Building Permits and Foundation Design for a Shipping Container Home | EP01

In Episode 1 we will go over the basic considerations for buying shipping containers, explain how we got building permits for a shipping container house and show how we constructed the concrete foundations. 

Buying the land:

Buying raw empty land without buildings on it is different than buying a house.  It’s more difficult to secure financing for land.  I paid cash for this 10-acre lot.  It was listed for around $24,000 and I offered $20,000.   I checked to make sure it was close to water and electrical utilities before completing the deal.  I asked the seller if they had commissioned a survey of the property in the last 10 years and when they said no I explained that I would be offering less than the asking price.

Survey:

The first thing I did was to commission a surveying firm.  I emailed several local firms and asked for a quote for a full topographical survey and plot plan with all building setbacks shown.  The building setbacks are key because they tell me where I can place the house.  I want the house to be somewhat close to the boundaries of the property to reduce the need for building a long drive and to reduce the cost of connecting utilities.  The survey cost me $4000

 Buying the Shipping Containers:

 We purchased one trip condition hi-cube containers.  California requires that shipping containers used for homes have documentation showing that have not had toxic or radioactive materials in them. This normally means that you need one trip condition containers with appropriate certificates.  I bought my containers from Container Discounts and paid $4800 each for the 40-foot hi-cube containers and $3250 for the 20-foot hi-cube container. Hi-cube containers are a foot taller than typical shipping containers. If you are interested in learning how to buy a shipping container i strongly recommend calling Container Discounts. They are very knowledgeable and have good prices.

I bought two 40-foot High Cube Containers and one 20-foot high cube container from Container Discounts

Permits:

I recommend going in person to the local building department showing them the survey and asking them for a checklist of everything that needs to be completed to get building permits.  The survey is important because it shows the building dept. both the physical nature of the property and documents its legal boundaries and history.  I explained that I wanted to build a shipping container house and asked for a complete checklist of everything I would need to get done and submit in order to get building permits.  Getting building permits is a little bit different in each county. My property was under San Bernadino County’s jurisdiction.

Architectural Design

I used the architecture firm I co-founded, ZeroEnergy Design, to produce the architectural drawings.  Even though I am a co-owner I made sure to pay the firm for the hours of preparation that this task would take.  It would be unfair to my partners if I used firm resources for my own personal project. I paid $5000 for the creation of the architectural drawings.  I didn’t need a lot of detail in the drawing set since i was planning on building a lot of it myself. I just needed a construction drawing set that would get me through permitting.

Structural Engineering

I sent the architectural drawings over to the structural engineering firm I hired, and they created the structural details and created a package of calculations showing that these details would meet all code requirements and result in a safe and strong building.  This package of drawings and calculations was required by the building dept.  My architecture firm primarily practices on the east coast and does not have a stamp in California so I had the structural engineering firm stamp the drawings.  The building dept. gave me the option of having either the architecture firm or the engineering firm stamp the documents. 

Hiring a general contractor

I am new to the Joshua tree area, so I hired a general contractor to help me with the project and recommend local specialty trades people like plumbers and electricians.  We agreed on a time and materials contract where I would pay advances every week based on what we expected to do.  He would then provide receipts showing how the advance was used.  This is a pay as you go system that is good for unconventional projects where the owner is involved.  For straight forward normal construction I prefer a fixed price contract.  With a project like this builders would tend to overbid on fixed price since there are so many unconventional parts.

Foundation design:

We ended up building a monolithic on slab on grade concrete foundation.  We worked on designs for some piers that would have saved in material costs but then the space underneath the container would have been classified as a crawl space and the bottom of the container would have to be 18” off the ground at a minimum.  This would mean I would have to build stairs and railing for all the decks. 

Grading the site and excavating for the foundation

I rented a bulldozer and hired an operator to level a portion of the site where I wanted to place the house.  I then rented a back hoe to dig out the footings for the foundation.

Building the forms

The forms were built out of 2x8s screwed to steel stakes that we hammered into the ground.

Building wood forms out of 2x8s for the foundation of a shipping container house.

Reinforcement

We used #4 rebar to reinforce the concrete.  This was wired together to match the structural drawings. 

Foundation forms ready for concrete

Concrete Day

Concrete day was pretty exciting.  We had to pump the concrete to one of the foundation slabs because the truck couldn’t get close enough without driving over the other forms. 

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

Hi, I'm Ben and this is The House I Built out of Shipping Containers. Now I've been interested in shipping container architecture for quite some time, but I had a really hard time finding good information about how to get building permits or how much would it cost. We did the research. We documented everything that we did and now we're so excited to share with you what we learned. So check it out. This is episode two. We'll show you how we move the containers, cut them open and started the structural reinforcement. After letting the concrete cure for three days, we began stripping the mold and getting ready for the day I was most excited about, which is crane day. This is the single biggest piece of equipment that we rented for this project. It's basically like a giant transformer.

To pick up the containers they use these fabric straps, which are super strong, and each one of them has a hook which can hook into the boxes at the corner of the containers. We started by moving one, the extra 20 foot containers that I bought to store tools and materials on site. This is a specialty type of container that opens up, not just on the short sides, but on the broad side as well. Next, we started moving the other 20 foot container which is going to be the guest bedroom and bathroom. This container is lightweight enough that the crane could actually drive while the box was suspended in the air.

