Existing Container House In Atlanta, GA
This Is The Inside of The Atlanta Container House, Third Floor
Way back in 2006 I went into my office one day and was asked – “can we do a structural design for a house made of shipping containers” by my partner, Greg Wagner. It didn’t seem like a big deal to me, I’d built with shipping containers in Uzbekistan in 2003 when I was there with the Air Force. Actually, the builder was Stratex, and we contracted them to put up our designs. I was there on a 4 month all expense paid vacation from my normally part-time position in the Air Force Reserves. Shipping containers seemed like a great way to build in a contingency environment, and I filed it away in my head. I didn’t expect to be doing a building in the US. Anyway, Greg did the structural design of the house in Atlanta, and I did the supervision and put my P.E. stamp on it. It didn’t register high on our respective radar screens, I put it on what passed for my website at the time, and we got one or two inquiries and I forgot about it.
Fast forward to winter of 2008. It was a bad, bad year. The bottom fell out of the home building market. Business fell to a third. I cut employees, and the partnership between Greg and I had to dissolve. I was struggling by myself to stay afloat with some pretty high fixed expenses. One day I got a call from someone who was really enthusiastic about shipping container buildings. We talked for a long time about them. I didn’t know there was such a subculture about these things. So, I went and did some web searches. I found the house we did in Atlanta, and someone was given credit for building it. I wasn’t too happy about that of course. About the same time I got called by a woman who wanted to build a pretty large project of shipping containers in Atlanta. Also at the same time I had called Container Technology in Morrow, GA to ask if I could come down and look at shipping containers. Oddly, they had someone inquire about my company’s plans a couple days before. As if it wasn’t enough, I had made a decision to redo my entire website, and was in the process of a top down design. It always amazes me how seemingly unrelated events cluster together.
Throughout 2008 I became immersed in shipping containers. I examined them in every which way. I built shipping container models in my structural software and analysed them. I read whatever I could find on them, and I talked to everybody that seemed to know anything. I got called about a lot of projects, and all of them fell through. Still, times were really bad, business was rotten, and working on containers was much better than stewing around worrying and wondering if I could make the next mortgage payment. By the end of 2008 serious inquiries started to come in, and I got my first design job for a house. I had some meetings with potential clients that looked positive. I developed a plan.
My plan was simple – focus on doing a very few projects with shipping container buildings in the first couple of years. Write some journal articles about lessons learned. Then slowly expand if the market demanded it. I would stay a one man shop until I hit 60, when I would be able to draw my pension from the Air Force Reserves. Then I would throttle down to semi-retirement, doing a few small design jobs here and there, and getting heavily involved in professional societies and volunteer activities like my father did. A great plan.
Well, in the military we said the first thing to go out the window in a war was The Plan. My plan has gone out the window as the year has unfolded. The jobs started as a trickle, and now are coming in with a fire hose. I’m no longer a one man firm anymore, we’re up at four people now. We’re working on jobs for private individuals, businesses and the government. We have developed relationships with several companies that build these buildings, and every week more jobs come through. However, I got contacted about one that really excited me today.
Glen Donaldson, the guy that built my first container house is building another, right next to his existing house in Atlanta. Francis Kirkpatrick will be the architect again, and my company will do the structural engineering. Glen wanted the same structural design, and I said no, we could do it much better this time around. I think we can learn from what we did the first time and other projects, and cut his costs significantly. This is really exciting to me. I’m putting in some pictures I took today of Glen’s house. More information will go on the website, and I will keep you up on our construction. We’re doing much larger container projects around the country, and we are talking to people in other countries about potential projects, but emotionally this is striking a strong chord with me. It’s get to go back to where we started on this journey. Some days are good, and other days are great. This is a great day.
George
Recently I was called by ThermaCote here in Lawrenceville, GA. They’d been reading my blog, and wanted to talk to me about their product. They also manufacture the insulating ceramic paint, and they didn’t make wild claims about an “R Equivalent”. In fact, they were rather upset that a competitor made that claim, because they felt it put a bad light on all the manufacturers of this type of product. I went on a tour of their factory here, and looked at some of their displays. One interesting display that they had was two small metal boxes shaped like houses. One had a roof that was painted with white paint, and another with their product. They had digital thermometers attached under each roof, and the boxes were placed under a strong lamp. The box painted with white paint rose in temperature on the inside very quickly, and the one with ThermaCote rose very slowly. They also had a steam generator pumping steam out of a”Y” fitting through two galvanized steel pipe nipples. One was uncoated, the other was coated with their product. The uncoated one was too hot to touch, the coated one stayed cool enough to grasp.
