Building a Shipping Container Home | EP02 Moving, Cutting, and Framing a Container House 

This has pretty much cured me of ever wanting a Shipping Container House ! Thank you.

From the start, Ryan was very helpful and is continuing to be helpful about his ru-vid.comUgkxGqOCINHE0Z0E5gxzSdNi9NWGugRY5Hm2 Plans . Also, they have answered all the questions I have asked & I got outstanding support from his My Shed Plans full package.

One of the most detailed DIY shipping container house videos on YT. Worth the subscription.

I bought a container last week for $2300 from Wuwi Shipping Container to build a small house out of it and this video is very much helpful. Thank you!

Cutting costs and saving time is not everyone's objective. From what I understand, Ben is more interested in experimenting with different materials and methods, in learning from those experiences and sharing it with others. I believe that was the original goal of the channel. Plus it's sponsored by a major company, so it's a win-win for everyone. Thanks for the detailed videos Ben, always look forward to your uploads.

Thank you for the detailed video, proving that container boxes are simply a trend. I do tilt-up walls with all parts in place on the ground, and stand them up with an electric winch...*by myself*. By the time you pay for all that labor, and double-building, you could have built twice the square footage using traditional tilt-up stick framed panels. If you really want that metal look, use metal siding, which you can cut more easily and get all the trim parts for. That stuff comes in snap-clip or roll-crimp standing seam.

Oh my word! Is this the complicated complex version of building a container house? Your detailed documentation is tops.

F. I. N. A. L. L. Y. someone ACTUALLY takes a few minutes to go into DETAIL on how they framed the windows and doors!! I have been looking for this for a few days now! Thank you so extremely very much! ❤

Now I understand why containers don't work from an engineering standpoint. I really enjoy the site and your excellent and thorough explanation!

After 15 seconds, I am amazed!!! This is one of the few videos on RU-vid with DECENT VOICE!!!! BRAVO!!!! I'm voting thumbs up now, without even watching more.

A little hint to save a lot of time cutting with the 4 1/2 inch grinder. Use a skillsaw with a metal cutting blade, it is MUCH faster and will cut a lot deeper and cleaner so you can make one clean cut all the way across from the inside or outside on the walls. They use a 7.25" blade or a 10.25" blade on some if you need a deeper cut! I started using a 7.25 to build dune buggies and boat trailers over 50 years ago and it worked great and was a great time saver tool. Thanks for sharing these videos I really appreciate them. Great work!

Thanks Modern Home Project folks! This is hugely informative! My partner and I (with helf from some very kind souls) are starting our home build right now. Your corner steel window frames looks fantastic, will probably borrow that idea! Keep it up, so inspiring

Love that you’ve documented this - cannot imagine the hell involved in the edit but thanks for this series :)

This has to be one of the best tutorials I have seen on how to efficiently and effectively drain a bank account. Bravo! Kudos, mate! Ya nailed it! _(No pun intended)_

The video transitions so well it's easy to overlook the sheer amount of effort you have put in to document the build. Awesome video.

This is great, and for those that are unaware, the timber frame stops heat transfer in to out and out to in. Great project!

Appreciate the detail and effort put into this video. Understand containers may not be the ideal home project for all, but, for those of us thinking about it videos like this are really helpful.

i dont know why is this in my recommended videos but i like it, great video cant wait for part 3

This is how I would build mine. I have seen so many shopping containers on RU-vid and I’m like “what are you thinking!” Finally I found someone who would build like myself. Love your videos.

BEST DESCRIPTIVE VIDEO ON CONSTRUCTING CONTAINER HOMES. CLEAN CONSISE AND ASSUMING THAT US DUMMIES NEED EVERY DETAIL ALONG THE WAY.

One of the most transparent and informative videos on shipping container homes.