We had the lineup the containers so that it wouldn't break one of the drain pipes that was sticking through the concrete. Next up was a 40 foot container, which is too heavy to drive with. So what they did is we just picked it up, swung the arm around to get it closer, and then repositioned the crane and do the whole thing again. We put some blue painter's tape on the corners of the concrete foundation just to give us a mark to aim for. The second 40 foot container had the farthest distance to travel and it's like watching an inch worm move its way across the desert.

It took a few attempts and three guys pushing on the corners to get it in the right location. If I was designing this again, I would now know that it's possible to get it, not exactly where you want it, but within about half an inch. Crane day was a lot of fun but now it's time to turn these steel boxes into a house. We started pulling up the floors on the containers. These floors are made out of plywood that is about one and an eighth of an inch thick. The steel structure underneath and underside of this plywood is coated with a thick black tar like substance which is there for waterproofing and they keep the steel from rusting. The majority of the plumbing for this house is going to go in this layer right amongst all the steel beams. Of course, things never line up properly so we're going to have to cut out a few of them. The pipe that Robert the plumber is working around is going to be the main drain that goes out from the container to the septic tank.

Originally, we had left this a lot longer, but once we saw that it wasn't going to align perfectly with the structure inside the container we had to cut it down so it wouldn't break when we drop the container into place. This meant that Robert would have to use a jackhammer to expose a little bit of the pipe by removing some of the concrete so we'd have enough room to fit an elbow on it. When I first learned we'd have to do this, I was worried it would take a really long time, but it actually only took about 45 minutes. We then cut holes in the other beams so that we could run the smaller drain pipes which will receive the water from the bathroom sink, the shower, the toilet, and the kitchen sink. The cut edges of the steel are quite sharp so the plumbers put some 20 minute hot mud and spray foam in between the pipes and the steel beams, just to keep the pipes from sliding around and potentially getting damaged.

Wherever you have drains, you also need to have venting pipes and these go all the way up through the walls and out the roof. The black ABS pipe is fine for wastewater going out of the building, but for all the clean water coming in, we want to use copper. This was more time consuming because the copper has to be sweated with a torch whereas the ABS plastic pipe can just be glued together. In the floor areas that don't have pipes going through them, we started filling those places in with rigid insulation. We packed in two layers of two inch thick rigid insulation, and then you spray foam to seal up all the gaps. Even though the insulation has excellent R- value. It's not going to be super effective in this location because the conductivity of the metal is going to create a thermal bridge around it, but still we added it in to keep that space full, keep critters out of it and to just give us a little bit of extra thermal protection.

This foam insulation cuts pretty easily with a box cutter so we just cut pieces that would also fit around all the pipes. After sealing it all with spray foam and testing to make sure the pipes are water tight, we then put the floorboards back on. This insulation is just so we can cover up the floors and get to work on the framing. We'll show the full installation details, including how we did continuous insulation over this plywood in next week's episode. While the rest of the crew was working on the insulation and the floors, I began making the structural frames for the doors and windows. After double checking the dimensions of the windows, I began making the 45 degree cuts so that I can make a mitered frame. The shipping container gets its strength from the continuous corrugated panels so whenever you cut one of these panels, you have to reinforce it. For these first few windows I decided to use two inch tube steel. It works great and it's plenty strong. But as you see, for some of the later frames, I switched to angle sections.

I did all the welding for the doors and windows using this little Forney welder. It's an inexpensive machine that's easy to use, great for beginners and powerful to build a house with. Now for the moment of truth, I was ready to cut into the container for the first time. I was pretty nervous about this because, you know, I paid a reasonable amount of money for these things, and we'd spent all this time to get them in the right position. I really didn't want to screw this up. I drew out the square that I'm going to cut out that will allow the frame to fit in using a silver Sharpie, a level and a piece of cardboard so I could draw straight lines around the corrugation. We didn't have electricity from the grid available on the construction site. I set up one of my little gold zero power packs with a solar panel, and that was enough to keep my batteries for my battery powered angle grinder nice and charge.

I've seen people cut containers open using a plasma cutter, but I'm really accurate with the angle grinder. It's a much easier tool to use and less expensive. I just went slow, made sure that I was following along the lines. I went through quite a few discs, but it only took about an hour and a half to cut out this entire window. The paint on these containers is really thick so I wire brush it away to expose the bare steel in preparation for welding. I needed a way to hold the frame in place while I welded the frame to the corrugated metal. I built these sliding supports out of two by fours that would allow me to clamp the two by fours to the corrugation and hold the frame nice and flush to the corrugation. This is important because when you cut into these big panels of corrugated metal, they can bow and flex quite a bit. With this technique it’s pretty important that the hole you cut into corrugated metal is just the right size because you don't want to be having to bridge across with the welder to connect the pieces. You don't have to do continuous seams all the way around. I just tried to get about two to three inch welds about every six to eight inches. I screwed up and over cut on this piece, but I just filled it in with my welder.

The second one went a lot smoother. I took more time in making sure that my initial drawing on the container was perfect and I went a lot slower with the cutting as well, making sure to stay right on the line. It was about 120 degrees inside these steel boxes and cutting open the window was a great experience. Not only can you see the view, but you get this rush of cooler, just 105 degree air coming in. It's definitely worth it to go really slow and get your initial cut out as accurate as possible. The welding for the second one was a lot easier because I wasn't bridging as big of a gap between the frame and the corrugated steel. On the first window, I ended up making seams that were a little bit too long. On the second one, I got it right and was sticking to seams that were just about two to three inches long. If you try to weld seams that are too long and continuous, the heat buildup from all the welding can start to deform and bend the corrugated metal.