So what’s going on? I suspect the product is reflecting radiant heat (infrared), which is significant. In a sunny environment the heat gain during the day can be extreme, the container house in Atlanta suffers from that. You STILL need to insulate the structure, ambient heat would not be reflected by this product. However, the manufacturer stated that their product is “insulation’s best friend”, and it appears to there is a lot of substance to that. I did some searching on the Internet, and unfortunately I could not find any independent studies or journal articles about ceramic paint. However, I think there is enough to it to justify further research, all of the extreme hype aside.
The questions for me are pretty simple: How much more does it cost to paint a building with this instead of conventional paint? How long does it last compared to conventional paint? What is the payback period for energy savings? Does the payback period vary by geographical area? It looks like the product is easy to apply, and has no significant VOC’s. Scratches and scrapes are easy to repair, and apparently it is pretty durable. As I explore this, I will update this blog.
They did apply this product to a house local to here, it’s about 100 year old house with the old tin roof. They painted it right on the roof, and it looks quite nice. I’ll try to get some pictures to post up here. Hopefully I can get permission to go up in the attic space on a really hot day to see what it’s like. It’s not a scientific test, but I’d like to observe it anyway.
Oh, and it DOES NOT replace insulation. That is too good to be true, which means like anything too good to be true, it’s too good to be true.
George
Back in January I put in a short paragraph in this blog about a foundation repair company that offered me what I call a kickback for referrals that I pass over to them. This weekend I sent out my newsletter, and I guess it got one of their guys to look at my website and go through my blog postings. I got this e-mail (which I am sanitizing of company information):
Name: xxxxx
Email Address: xxxxx
Contact Phone: xxxxxxx
Best Contact Time: All Day
Alternate Phone:
Best Contact Time Alternate:
Comments: Remove us from your mailing list. Your portrayal of our referral
program is completely inaccurate. We did refer you to several people and
know that you did not have a problem accepting those referrals. The reason
we have a donation for home inspectors, engineers, etc is because of
conflict of interest. We justify the amount donated because we did not have
to spend advertising dollars to generate those leads. This money is not
added on to a customers quote, they in fact receive the same pricing as
someone who heard about us in the yellow pages. So contrary to your
statement, you are not stealing from anyone.
——————————————————————————–
I didn’t bother responding to the writer of this email, because it will just generate a lot of back and forth attempts to get the last word, and I really don’t care. Here was the full story as I remember it, and I’ll leave it up to you the reader to decide what is ethical or not. I found this company one day while surfing the web, and I’m always interested in finding good foundation repair companies that I can refer my clients to. I called the company, and met with their people. I was pretty impressed, until their office called me. The lady told me that they were enrolling me in their “Special Partner Program” or some such thing. I would get $100 for the first referral I gave them, and then on further referrals 10% of what the job was. I was rather speechless, and got off the phone amazed. A couple weeks later I talked to the writer of the e-mail above, and explained to him that I couldn’t ethically take a fee like this, because it would call into question my impartiality with my clients. He told me that “many engineers” elected to have the money “donated to their favorite charity.” To me that was still wrong, and I never put the company on my referral list. They did refer some people to me (2 jobs I think), which I took. If you want to give my name out to people, that’s fine. I’m not paying you for it, and I don’t feel I have any obligation to you.
My blog posting about this must really have rubbed this fellow the wrong way, and what surprises me more is I have actually had one other person tell me he thought it was perfectly fine to enter into an arrangement like this. It isn’t, and let me lay it out in detail.
