.
Instead, you can convert your shipping containers in an urban area and then once the fabrication/modifications are complete, you can transport your finished home to your land.
Eco-Friendliness
Over the past few decades, the number of people becoming more aware of their impact on the environment has been accelerating. People are looking for ways to reduce their carbon footprint and become more eco-conscious.
A fantastic way to do this is to build your home from recycled materials. Each time a standard 40ft container is recycled, around 3,500kg worth of steel is repurposed.
It’s estimated that each year around 500,000 shipping containers are abandoned. In addition, there are several million shipping containers which have already been abandoned. That’s a lot of construction material.
So if a shipping container home build uses five standard shipping containers, around 17,500kg worth of steel will be recycled. Not to mention that by building with containers you aren’t using other building materials which harm the environment.
Fast to Build
Another great advantage of building with shipping containers is that the finished
assembly can be done quite quickly.
This equates to around 6,000 square feet of construction laid down in 2 days, a rate that just isn’t possible with traditional building methods.
Also, the entire home only took 16 weeks to build off-site, which is pretty remarkable considering the size and specifications of the home. One of the reasons why shipping container homes tend to be quicker to build than traditional homes is that the main structure of the home is typically complete when the containers are delivered.