For the two big 10 foot long bi-folding doors I wanted a frame that was a little bit stronger so I went with three inch by two inch tube steel. I glued some blocks of wood to the underside of a steel square and then I used that to clamp my tube steel pieces at nice right angles. I learned that grinding things once they're installed is a little bit more difficult especially if you have to get up on a ladder. I made sure to grind out all my welds as I welded them. The frames for the doors don't need a bottom piece, but I didn't want to move this without one because it might bend so I just welded in a temporary support. I also didn't cut the vertical pieces to length until I had welded the whole thing together. This way I can make sure that both sides were even. Working close to the ground is great because you can keep everything nice and flat, but it did make it so that we'd have to flip the frames over in order to cut all the way through from the other side with the angle grinder.

First frame is done time to make a second one exactly the same. For these big doors we started cutting out the openings from the inside, since it was easier to get up on a ladder with the nice flat floor. The black Sharpie line showed up real strong against the light beige interiors so it was easier to cut from the inside. I could see the line really crisply even through all the sweat and fog on the safety glasses. No matter what side you're in, though, it's easy to cut the part of the corrugation that's closest to you so I did do some of it outside as well. It's also easier to cut real close and flush to the support beam from the outside because from the inside, it's hard to get the angle grinder at the right angle because the floor gets in the way. Now, one thing to be careful for is that when you're cutting the container, the walls are under some pressure and all of a sudden, every once in a while they will jump or move and this can pinch the angle grinder or snap off a blade. These big pieces of metal are bendy, heavy and have jagged edges so it's a little bit tricky to handle them without cutting yourself up.

Some containers have welded on steel loops that are used to strap down cargo. I just cut these out as well. The corrugated metal was welded to this base beam along the container. I switched to a heavier angle grinder and just ground this all down. I stripped away the paint in preparation for welding and we lifted this 10 foot by seven foot frame into place. Remembering the lesson from the windows about bridging the gaps, we cut a little bit more on the conservative side and it wasn't quite big enough. We just ground away until the frame fit in perfectly. We started by tacking the frame to the base beam at the bottom corner, and then slowly worked our way up, making sure everything was still level.

The three inch wide tube steel was a lot easier to weld to the corrugation than the two inch steel because there was just a lot more surface area to connect the welds to and the radius of the tube steel wasn't sloping away from the corrugation. As soon as they got the frame tacked in and secured to the container, I cut away the temporary support. In retrospect, I should have welded this about six inches higher than I did just to give myself a little bit more room to cut it off. While I was welding in the first frame, the guy started cutting the opening for the second one. Now you might think that shipping containers are quite strong and don't need any additional structural support, but that's not actually the case if you're doing a fully permitted code approved building. Our structural engineer had to design an interior support system out of two by lumber and plywood that would meet all the structural requirements from the permitting office. This required substantial headers over these large bi-folding doors.

We were figuring this out as we went along and we knew that the doors and windows would be the trickiest parts. We made sure to frame around those and get that all set relative to the drawings before filling in all the wall spaces around them. Once you have the key structural elements in place using a nail gun to add into by fours, isn't too hard. On most of the projects that I have been involved with the header is directly over the door itself. But in this case, the header has to be tied in to the square steel tube that runs along the upper length of the container. Therefore we had to push the header up and then frame out underneath it. The purpose of the header is to provide support over large doors or windows. You don't want the flexion down onto these frames, which either cause them to break or could make them very difficult to open. The framing was going pretty quickly, but nothing was really tied into the container yet except for the two by four that runs along the bottom of the wall that was attached to the plywood that is a part of the container floor.

The stretches of walls that don't have doors and windows or plumbing features went a lot faster because we could panelize and build the walls and sections outside. We could then drag these into the container and then shoot nails down through this bottom two by four sill plate and into the plywood deck below. I've had a lot of people ask why any sort of additional structure is needed. I mean, aren't these steel boxes? Shouldn't they be strong enough by themselves? The problem isn't that these boxes aren't strong enough, it's where they get their strength and it's from these continuous corrugated panels. That strength is compromised when we cut into them, even though we are reinforcing where we cut. But the more important problem is that this steel is exposed to the outside and it's only about an eighth of an inch thick. If you're relying on exterior steel that's relatively thin for the structural support of the building, if someone doesn't maintain the paint and it starts to rust out, the whole building could collapse. You don't really want buildings that can have structural failures due to owner neglect. The most annoying part of the framing was attaching the walls to the steel containers. We nailed these galvanized steel brackets to a two by four, and then nail this on top of the walls to create a double top plate and then drive self-tapping screws through the holes in the brackets and into the square steel tube that runs along the top of the container. Putting this many self-tapping screws into steel is not fun and this took a minute. Our walls are taller than eight feet, and we're going to have to add plywood sheathing. We added additional pieces of two by four in between the studs so we'd have a surface for nailing on the plywood.