People call me to get an independent analysis of their foundation problems. The idea is that I don’t have a financial interest in how many dollars you spend on a repair. This is important, because each foundation pier costs about $1,100. A couple extra piers can cost you a few thousand more dollars. When you call a foundation repair company direct, many of them will be honest, but there is a built in conflict there, which you assume I don’t have. If I am taking a referral fee (kickback), I’ve got that conflict. At a 10% referral fee, each pier I add to my design will generate me $100 more on top of what you pay me as a client. Typically a foundation repair will require 4 to 5 piers, which would generate me in most cases more in kickbacks than the fee you the client pay me. So where is my loyalty going to be? Let’s go further. If I get a kickback from company X, will I be likely to give you the client a list of companies to call, like companies Y and Z that don’t pay the referral fees? Probably not, and company X will know that. They will have tendency to up their prices with you, knowing they aren’t competing with anyone. So, you have a situation where I would be tempted to add more repairs than necessary, my loyalty would be to the repair company instead of you the client, and the repair company could charge higher prices. By the way, I generally do 2 foundation investigations a week. If I came up with 5 piers required for each investigation (about $5,500), I could generate myself an additional $26,000 or so in “referral fees”. Not an insignificant amount.
Now, let’s assume the company donates to my “favorite charity”. Imagine what $26,000 a year donated to my favorite charity would do for me. Pick the right charity (some have some pretty heavy pull politically and with businesses), and I could get some significant benefits with no extra effort on my part. So, even getting kickbacks in a donation form are wrong.
There is one way I could take part in this program and be OK ethically and legally. I could tell you that Company X is giving a percentage of what you pay them back to me, or my “favorite charity” up front. That begs the question – why do you want to hire me then? I’m just an independent sales person working for Company X. So much for my impartiality.
There are a number of levels that this bothers me. The nastiness of the above e-mail amazes me, because the company sees this as just another advertising expense. I’m disturbed that people could be paying for repairs they don’t need when they hire engineers and home inspectors that are taking these special donations or whatever you want to call them. Finally, on a selfish note, there are probably engineers out there competing with me that are giving unrealistically low fees to people knowing that they will get money back for the repair. That is taking business away from me and not through honest competition.
Am I unreasonable about this? You decide, and please feel free to post here on the blog.
By the way, make sure any engineer you hire to look at your foundation puts it to you in writing that he or she is not accepting any “referral fees” “donations” or any other special consideration from companies he or she is recommending. They also should be asked to disclose if they have done any work directly for any companies they recommend, which they should do without being asked. I often recommend Atlas Piers of Atlanta along with other foundation repair companies, and I have done work directly for them. I make sure I tell people up front about that, and it’s in the comments in my referral list too.
George
I was directed in my company’s Facebook page to an advertisement for the supposed insulating qualities of ceramic paint. The advertisement was almost funny, its graphics remind me of a carnival poster and they found a way to put the phrase “nano technology” in the text numerous times. I guess if it’s “nano” you know it’s good. Anyway, they bring up the “R Equivalent” over and over. I can comment specifically on this very easily. If I do a design, it has to be with recognized methods. I use equations that are commonly used in engineering and were developed by recognized experts and peer reviewed. For example, if a civil engineer calculates water flow in a ditch, he probably uses Manning’s Equation, Manning was a researcher in Ireland back in the 1800’s. There is Terzhagi’s Equation for bearing capacity of soil, developed by Dr. Terzhagi. When a Mechanical Engineer calculates what is needed for heating or cooling, he uses the ASHRAE manuals for his calculations. These are well recognized standards.
So, what is “R Equivalent”? The advertisement doesn’t define it. It doesn’t appear to be defined by any recognized agency such as ASTM (American Society of Testing and Materials), ASHRAE (American Society of Heating, Refrigeration and Air Conditioning Engineers), or Code body, such as International Code Council. If I design an an air conditioning or heating system according to a recognized method, and I get an angry client that brings me to court, I at least have some defense in the court. I can say “yes, the plaintiff’s heating bills are high in cold weather, but his system was designed according to these criteria…” and hopefully avoid getting hit with a big judgement. What happens if I design a system for heating or air conditioning assuming the building has an “R Equivalent” of 19 or so?
The outcome is pretty easy to predict. The plaintiff’s attorney would go after the “R Equivalent” like that shark went after swimmers in the movie “Jaws”. He would get an expert witness (that would be another engineer) to testify I had committed Gross Negligence for not following the expected standard of care of an engineer. The expert would testify that there is no standard for “R Equivalent” except in this company’s own advertising. He would question the methodology the company used for making its claim. He would point out that there is no research cited that has been published in peer reviewed journals. He would also point out that that no recognized body defines “R Equivalent”. At least I wouldn’t have to worry about what to say in my own defense in court. My insurance company would offer to settle out of court. Of course if a complaint was brought to the Board of Professional Engineers, I’d have an embarrassing day explaining myself to them. I’d certainly get a reprimand or suspension (depending on the state, Florida might take my license).