I envy you. My girlfriend and I purchased land in 2016. Designed the house in 2017. Probably won't build for a few years cause of the obstacles ahead. Fortunately we didn't do ours in California so they aren't nearly as strict here. Unfortunately we bought land without utilities so that is gonna have to come first and it isn't cheap. Thanks for posting videos so I know what to try out and what to look for. Very well made.

Wonderful stuff, I love the feeling of building something yourself.

great job. it was unreal to view the first vid. you guys are a great inspiration.a real dream come true.god bless.

This is hilarious. Essentially what you ended up with is a method to build a house outside inwards. Built it backwards. Cladding first, then framing. All for the container aesthetic. I can't deny they are cute, and that limitations beget great designs but this is all driven by this romantic ideal of apparent "cheap efficiency". Which this clearly is not and is what anyone who actually builds with containers finds out real fast. Still, I love this project. Money be damned it's cool.

Building a shipping container house. First step-move out of California.

This would be one of the best how build a container I have ever seen. Really appreciate your guidance from down under

Consider foundation anchors that can later be mounted to with adjustable welded or bolted metal supports. That was good to work with and promote other people’s crafts. Shipping container makers may even consider offering designs for home builders. A cool option is a horizontal sub-terrain container that is connected to the surface with a vertical container spiral staircase. Multi-levels connecting with vertical containers is cool. Thanks for sharing your craft.

Thank you so much for aharing this, i learn a lot from your videos!

This is without a doubt the best container building info out there ,Awesome clear and concise .Thank you so much

This is the most useful video I have seen. I have been thinking of building a house out of shipping containers, but that looks like an enormous pain in the AZ! You have convinced me to use traditional materials like bricks and wood. Very interesting video though, thanks for sharing!

Wow, great crew and insight on how it’s done. Thanks for sharing

building a house inside a shipping container .thats the best title for this

Wit each minute of this video I am more and more convinced that traditional framed building would have been better :D

The view is heavenly from all angles but seeing it after a cut out is just dreamy.

This video and narration is fantastic and thorough! Thanks!

Thank you for talking me out of ever building an ocean container home.

i LOVE LOVE LOVE this video. i'm saving up to get a 40 hi cube so i can have a studio and workspace and watching this gets me hyped about mine.

These guys are doing a far more professional job than most builders in Vancouver.

Mate, this is a great RU-vid video! Super interesting, and you are not scared to let us know when you messed up! Well done, very clear and precise!

Congratulations & thank you for posting, this was an awesome project, challenging, and educational. I learned a lot from your posting and your commentators, a lot of negatives comments but also a lot of educational tips. 👍😎👍

wow, that's a lot of useful, in-depth information. good work.

This fortified me wanting to create a shipping container home. I would like to see a video of someone putting multiple containers together, cutting out the sides completely to have a huge floor surface and framing it out.

This is one of the finest educational programs I've seen on sea containers you really did a wonderful job I disagree with keeping that floor in there because you don't know what chemicals have been on those floors and unless you do know that but that was one of the warnings I understood that there could be toxic chemicals that have had penetrated those floors so you either buy a brand-new container knowing that what was shipped in it or remove that but you did a beautiful job and I'm very the script how you did it thank you

I love how detailed this is. Well done, man. Looking forward to part 3.

Cant wait for the next video. Im absolutely loving this

Love the simple design! We are working on building our container home right now and I thought welding in 80 degrees was tough! I can’t imagine what it was like welding in 100+ degrees!

Love those 20' Containers -- Great for Tool Shed and an Art Studio!

I really appreciate the time effort and care spent on documenting this project. Thank you

Another great video, please keep up the awesome work!

Honeslty one of the best and most interesting container home videos i´ve watched. And i watched a lot, trust me :D Thanks for the content!

Amazing!!! Your videos and instruction are such good quality! I want to learn to do stuff like this --

Love the idea. I think it should be under ground it would stay colder and warmer. The $25,000 permits is just insane.

Welcome to the future of bulletproof container homes. lol ... this would be great in da hood. xD

Amazing content, very much appreciated.