The ceiling will be supported by two by fours on joist hangers. We didn't nail in the two by fours yet because we still have to add insulation and sprinkler systems and other things, but we just cut them and set them in place for now. To recap, we have a two by four at the bottom vertical two by fours with stiffeners; some additional pieces for attaching the plywood and eventually dry wall; hangers to support the two by fours that'll support the ceiling and a double top light with brackets attached to the container. Another tricky structural requirement was that we had to tie down some of the shear walls to the foundation. We have to have a steel bar coming up from the concrete. We can get in there one of two ways. We can either cast it in place and use a coupling nut, or we can drill a hole and epoxy it in there. In either case it has to come up through the container through a top plate where this galvanized steel bracket can be bolted to it and then that bracket can be attached to a four by six or four by four post. Tony wrestled with that, but we didn't want to lock the post in place until we knew how the window installation would go.

After cleaning all the welds with wire brush, I then sprayed a few coats of rusty metal primer over the welds, the exposed steel that I brushed away on the container and the frames themselves. We ran a heavy beat of caulk around the inside of the frame and then pressed the window into place. The nailing flange on the window is going right up against the inside of the frame. Then we drove self-tapping screws through the flange and into the steel frame. This wouldn't be an ideal building detail in anything but a dry climate like this because you really have to rely on the silicone caulk from the exterior between the window unit and the steel frame to be your rain protection. With the window in place Tony then felt comfortable adding in the post.

Here's how the whole framing for this end wall looks. We have a steel rod going into the foundation that attaches to a bracket that connects to a post, which is tied into the rest of the two by four framing. I recommend drilling holes and using anchoring epoxy to fix the steel rods into the concrete it's way easier than trying to cast them in perfectly. You may have noticed that the part of the floor that the steel rod went through was steel and that's because this is part of the container where forklifts can come in to lift up the container from the end. You may notice that our building details are different throughout the project and that's because we were learning as we go along. The frames, I made out a tube steel for the first set of doors and windows worked just fine, but I noticed that it was very difficult to hold them perfectly in place. It was a really unforgiving detail where you had to cut the window hole perfect so for the next set of doors, I used angle steel to make the frames.

In this way, I would have a flange that could catch on the hole in the container, which would make it easier for clamping, getting it straight and it would give us a little bit of overlapping connection where we could caulk it from both sides. I used an angle grinder to notch out the ends of these pieces of angle steel so that they'd fit together and have a nice flat flange. These frames are going to reinforce the openings for the swinging entry doors

We welded the corners, added a temporary support piece, and then flip the frame over and welded from the other side. The 20 foot container which is going to house the guest bedroom has two swinging doors that are parallel to each other that's going to create opportunities for cross ventilation. My buddy Eric was visiting so we had ourselves a dueling angle grinder situation. Eric is a really talented metal worker and be sure to check out his work. I'll put a link to his Instagram in the description box below. I feel like this is a much better way to frame the doors and windows. Not only does the flange catch nicely on the corrugation, it actually gives you a really clean aesthetic from the outside as well. You also get two different areas to weld the frame to the corrugated metal. On the outside you weld right along the opening, but on the inside, you're welding the edge of the flange to the surface of the corrugated metal.

It's also nice because it gives us two seams to caulk one on the inside and one on the outside. I'll show finished drawings of the different window framing details next week, as I show how I finished trimming out all the windows and doors. Also in the next episode of the modern home project, we'll show how we did the insulation, installed the doors and windows and start having a little bit of fun along the way. Be sure to check out the first episode and don't forget to subscribe and turn on notifications. Oh yeah. And our new website's app. So check it out. We'll still be adding more information as we go, but it's worth taking a look now.

Building a Shipping Container Home – EP03 Doors, Windows and Insulation

Hi, I'm Ben. This is the house I built out of shipping containers. I've been interested in shipping container architecture for quite some time, but I had a really hard time finding good information about how to get building permits or how much would it cost? Well, we did the research. We documented everything that we did, and now we're so excited to share with you what we learned. So check it out. This is episode three, where we'll install the doors, windows and insulation. One of my favorite design features is this pair of Jeld-Wen bi-folding doors that we installed parallel to each other. Overall, we tried to keep the amount of glass at a minimum, since that adds cost and wherever we add glass, we have to cut away some of the container, but we did splurge on is one dramatic moment that allows the inside and outside of the home to merge together.

When we left off in episode two, we had just been installing the steel frames for the openings for these big doors. I wanted to create a little more visual separation between these doors and the corrugated metal. I welded someone eighth of an inch-thick plate steel to the tube steel frame. I did this on the South side and even though the motivation was primarily aesthetic to create some visual relief, this will provide a little bit of passive solar shading as well. We lifted the top piece into place so that we could get a precise mark for the length and then cut it and welded it into place. We cut the side pieces at a slight angle so that when we welded into top piece, it would be sloped to shed water. Now, typically in an environment like this, I would install much longer overhangs, but I'll explain my thinking for these shorter ones in the design notes at the end of this episode.

These Jeld-Wen bi-folding doors came unassembled, which made them easier to ship. Prior to assembling the frames we had already installed some strips of one inch thick wood that we will set the door frames on. We moved the frame into position check to make sure it was level and then screw it through the frame and into the wood surrounding it. We added shims where needed and were careful not to overdrive the screws and bend or tweak the frame. I will post the full specs for these doors on the Modern Home Project website. Once the frame is secure, we could install the door panels one at a time. Now I like bi-folding doors because they create such visual drama because you can open them all the way up. They can be however, a little bit more finicky and difficult to operate then say, sliding glass doors.