It just doesn’t make sense. I don’t care what TV show it was on. All sorts of stuff is on TV, like conspiracy theories, claims that the world will end in 2012, that we descend from aliens, and professional wrestling. It doesn’t make it true.
George
January 11th, 2010 in
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Having been involved for many years in the military with contracted services, I know a bit about how the government operates, and I get a lot of questions about getting contracts with the government. I’d like to go into some of the questions I get asked, and some myths and facts.
Can you make money contracting for the government? That is a broad question, which is like asking, can you make money if you own your own business. It really depends. Some contracts are very competitive, and very low margin. Others are not. Sorry, that question doesn’t have a blanket answer.
How do you get “in” to government contracts? Generally there is no “in” with the Federal government, although there are exceptions and many of those may be illegal. I’ve seen people get caught taking payoffs and making payoffs, and they went to prison. One contracting officer I knew got a ten year sentence (no parole, it was a Federal crime), and the government confiscated virtually everything he owned. It’s not worth it. On the legal side, state and local governments all have different procedures. The Federal government generally advertises all of its contracts on the Federal Business Opportunities (www.fbo.gov) website, and you need to register with it, and the Central Contractor’s Registration (which you can get to through the Federal Business Opportunities website. Some contracts are by open bidding, others require prequalified bidders, and still others may be based solely on qualifications. It varies by the contract. For example, architect and engineer contracts are generally qualification based, but if you want a contract to paint a building, you probably will be bidding on price.
What are the pitfalls? First, on many government contracts you have to pay a wage scale, such as the Davis Bacon Act requirements on Federal contracts. The reason this was done originally was to keep contractors that hired low wage out of area labor from coming into a place and depressing local wages, and doing shoddy work. So, on Federal contracts you get a list of “prevailing” wages for an area that you have to pay your different people. Supposedly the prevailing wages are from a survey and are at a certain percentile. From what I’ve seen, the wages are quite a bit higher the usual wages in the area, and that’s what nails contractors. I’ve seen a couple bid without taking this into consideration. Some did it out of ignorance, others figured they wouldn’t get caught. We would go out and interview workers to get their wage rates and we caught people cheating. They had to pay back wages for the difference, and that was expensive. There are also bonding requirements, and for bigger contracts there are requirements for set asides to minority business enterprises, disadvantaged businesses, and so on. Generally, paperwork requirements for government contracts are extreme. The government agency is spending public money, and they have to try to take care of it honestly and fairly. This can cause a burden if you aren’t ready for it.
Does it help to be a minority or woman in getting government contracts? The answer is “sometimes” and “it depends”. Some localities have rather extreme set-aside policies, and maybe it helps there. In Federal contracting, I have to say that being a minority doesn’t make that much of a difference in many cases. The reason is the extra hassle. In Federal contracts there are set asides for numerous groups, women, veterans, disabled veterans, minorities, and businesses in disadvantaged areas. When I was with the military, we had to set aside a certain percentage of our contracts, and it was done through the Small Business Administration (SBA). Some set-asides don’t go through the SBA, like ones for veterans or women, but there is a very small percentage of contracts going to that group. So, giving your wife 51% of your company probably won’t help you get government work. The same goes for giving 51% to your cousin who spent 2 years in the Army at Fort Dix in the seventies. If you want the set asides through the SBA, generally you need to be registered in their 8a program, which from what I’ve seen is a lot of added work. You contract with the SBA, and they contract with the agency that sets aside the work. The SBA negotiates on your behalf. I’ve only seen one business in the 8a program ever get big and get out of the program. All of the others I’ve seen in it stay, and are only able to survive on set asides. It’s not a good way to run a business in my opinion.
Should I get a consultant to help me get government contracts? No, I would just take my money out of the bank and flush it down the toilet. That would save me a lot of trouble, and it might be somewhat amusing to watch the bills go swirling down the drain. I have met a number of these consultants, and I have to be blunt – they were flaming idiots. I had the misfortune of talking to some of these when I was with the government, and it amazed me how ignorant they were of our contracting procedures. One wasted my time trying to get me to add a third year of time on a contract for her client that had a two year limitation. Hello! The contract had a two year LIMIT. The woman couldn’t seem to grasp this, and had some complex “method” I could use. It was obvious she hadn’t read the contract, or even understood the contracting regulations. She was just billing money. You would be better spent going through the Federal Business Opportunity website, reading the solicitations, and reading through the various requests for proposals. Professional organizations, such as the Society of American Military Engineers are helpful too with getting out information.
