40 ft shipping containers as UG house shell????

[Jackalope Hunter]

So can it be done? understand drainage will be big deal.. use EDPM liner over roof & create a french drain all around structure, epoxy paint outsides the bury under yards of dirt into my hillside. with a nice south facing berm against 1 40 ft side could create windows in this end for daylight @ put a sun patio stepping off the backside.... so what do we think. I believe that this would be a great lowcost shell that can be added to with a welder & backhoe.

[Jackalope Hunter]

whooops should have used the dang search.....

sorry but hey anymore ideas.... I must be underground with a low cost abode by Aug.

Richard

[Jens]

I have heard that containers don't have much strength in the side walls, that their strength lies in the corners, where they take all of the forces of being stacked.  I don't know for sure, just heard or read that somewhere.  There is a whole forum for shipping container houses, can't remember the name though.

[John_C]

I don't think that would work well at all.  They are nowhere near strong enough, especially to support the roof loads of an underground house.

[Windpower]

I am thinking of buying one of these to put contruction materials in to be safe and dry

I anticipate that there will be some tremendous sales going on this year and it would be a nice way to keep things on hand and safe from theft

I think they would be able to handle a very large load of lumber, windows, cement, plumbing and other items

Just curious about costs etc

[cordwood]

 NOT STRONG ENOUGH?!?!?! When I used to haul them around Long Beach Ive seen them dropped from a top handler that only uses the top outside corners from about 20' to the ground and just hook'em back up and keep going. I've seen them moved with cable slings to the top corners with over 60,000 lbs of nickle ingots in them.
A friend of mine in Cali. half buried one and drives his 20,000 lb dump truck on top of it to change his oil and work under it, A 5' wide opening in the top at one end and the rest is kind of a storage room for oil & tools works pretty slick.
The only problems I could see is they sweat bad and the rust problem.

[MountainDon]

I believe they are very strong to handle the job the were designed to do. The weight is transferred down through the stack through the corners.  I do also wonder if the sides would be capable of withstanding the earth loads that would be pushing against them. Ditto the roof loads from being buried. I have no doubt the floors are strong as that is also part of the design; they have to carry heavy loads. I could be wrong on that. They do make excellent above ground storage.

[firefox]

I have seen different types of these containers.  They look more or less the same until you get up close. Some of them have steel sides and some have
aluminum sides. Sun Microsystems just installed an impressive although somewhat short mobile data center. from the looks of it I would think it would take a mortar hit and still be working. The corner gussets were twice the
thickness of any I have ever seen.(I worked in the merchant marines for 10 years as a crane maintenance electrician serviceing the shipboard cranes that handle these containers, so I've seen a few.) The steel sides on this looked like roof decking, but thick enough to take small arms amo.

So as one of my mentors says. It depends...But if you could get one of these, maybe slightly damaged or something you wouldn't have any problem burying it. I'd think twice about using the regular ones. Maybe if you welded a frame on top to distribute the load to the corners.
Bruce

[Pox Eclipse]

How about burying preformed 12' concrete storm drain pipe?  It comes in many sizes, with joint sections, just hook a bunch of them together, backfill over them, and you have a hobbit-home, ready for finishing.  They are made to be buried, are water-tight, and can bear any reasonably imagined load.

This guy has done some thinking along this line.

[MountainDon]

Hey P-E, that's an idea. Wonder what those things cost?

[glenn kangiser]

John related a story of the containers caving in on some Maryjane growers.  They are not designed to take the side loads and rust could make it worse.  Search here on CP for the old discussion.