As with most things in life, there's a tradeoff. But with this project, we decided to go with the visual drama and really capitalize on the view since this was going to be primarily used as a vacation house. There was some gaps between the steel frame that we welded in and the frame for the doors. We use fire resistant spray foam insulation to fill in these gaps. We're going to cover these foam filled gaps with angle steel and flat bar. We sprayed the pieces first with rusty metal primer and then welded them in place. We used this piece of angle steel to hide the wood underneath the door frame, and then welded these really thin half inch pieces of angle section to the tube steel frame. And that just covered up those gaps around the sides.

We used a piece of flat bar to hide the gap along the top. The sparks and splatter from the welding can damage the windows so make sure you protect them. We were priming the backside of these pieces of metal trim with rusty metal primer. We had a few people suggest that we should be using a weld through primer, but then we also heard that these aren't that great. So let us know your opinion in the comment section below. The rest of the doors are all swing doors that have glass panels in them. These are also from Jeld-Wen. Once again, it's just about getting them nice and level using shims to stabilize it, and then screwing through the doorframes and into the wood around it. Every door in this house is technically a patio door and has the glass in it. I just figured if I was going to take the time to cut an opening, I might as well be letting some light in.

We used a few different types of Great Stuff spray foam insulation for this house. The reason we used a fire blocking foam on the outside gaps so that it wouldn't catch on fire when we welded on the steel trim to cover it . While I was waiting for the foam to expand, I trim the shims using a multi-tool. Tony had used a two by eight underneath this door, which was wider than we needed. So I drilled a hole and then trimmed it with my jigsaw. I'm going to slide a piece of angle steel over the wood, but under the door sill and I used a chisel just to shave the wood down a little bit so it would fit. I cleaned up the metal and then welded it in place. The foam had expanded, but there was still a few gaps so I just went in one more time to fill those in. I find that it's easier to do it in multiple passes than to try to over-spray and then have to clean up all that mess. Once the foam had fully cured, I took a knife and trimmed it flush to the door frame.

Now I can weld in a piece of angle section that will cover that gap and the piece of flat bar at the top. There was still another window to do, and we did this the same as before, just plying some caulk on the inside of the steel frame and then securing the window through the nailing flange with self-tapping screws. If I was to do this again, I think I would have installed the windows from the outside and then created a second trim piece to cover the nailing flanges. With the window secured, we then added an additional two by fours around it, and then screwed through the window and into that wood. For the inside gaps around the windows and doors, we used a window and door Great Stuff. This version is formulated so that it won't over expand and bend the window and door frames.

We also took regular Great Stuff and started foaming around all the framing. We really focused on the irregular nooks and crannies which would be difficult to fill with rigid insulation. This spray foam is helping to seal up all the little gaps in the construction, which will greatly reduce our air infiltration and improve the energy performance. We also started the electrical ruffins, which involved installing all the electrical boxes and running the wires. This is the last chance to walk through the entire house and really make sure you have all the switches and outlets exactly where you want them. Typically for a design like this, I would specify spray foam insulation, but since we wanted to do it ourselves, we chose to use rigid insulation, which is easy to cut with a box cutter. We're going to use a combination of two inch thick, one inch thick and half inch thick, rigid insulation to fill in the gaps in between the two by fours. For the ceilings we started with pieces of two inch thick insulation, which we put on top of the double sill plate and they kind of fit nicely up there. Later we taped in between the seams to seal each layer.

Now, no one on this team had ever built a shipping container house before so we were definitely learning as we went. And one of the things we like to do was to build ahead on one small area of the house, this way we could kind of test out our construction systems, see how everything would go together and then make better informed decisions as we applied it over the majority of the construction. We insulated this one end wall, and then sheath it with half inch thick OSB. Later on we had switched to plywood because it has a little bit less formaldehyde than the OSB.

Some of the biggest gaps are between the corners of the steel containers and the wood framing. And here's where I made a real big mess with spray foam insulation. I was going around just sealing up all the nooks and crannies and I kept trying to spray more foam into that big corner gap. I would spray some in move around to other areas and then come back and spray a little bit more in, and then it started spreading and getting kind of out of control. Jesse came in to start measuring and cutting the insulation panels and if you keep your eye on the pile, you'll just see it keep growing and growing and growing. A number of things went wrong. First, we just sprayed in too much, too fast. Also the air out here in the desert is quite dry and spray foam cure is a little bit better if there's a little bit of moisture.

We learnt that applying a little bit of water with a spray bottle helps the spray foam expand and fill out these bigger gaps. To fix this, we also took a bunch of scraps of rigid insulation and stuffed them into the gaps first. This way there was a little bit of structure for the foam to go around and hang on to. There you go. All filled up. We would slide in the first piece of insulation, apply a little bit of spray foam around the edges, and then add in the additional pieces. We filled in all the gaps and then sprayed around all the electrical boxes as well. We already have some insulation in between the steel floor joist, but we want a layer of continuous insulation on top of it. We're going to apply these sub floor insulated panels. These are really cool product that are often used for remodeling basements, and it's just a layer of OSB laminated to foam. They cut easily with a circular saw, and then you can just glue them down to the floor using liquid nails subfloor adhesive. For the pieces around the door we trimmed just the OSB part of the panel so that the foam would slide right underneath the door's threshold.