Do I need a full time marketing person for government contracts? Generally, yes you do. There is a lot of work. Be careful with who you hire though. I’ve run into a number that were hired by companies by claiming they had “connections”, which was always a lie. They were figured out after about a year or two of abusing their expense accounts and showing no results. The other mistake is to hire someone on the basis of their perceived enthusiasm. Marketing to government agencies is not like selling cutlery at the County Fair, yet many companies seem to think that’s the kind of person they need. They don’t, a more methodical and analytical person is needed. You need someone with the patience to read through all the solicitations on the web, be able to fill out all the right paperwork, and have the ability to write. You also need to be able to figure your costs out and what your competitors are likely to charge. Marketing to the government is not playing golf with some high up official, it’s hard work.
You need to understand your contract, I had an architects two different times come to me once wanting additional money because they were losing money in their contracts with us. Both had fixed price contracts, and both came up with lame excuses. One argued I pushed him past the scope of his contract, but what I had him do was precisely in his contract, except for one task we called him about – we paid him extra for that, but apparently he wanted to be paid again. The other wanted additional money because he based his contract on a percentage of the cost estimate of the project, and the project was double the estimated cost. Again, he had a fixed price contract. Worse, it was his firm that did the original defective estimate. Neither architect got the additional money, and they lowered their standing in my eyes. If you have a fixed price contract, you have to deal with it. Don’t take on additional work under the contract without authorization unless you want to do it for free.
This brings on another problem people run into with government contracting – in the Federal Government, the only one authorized to issue any kind of notice proceed, or changes in the contract is the contracting officer. I worked for an engineering firm years ago, and we were in the process of negotiating a contract in another state. I went out of town for the day, and when I got back I found out one of my coworkers had made travel arrangements for me and several employees to go to the job. He even bought airline tickets. I was horrified – we had no “notice to proceed”, and this was putting us at risk. The coworker gave me the “you have to be pro-active” sermon, and I yelled at him that the “you have to follow the rules” rant back (he later was fired, but that’s another story). Fortunately, we did get the contract, but my idiot coworker forced me into a bad choice of losing money paid on airline tickets (a couple thousand), or risking not getting the contract. We also hadn’t negotiated the fees, which put me a tough negotiating position because we needed to get that contract to avoid losing all the money spent on the “proactive” trip.
You need to find out who the contracting officer is, and only take contract direction from him or her. Any work you do without authorization from the contracting officer could be at your risk. You can force the issue, and ultimately you may get paid for work an unauthorized person directs you to do, but do you want to risk that? A good tactic is to read the contract you get with the government agency. In US Government contracts F.A.R. (Federal Acquisition Regulations) are given by reference. The contracting officer has to give you copies of the regulations referenced if you ask for them. Get them, and READ THEM. It can save you a lot of heartache. In the early meetings find out who everybody is that you will deal with, and what their functions are.
This is just the beginning of what you have to deal with in government contracting. Hopefully it is helpful information to those of you who want to go that way, but there is much more to learn. Good luck!
George
One of my clients, a builder, disagrees with me on the potential cost of shipping container houses. He says that the cost of construction should be about $65/SF for a modest house as opposed to $100/SF for the same construction using wood framing. We’ll know for sure in early 2010 as we complete a couple of houses in Atlanta. Hopefully the $65 is a good number. I’d like to see this happen.
George
December 16th, 2009 in
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While I would love to tell everyone what they want to hear about building with shipping containers and increase my business, I feel obligated to tell you a lot of things you don’t want to hear about building with these. Unfortunately, when I tell people this stuff on the phone, 90% refuse to believe me, even though I am the one that has been working with these things. Well, you can believe it’s pink outside, but that doesn’t make it that way. Here’s some items you need to know, and choose for yourself whether to believe it or not:
BUILDING WITH SHIPPING CONTAINERS IS NOT CHEAP
No one wants to believe me on this. You can not put up extremely low cost housing with these, and you think logically it should be obvious. If I build a house out of containers, the only thing the container provides is the framing. I still have to put in the interior walls, the finish, the wiring, the plumbing, and the heating. Not only that, modifying the container to live it in it (unless you are happy with an 8′x40′ tunnel) requires working with steel – cutting torches, welding, and fabrication. Wood framing for a house is fairly simple, it’s not the same level of skill in the labor. It also doesn’t require the equipment. A couple power saws, some nailing guns, and you are on your way. Also, when you put in doors and windows in a standard wood frame building, it’s pretty easy and the methods are standard on how its done. Putting in a window in a container house or a door requires significant fabrication of the frame, and you have to fit in a window or door into a steel structure, not nail it into wood. You have to seal the wood floors in the containers, and build them up to take the finish floors. Putting in the plumbing is difficult, as is the wiring and HVAC because you have to work around the container. You need a crane on the site to put the containers in place. It just isn’t that easy. I’m sorry, but it’s true.