The editing and camera motion skills are Superb!!!! as well as the container home.....my next project

I was in the military and we lived in some of these containers in war zones. We would set them on the ground, level them the best we could and then stack sandbags all over the top and sides for insulation and mortar protection. Containers are designed to support a stack of 6-8 containers loaded with cargo. Containers are very strong in their corners, due to this strength in the corners we would just build a timber frame over the top and then we added sand bags to the roof. This build is overkill to say the least, this house would be standing after everything else was shaken apart in an earthquake. It's important to understand that the structural limits of containers are formulated under the assumption that hey will be moved while loaded and loaded onto each other on a moving vessel. Needless to say many of us are still here because we slept in these things. ISO Standard 1496(1) states that the corner posts of ISO Series 1 containers should be tested to a load of 86,400 kg (190,480 lbs). This is the load applied to the posts of the bottom container in an 8-on-1 stack of 24,000 kg (gross weight) containers (20 Foot) The side walls and end walls/doors have to withstand loadings of 0.6P and 0.4P respectively, these values equate to 28,746 lbs and 19,164 lbs based upon the payload given above. The side wall area in contact with the load is 146.56 sq. ft. giving a pressure of 196 lbs/sq. ft. Corresponding figures for the end wall/doors are 51.78 sq. ft. and 370 lbs/sq. ft. These figures are well in excess of the 20 lbs/sq. ft. wind load required for structures less than 50 ft. high. A wind of 100 MPH produces a pressure of only 30 lbs/sq. ft. The roof load test is 660 lbs over an area of 2' x 1' applied to the weakest part of the roof. The load is usually applied at the center of the containers positioned with the 2' dimension aligned longitudinally. Thus the roof is able to support an imposed load of a minimum of 330 lbs/sq. ft. The design is easily capable of supporting the basic snow loads of 30 lbs per sq. ft. evenly distributed. The floor is design to pass a concentrated load test of 16,000 lbs over a foot print of 44 sq. inches. The floor has also been designed to pass a test at twice its rated payload capacity of 47,895 for a 20 container and 58,823 lbs for a 40' container when evenly distributed. The boxes are suitable for earthquake areas of seismic rating of up to the California standards.

Next in series: Recladding the exterior.

That Window Frame Jig is Bad Ass !!!! Job well done 👍🏻, Freakin Genius

really cool! can't wait to get started

That box begins to get pretty narrow when you start adding 2x4's for framing. I think I would want to attach two of the boxes together and blow out part of the inside walls, then put a beam across the top of them both for structural support.

An hour and a half to cut a window out.... jeeze. Your tolerance is astounding. I would have spent an hour going to get a generator and 9 inch grinder before I stood there for 1.5 hours cutting a simple window out.

Wow, what an awesome house. Two thumbs up.

Thank you for this episode - super helpful!

District 9 is taking shape, gj!

15:10 "...l've had a lot of people ask why any additional sort of (wooden) structure (supports) are needed..." Those asking the questions are correct in their assessment. I work with shipping containers too and those wooden support struts are unnecessary. These containers can hold tonnes of goods and be stacked up 8 storeys or higher atop each other, then placed on ships that roll with the waves on high seas full of saIty spray and strong winds. The rigidity of these containers is from the box FRAME, not the side corrugated metal sheets, so as long as you do not cut into or compromise the rectangular skeleton, cutting holes for windows only marginally reduces its structural strength. However, the wooden frames could be useful to hold insulation boarding panels, hide wiring or plumbing lines or simply as placeholders for cupboards or shelves etc. later on. The less unnecessary structures you build-in, the more living space you will eventually get out of it. Keep the original paint on these containers and paint over them if needed, and your box will never rust for a long time. For the windows and door frames, you should have simply used wooden frames plus rubber or steel washer adjusters instead of welding that steel frame into the walls. Metal expands and cools significantly based on climate, and thats why your windows will crack or your doors get stuck, even if you cut your angle steel perfectly. Wooden frames has more play and flex and will not expand / contract as much as steel due to temp variances.

hello, great job soon fitting out the floor, congratulations.