I really like the system. The two foot by four foot panels were really easy to handle and the whole installation went really quick. We ran out of these panels for the third container, so we decided to come up with a different way to do it. After we screwed the plywood floor panels back down, we nailed in two by fours on the flat side, every 16 inches on center. We then filled in these gaps with pieces of one and a half inch thick foam, and then nailed down plywood on top of that. In general, my strategy for this project is to use my hired labor to do the more conventional parts, like the two by four framing, applying the plywood and insulating while I focused on the steel work. I think the strategy makes sense because in most areas it's easy to find affordable framing labor than it is to find affordable steel workers that have welding experience. I want to make a thin plate steel frame to go around one of the bedroom windows. So I cut and welded pieces of plate steel together, but I was careful to make sure that there was a bit of a taper on the top and bottom panels. This way, water that lands on it will drain right off the edge.

I prepped the tube steel frame and then welded on a piece of angle steel that will serve as a ledge to support this big trim piece. I use magnets to hold the piece of angle steel level and then welded it to the tube steel frame. All of the welding that I did on this project was done with my Forney three in one welder. I can't recommend this machine highly enough. It's affordably priced, powerful and incredibly versatile. We lifted the trim piece into place and then welded it to the tube steel. We still didn't have power to the site at this point so all this welding had to be done with a generator. We use this Ryobi generator to power all the heavy duty tools and the welding and then we used our gold zero system to keep all of the batteries charged for all of our handheld power tools.

It was an effective combination because it allowed us to keep the noise down when all we needed to do was charge batteries, but then still have the power when we needed it. Shipping containers have holes so that they can be picked up with forklifts. I cut some pieces of eighth inch plate steel, prime the back of them and then welded them into place. The plumbers cut some notches into this bottom beam in order to fit in some of the elbow pieces for the drain pipes. I just took some of the extra corrugated steel and cut patches for those.

There are some really big openings at the ends of the 40 foot containers. Again, I cut long strips of eighth inch plate steel, and I welded on two small pieces of angle steel so I'd have something to clip my welding ground on to. The structural engineer required half inch sheathing on all the interior walls so while I was patching up the steel, the rest of the guys started cutting and nailing in all the plywood. This does seem like overkill to me, but I'm not an engineer and I couldn't find an engineer that would sign off on it without specifying this type of sheathing. The good news is that it will be really easy to hang pictures in this house since there will be plywood right underneath the dry wall. Typically this type of sheathing is applied on the outside edge of all the two by fours but because we started with a complete container, that would have been a little bit difficult. In our location all new houses have to have sprinkler systems in them for fire suppression so we had to wait for a specialty installer to come and install all these pipes before adding additional insulation around them. We installed another layer of insulation over those pipes with just the sprinkler heads sticking through. There are a lot of tasks you can do yourself to save money, but I highly recommend hiring experts to apply gypsum board. An experienced crew is so fast at it and they're going to do a much better job at muddying, taping and sanding than I could.

Not only would I be struggling physically with the dexterity for each one of these steps, I'd be overthinking each process as well. This crew was able to do the whole house in just two days. They screwed on the panels, muddied and taped the seams, put trim on all the corners and then did a full skim coat over the top. The skim coat is definitely something I wouldn't have attempted as a DIY project, because if you aren't able to apply it perfectly flat, you're going to spend a whole lot of time sanding.

In this edition of Design Knows we're going to go over what I learned about reinforcing openings in shipping containers. We're going to check out the installation details and we're going to talk a little bit about passive solar overhangs. Let's start with why I think angle steel is a better option for reinforcing openings than tube steel.

The width of the corrugation on a shipping container is pretty substantial and that makes it a little bit challenging to get perfect cutouts. Even when I went nice and slow, I occasionally had gaps ranging between an eighth of an inch and a quarter of an inch. It's also very difficult to hold them in the right position while you're getting ready to weld them because there's nothing for the tube steel frame to rest against. The corners of tube steel have a radius to them so even if you cut the openings perfect, that radius will slope away from the corrugated metal that you're trying to weld it to. Another issue that's totally fine for this climate, but isn't ideal overall, there isn't any overlap and that means we're relying a lot just on the sealant. With the angle steel we have three inches of overlap so even if the sealing failed, it would be hard for wind driven rain to get up past that flange.

That flange also makes the installation process a lot easier because it gives you a positive stop where you can push the frame all the way up against the corrugation. Even if you cut the hole a little bit too big, you're still going to have a lot of these positive stop points to weld the steel together. The gaps between the corrugation and the flange on the frame can be filled with closed cell spray foam. I also think the angle steel just creates a better looking frame from the exterior.

Let's move on to insulation. For the walls we were able to get between three and three and a half inches of insulation, which gets us to about R-19 to 21. For the floors we hit R-46, but remember the majority of that has steel going through it so it's not going to be as effective as the continuous insulation. For the roof we hit a total of R-48 and 26 of that is continuous. The floors, the container came with this really thick plywood. There are steel beams underneath it and in there we just filled in with a lot of rigid insulation. Mice and other critters sometimes like to burrow through rigid insulation so we made sure to seal along the bottom side steel rail with some Quick Crete precision grout. Above the plywood is where we get our nice continuous insulation using the OSB insulated panels. The sill plate ends up beneath this panels. We added some short pieces of two by four in between the studs, just to give us a little bit more material to nail and screw the plywood and gypsum board to. For the roof insulation it's all about working around the structural connections. The first continuous layer of two inch insulation sits on top of the double two by four top plate and gets pushed right up against the two inch tube steel.