I suspect that in certain types of buildings you can build with containers cheaper than conventional construction. In developments with repetitious construction, such as low rise apartments, or fairly large tracts of low income housing it might be possible to build cheaper. I’m working with various clients that are exploring that, but unfortunately a couple have already come up with it’s not feasible.
A HOUSE BUILT WITH CONTAINERS ISN’T REALLY “GREEN”
Maybe you can define it that way for some agency, or for the local paper, or for LEED certification, but it really isn’t green to use the containers. If you didn’t recycle them for a house, they don’t go to a landfill. They end up being cut up for scrap and melted down for steel again. About 2/3 rds of the steel made in the US is from scrap (http://www.recyclingbizz.com/newsbriefs/LA900638.html). If you build a house out of wood, isn’t it killing trees? Yes, and that would be bad if it was old growth forests that were cut down for the lumber in your house. However, the trees used to make a house are grown for that purpose. Down here in Georgia there are acres of timberland, it’s big business to grow trees. If you drove through this state 75 years ago you would see worn out farmland, heavily eroded and barely productive. If it stayed farmland, it would only be marginally productive with heavy applications of fertilizer, and it would be eroding sediments into local streams and rivers. Over time the farmland was replaced by trees grown for lumber and pulpwood. The trees are planted and allowed to grow for about 20 years. In the meantime wildlife lives there, there isn’t heavy applications of chemicals, and erosion is minimal. So, when a house is made from wood, you could say it encourages planting timber on land, and helps the environment.
YOU CAN’T BURY A CONTAINER HOUSE
I don’t why people want to do this, but I keep getting contacted by people that want a container house buried in the ground. I actually ran the calculations, and no, a container can not take a soil load on the side. Worse, people don’t believe me when I tell them that. Also, when you bury steel, you get corrosion problems. In buried pipelines and tanks, steel is protected with coatings and cathodic protection. You could technically build a concrete vault for your buried container house, put the containers in, and then cathodically protect them. We then come back to “why?” You would save money in heating and cooling because you are in the ground. However, you get no sunlight coming in through the windows, and moisture is a serious problem. You would have to install dehumidiers to keep out the dampness, and get used to having no sunlight. I’ve read loads of articles in various magazines extolling the virtues of building underground, but notice how few buildings are actually built underground. Even in big cities where land is a premium, underground space is used for parking, storage, and mechanical rooms. The technology has existed since stone age times to build underground, and some early cultures in northern climates did build dwellings in the ground to keep themselves warm. I wonder if they lived in those underground structures year round, and notice there isn’t a large number of cultures that live in underground dwellings anymore. If it worked well, it would be a common thing, and it isn’t.
THERE IS NO MAGIC INSULATION
Go several posts back and see what I found about the high tech ceramic paint insulation. Insulation is a way of slowing heat transfer, and while there are some great products out there, and they are getting improved every day, you still need a certain amount of thickness to slow down the heat transfer. Maybe in the future that problem will be solved, but I suspect it will have to be the same type of physics that will let us travel in time, communicate faster than light, and develop Star Trek type transporters. The more classical physical universe we live in now won’t let us get away without having a thickness of insulation.