Very informative and with details. Seems like more work involved than one might think.

We've learnt to do continuous welding on the 100x50 external frames and spaced welding for the internal frames on the New Life Children's Home project here in Witbank, South Africa. Also these containers are designed to carry approx 21 metric tons and be stacked about 10-12 high that's over 200 metric tons in the bottom container. On a single story structure I think additional structural work is a waste. Just don't cut unnecessarily and frame everything effectively. The box does the rest of the work.

You've taken all the disadvantages of an RV but none of the advantages. Amazing!

best container framing video I've seen on youtube yet. Super pro.

thank you for this series

yes new episode

Thank you for this project! I am looking at building one in Canada but all the other videos I have seen have not been this detailed. Including what tools you need (like the type of welder) I look forward on learning more from this project with hopes to build my dreams from gaining knowledge and confidence from your videos. Cheers!

Thank you for sharing this! Amazing stuff!

We all share your vision, I bought one 40 footer, but using it for storage only. I will share this with my children. God Bless you

This is a wooden frame house with corrugated cladding.

I've been waiting so long for this, so excited!!!

I just got my containers delivered from Wuwi Shipping Container yesterday. I am planning to make a two-story container house i thought it would be expensive and surprisingly Wuwi Shipping Container sells cheap containers i got my 40ft Container for 1800 each and i even paid it upon delivery. I am from Texas by the way.

Hard work bring joy in the end

This is so interesting! Your explanations are concise and easy to follow along with. When is Episode 3 coming out?

When welding large frames, lay out the square, weld small dots in each corner, check if it's still square, than weld it complete. Your technique puts a lot of strength/ stress on the angle. You can bent you're angle and the square won't be square;) but nice project, greetings from Germany

Working on a Container Office Project , your Video Really Helped. Thanks.

I was thinking of building a containers house. 3 minutes into the video and I changed my mind

Cool project. Although, the more videos I see about shipping containers turned into rooms, the more I think it's easier to build them from scratch.

I have to wonder if it would have been cheaper and easier to just build a wooden house. I like the idea though.

Thank you for uploading this Amazing and Awesome Video !

Beautiful job:) greetings from Poland ❤️💪

Not maintaining the paint doesn't matter. Shipping containers are corten steel, which forms a surface rust barrier as a means of protection.

Great videos, guys. I am willing to bet you a few dollars that the building regulations here in Japan are even stricter than in California. You have to have a permit here even to put a trailer / caravan on ground that is not 'residential' zoned in some cases. I am checking out this kind of stuff so I can build a small school. Interesting to see how it's done in other parts of the world. Thanks.

Nice work, really looking into these.

You do very good job,and also it is very good that you give advice how you do some part of work,and you give safety advice to people. If someone want to make something from shiping container, this video need to be in category: must see. You have big like from me. Greetings from Serbia

My god... we put up a concrete house with red clay blocks and plaster way faster for probably less than this... At this point, the modifications needed to make these containers livable long term are taking more time than building a traditional home.

He finally gets his praises on a fine job done so far.

This video was extremely helpful thank you so much

Great work guys.

The rooms are so small by the time you add the internal framing that they look like corridors; I can't help thinking that you really needed to join two containers together in order to get a decent sized interior space for each unit- I've seen that approach before and it works just great.

So you basically framed out a whole house ontop of a concrete slab. Why even use the shipping containers in the first place? If you want the metal exterior, just add corrugated steel sheeting to the outside after you built the house you wanted without having the limitations of size imposed by using containers.

I really appreciate you I’m thinking to build a restaurant in Ethiopia and I was doing my research and your videos contribute a lot 🙋🏾‍♂️ thank you

California is along the ring of fire. Investing in a steel box is a smart move considering what earthquakes can do to timber structures