We use two by fours on joist hangers for the ceiling and was able to get another continuous layer of two inch insulation, right above them. We shoved in additional insulation in between the two by four ceiling joist but some of this had to be cut out to make room for fire sprinklers and the ceiling lights. Passive solar design is all about understanding how sun angles work and designing a building so that you let more sun in when it's too cold and keep the sun out when it's too warm. This is typically done with overhangs above any windows or doors. On the south side of a building the sun will be at a steeper angle during the summer, and then it'll drop to a little bit lower in the winter. You can size overhangs to keep the sun out during the hot summer months, but still let it in to warm up the house in the winter.

Typically I would select the length for these overhangs from a chart of best practices, or if we wanted to get really precise like I did with my architecture firm, we would actually build a full energy model to really simulate how the building's going to work. But in both cases, you're taking in a lot of assumptions. With this project, since I'm actually going to be able to live in it and measure it, I decided to go a little bit more conservative on the overhangs at first and then really in measure and see how well they are working and only add a little bit more as needed. It's a really cool opportunity to design in real time and constantly improve the building. I'm super excited about measuring these things and tweaking and adjusting them.

Obviously the sun angles are going to be different in different parts of the world. This is a handy chart that I created with one of my previous design companies. They are separated into a few basic groups and then gives you really good rules of thumb for sizing your own passive solar overhangs. I'll post this chart on the Modern Home Project website.

Thanks for watching episode three. We're still working on episode four. We should have it for you soon. I know you've all been waiting and we appreciate that. In episode four, we're going to cover the HVAC systems and some of the other technical aspects of the home. So stay tuned and make sure you hit that subscribe button if you haven't already. Thanks. Bye.

Above Ground Septic System – Ep4 Building Shipping Container House

This is episode four of how to build a shipping container house and we're going to focus on how we installed this above ground septic system. Let's begin with a question that my friend's seven year old daughter asked when visiting a construction site, where does the poop go? This is actually a really important question when designing in rural locations that don't have access to a municipal sewer system. The answer for this house is a little bit different than most. It ends up in these wildflower gardens. When you flush the toilet, run the sink, or take a shower in the house, the water and waste all ends up going into a three inch diameter pipe and flows down into a septic tank.

I purchased a 1500 gallon concrete septic tank, and we needed a crane to drop it into the hole that we dug just about 60 feet away from the house. Even though the tank just looks like a big, simple block, it actually has a few key features inside that help it separate the waste into three different layers. Majority of the volume coming in is water. But as it collects in the tank, it starts to stratify; grease oil and soap bubbles float up to the top to form a layer of scum solid waste sinks down to the bottom where it slowly dissolves to form a sludge.

In the middle we have a layer of water that is full of small particles of waste. This is often called effluent. This water is full of bacteria and chemicals like nitrogen and phosphorus, which actually make really good plant fertilizer. So we are going to pump out that effluent and use it to fertilize and water the flower beds. This is important because the 1500 gallon tank would get filled awfully quick, if we didn't remove this large component of wastewater. Using these above ground concrete planters, wasn't our first idea. Originally, we thought we'd do a very conventional septic system where the effluent just drains by gravity into a leach field.

But in order to get a leach field system approved by the County, you have to perform a percolation test that demonstrates that the soil on the property can safely handle the effluent. This is done by drilling holes deep into the ground and seeing how fast water disperses in the holes. We tried a bunch of different locations on the property, but we kept hitting rock just about a foot or two beneath the surface. We finally found a location where we didn't immediately hit rock, and it was really cool to see how this giant, modular drill bit snaps together. So you can keep going deeper and deeper.

Soil samples are also collected and sent to a lab for testing to determine their capacity for distributing the water and remediating it. The water test wasn't looking good. And later when we got back to full report from the engineering firm, we learned that due to the poor draining nature of the soil, we would need an area bigger than what we had available for a proper leach field. The guy that we hired to dig the foundations suggested that we over excavate a large portion of the site and fill it in with soil to create an area of dirt that drains better. But after half a day of trying to dig through the rock he was wearing through the teeth on his excavator really quickly, and we realized it'd be cheaper just to bring in concrete containers. Seeing these nice, solid rock walls in the trench though, definitely made me think about doing a underground project in the future.

So we struck out on the percolation tests, the over excavation plan really wasn't working that well and so we turned to our friends over at. Action Pumping to come up with a above ground leach field design. In addition to the 1500 gallon concrete septic tank, we also bought four of these 1000 gallon planters. Knowing that we were going to be going up against a lot of rock. We rented a bigger excavator to dig the hole for the septic tank. The septic company asks us to dig a hole that was one foot bigger than the tank all the way around and to put in six inches of pack down gravel in the bottom of the hole. This way, they'd have a nice flat surface to set the concrete tank down on without worrying about it cracking.

We checked to see if it was level and it was just a little bit off. So we picked it up again and kept pushing a little bit of rock and gravel underneath it until we got it level. I really like this sling or harness that they use to pick up these big concrete tanks. I used a mini excavator to push a pile of dirt closer to start filling in around a septic tank. This is one of my first time to using one of these. So I played it a little bit on the cautious side, and then rather than getting too close to the edge, I did a lot of hand shoveling as well. I rented this mini excavator from Home Depot for about a thousand dollars a week. It only took me about 15 minutes to figure out how to use it. And it came in really handy for digging and filling in the trenches for the drain pipes.