LIVING “OFF THE GRID” IS NOT PRACTICAL
I have been approached by a few people with the idea that they would build a container house totally self sufficient in energy, water, and sewer. I’m not a mechanical engineer, but I do know a bit about power generation from my basic physics and the different jobs I’ve had in the military. You can generate power on site from wind, geothermal, and solar energy, but the more you want to generate, the more expensive it is. It’s not too terribly hateful to put some solar panels on your house to heat water. The first time I ever saw those panels was in the 60’s in Florida. I was a little boy and I saw them on a lot of houses. My father (an engineer also, it’s genetic in my family), explained the principles to me. My grandfather also explained the downside. The panels don’t generate heat when its cloudy. So, at that time they were used where it was sunny a good amount of the time. There is the rub with generating your own energy. Nature doesn’t give you the energy supply when you need it. Your wind turbine won’t generate electricity when the wind doesn’t blow. The solar panels don’t work at night or on cloudy days. Geothermal works all the time, but you need a pump to run the water in and out of the earth, and that needs electricity from somewhere. So, to be “off the grid” you need to story excess energy at times you don’t need it for when mother nature is not cooperating with you. It means expensive batteries that need to be maintained.
So, to be off the grid, you need a lot of generating capability, a lot of batteries, and a backup. Equipment breaks, so if your wind turbine decides to die, you need another source of electricity so you can work your pump for your geothermal energy. You either need a backup diesel generator (a maintenance headache), or to, yes, be connected to the grid.
In the end, I’m not sure why you would want to be totally off the grid. Any environmental advantage that you gain in generating your own electricity will be lost in the degradation of manufacturing the batteries that you will have to use (batteries are full of heavy metals that are taken out of the earth in environmentally unfriendly manners). It will be horribly expensive and you will never see a payback. If you are worried society will fail, and you want to be totally independent, I suspect you may have other issues. However, if your fear does come true, how are you going to fix the equipment when it breaks down? How are you going to protect yourself from the Multitudes that are going to come after what you have? A couple of guns won’t help you either in such case.
I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news here, but what I laid out above is the truth as I see it. Shipping containers have some very good uses for certain applications, but they are not the end to mankind’s problems.
George
3form USA – Browse Installations – Best Installation Contest – 2009 Entries.
We did the structural engineering on this job – putting in that canopy was rather tricky because it is in an existing building, and anchored to the concrete floor above. The canopy is made from a structure of cold-formed steel and held up into the floor above with steel all-threads epoxied into the concrete. We modeled it in 3d with Bentley RAM Advanse.
While the architect (Haralson Group in Atlanta) is responsible for the great look of this project, we’re proud of our part too.
George
The short answer is “no”. It’s funny, but judging from what I see on the Web, and conversations with some very enthusiastic people that call me, shipping containers will provide housing for the poor, cut down carbon emissions, eliminate water pollution, reverse global warming, and end conflict in the Mideast. They also will make all of us in this business filthy rich. OK, I exaggerate a little, I haven’t been told that shipping containers will make the Israelis and Palestinians stop fighting. Like most grandiose ideas, the idea that shipping container buildings will solve the world’s major problems is, well, grandiose.
The fact is, container buildings do not have universal application. They are good for semi-permanent and temporary buildings, such as would be used for the military in deployed areas, mining camps, and disaster housing. They have been useful in building housing in northern areas of Alaska on Native American lands. They are also great for building training structures for law enforcement, fire departments, and the military. I believe they also are good for low cost housing, and there is limited use for them in more stylish housing in certain areas where they fit in.
If you plan on building with these, you need to have a viable business plan which should include:
- What application are you going to use them for? You can’t just have a general idea that you are going to build with these, but no idea what.
- Is there going to be a demand for what you are building? For example, if you are going to build an apartment building, will people be willing to live in it? This is a big one, you need to do some sort of market analysis, which so many people don’t do when starting a business.
- What are the Code issues? There may be issues with fire walls, wind loading, seismic loading, sprinklers, and so on depending on the building you are putting up.
- How will the local Code officials react, and will community resistance stop your project? Tell a neighborhood that you are building something in their backyard out of shipping containers and watch just how angry people can get.
There is another issue which seems to get ignored. How will you market your product? If you are going to build for government agencies, do you know how to bid on projects, or how to even qualify for the jobs? The Federal Government has specific requirements and procedures that have to be followed, and state, tribal, and local government agencies are the same way. Getting jobs with government agencies takes a lot of effort, and there are many consultants that are more than happy to take your money and provide nothing in return. Getting work from private companies can be even more difficult, since a mining company, or oil company doesn’t have to worry about allowing somewhat open access to its projects.
Finally, we have the big issue – money. You can’t proceed without it. I can’t believe how many people call me that think everyone is going to do everything for free or for a nominal amount with the promise of big rewards later “when this thing really takes off.” Well, I can’t tell my mortgage company that I will pay them when “this thing takes off” at some unknown point in the future. Also, having been part of the dot-com meltdown and the housing market implosion, I have my strong doubts about something “taking off”. Everything has to be paid for, and you either have to have funds yourself, or get the backing from investors. Chances are that investors will want realistic answers to the questions above.
I hope this post helps guide you in the start of any business you want to start, not only in shipping containers but anything else. There is no easy way to get rich, and very few businesses are going to be the “next big thing”. For me, getting into shipping containers was mainly a way to do some really fun projects and maybe travel around a bit to some interesting places. It’s a relatively modest goal, but that’s why I spent 27 years in the military, and it worked there, so why not continue?
George
A couple of years ago Georgia passed the “Right To Repair” law, which was from my standpoint a law to protect homebuilders from frivolous lawsuits. I have been told of more than a few cases (not first hand, which puts a bit of doubt about how common this was) of builders finding out the homeowner had issues with the house when they answered their door at 6AM and saw a Deputy Sheriff with papers. I do know first hand of one builder that got numerous complaints from the homeowner he built a house for, and the homeowner refused to let him back in the house to repair what he alleged was wrong, and then sued him. The homeowner lost the lawsuit by the way.
Anyway, in Georgia if you buy a house from a builder, have a house built, have work done on your house, or in my case, have design work done on your house, there are certain steps you must follow if you have problems. For example, I am working with a home owner right now that bought a house from a major national builder. We discovered that the builder put the siding up directly on the wall studs, the required weather barrier and sheathing was not installed. This is a major defect that could cause unbelievable problems in the house with water infiltration. I advised the home owner to engage a lawyer. The idea is not to sue the builder, but to give notification as the Right To Repair law requires. You need to follow the time table of the law, otherwise you can be stuck for a lot of costs.
For example, if you find a defect and go ahead and fix it without notifying your builder, your chances of being reimbursed for the costs are probably next to nothing. If you decide to throw further money and aggravation away to sue the builder, you’ve wasted that money. You would be better off going to Vegas and putting it all on roulette wheel on black. You at least statistically will get half your money back and free drinks.
You can notify the builder as required under the Right To Repair law, but you need to track the time correctly, and do the documentation right. Also, a lot of builders will just plain ignore you. That is a common tactic among many builders in dealing with dissatisfied home owners. The theory for a lot of builders, large and small, is ignore it and it will go away (which has led to a large number of builders I’ve known getting sued because it makes homeowners angry). Generally letters from lawyers don’t get ignored.
Not only should you be careful to follow the Right To Repair law for legal reasons, it’s a matter of being fair. In the case of the homeowner I am working with, I know the company that built his house. They have very high standards of quality control, and I suspect the reason his house got built so poorly was that it was one of the last in the subdivision. The superintendent on the site was probably hurrying to get out, and didn’t supervise the subs right, or may have turned a blind eye to defects in the homes because maybe he didn’t care and with the subdivision finishing there would be no one to check his work. It’s hard to say. Since we don’t know for sure how the warranty department will react to the complaint, it’s better in my opinion to make the complaint in a legally correct way, which help make them react faster.
What if the notification doesn’t work? At that time you need to decide whether to press a claim. Most contracts around here in Atlanta have binding arbitration clauses. You don’t have to have a lawyer for arbitration, but I would not go in without one. It’s pretty much guaranteed a good way to lose. However, with a lawyer the arbitration can be quite expensive with legal fees and expert witnesses. You still have no guarantee of winning, and even if you do, you have to collect on your judgement. I don’t have statistics of decisions, and they may not be available, but from what I see the homeowner tends to lose. I’ve seen one case where the homeowner was absolutely right and won. I was on another where I thought the homeowner was absolutely right, and he lost. In others the homeowner lost because he kicked the builder or contractor off the job without proper notification (remember – you need to follow the specific procedures in the Right to Repair law).
In my opinion, for what it’s worth – in the end if you can’t get the repairs done by the builder, do them yourself with the money you would have spent suing. It’s painful for the injustice, but not as painful as spending money for legal fees, going through the agony of arbitration with motions for discovery, depositions, and then being made to look like a criminal in the arbitration by the opposition lawyer, and then losing. Then you get to go through a year or two of humiliation and still have to spend your own money to fix the house.
George