For the concrete planters I'm going to place them all in a row. And this is going to dig out a flat surface about eight inches deep. This way I'll be able to bury the pipes that come out low, but on the sides of the planters. I've made a lot of concrete things before and for second, I thought about making these planters myself, but these ones only cost me about $650 each and saved me a ton of work. On form work alone I probably would have spent about a hundred dollars for each one.

The crane truck only had room to store two of the planters. So they had to drive back to the flatbed trailer and load the last two planters before placing them. Seeing these large precast concrete objects gave me a lot of ideas for future projects. I think it'd be really cool to make a hot tub out of one of these, or to make a giant above ground garden maze. There are two holes in each planter, one to supply the effluent from the septic tank and the other one is an overflow, in case the planters get too full.

I dug a trench along the side that has these two holes. We then brought in some two inch abs pipe to create an overflow line that in the rare event, if the planters get too flooded, the excess water can then drain back into the septic tank. We then installed a small pump that can send the effluent up a one inch polyethylene line and into the planters. We have a volume control valve going into each planter so that we can control the amount of effluent entering each one.

Inside the planter, the effluent will come through these PVC pipes and be distributed near the top of the planters. This way it can filter down to the bottom. We poured gravel around the overflow drain pipe, and then put a layer of landscaping cloth over that. The vertical black ABS pipe has perforations at the top and will serve as our overflow system. This way Of the planters get flooded, the excess water will flow back into the septic tank. Now back down by the septic tank, we had to install a dry box so that we can bring electricity down to power the pump.

Now, just in case we ever need to increase the capacity of the leach field, we installed an extra outlet that can dispense effluent. We use the submersible pump that is triggered by a floating buoy. So when the effluent level gets too high, it turns on and pumps it to the garden beds. I would have preferred not to use a pump in place the planters downhill from the septic tank, but on the property, There's a valley that when it rains channels and drains water and the building department was worried about contamination from a leach field, getting caught up in flash flood waters and being swept onto neighboring properties. And they wouldn't want to be a crappy neighbor. We then buried all the pipes and stacked stones around the volume control valves so that we would have access to them.

We're going to need a lot of soil for these planters, so we picked up a trailer full of this really cheap dirt from a local landscaping company. It'll be good for filling up a lot of the volume in the planters, but there isn't a lot of organic nutrients in it. I picked up a pallet of top soil from home Depot, which we'll use for just the top layer of the planters. That way we can kickstart a bunch of plants growing and create a healthy ecosystem that will help remediate the effluent. I used a small skip loader to start dumping the dirt on top of the landscaping cloth.

Once the planters were about three quarters of the way full, I started getting close to the PVC outlet where the effluent was going to come through. I then laid down a bed of three quarter inch gravel that's lined on either side by some rocks. I drilled a bunch of holes in a piece of two inch abs and then fit that over the PVC to disperse the effluent. I then added a bunch of top soil all around it. We put some water into septic tank to test the system and then open up the handle on the volume control valve and solid the system was working.

We then placed more gravel and rocks on top of the abs pipe and our planters were ready for plants. I then threw in a whole bunch of wildflower seeds. And it wasn't long before we had a nice lush green flower bed. After about a month of light use, the system seems to be working really well, but that's way too short of a test period to fully endorse a system like this. The biggest advantage of this system is that it gave us a path to approval that didn't require a percolation test. And when you factor in how much those tests costs and the unpredictability of the results, this seemed like a worthwhile experiment.

This entire system costs just about $8,000, which really isn't too bad considering how important it is. I will post drawings and specifications for this system on my website. And speaking of drawings, I've had a lot of people asking if they could purchase the complete house plans set for this project. So I put it up for sale on Gumroad and I'll put a link to that in the description box below.

That being said, this is going to make a fantastic vacation house, but unless you're going to build it yourself, it's probably going to be about 15 to 20%, more expensive than conventional building methods. So please don't buy this. If you think it's going to be a miracle solution to your housing problems, if you want to see a lot of the furniture that we're building for the interiors, be sure to go to the homemade, modern YouTube channel. That's where we show the DIY projects. We recently published videos showing how to make this modern sofa and this combination planter and side table. In the next episode of the modern home project, we're going to go over the electrical and HBC systems for the house and get it ready to paint.

Thanks for watching and be sure to subscribe to this channel and turn on notifications. That way you'll know exactly when I post the next episode. And lastly, I just want to say, I'm sorry for taking so long to get this video out. I haven't put together videos at this scale before and I way overshot and there's just so much footage to go through. So everything will get done and published and put up on the website, but please just be patient in the meantime. Thanks. Bye.

Building a Shipping Container Home – EP05

Hi, I'm Ben and this is The House I Built out of Shipping Containers. I've been interested in shipping container architecture for quite some time, but I had a really hard time finding good information about how to get building permits or how much would it cost. We did, the research, we documented everything that we did and now we're so excited to share with you what we learned. So check it out. This episode is going to be a little bit on the technical side. We're going to cover all the utilities, plumbing, HVAC concerns that go into setting up a container house. We'll start with how to go from raw land, to a house with utilities. From there, we'll do an overview of the electrical system. I'm gonna show you how I connected this container house to the utility grid.

I'll give a little bit of insight into my thinking for why I chose to be connected to the grid with a battery backup, rather than going all the way off the grid. I'll go over the plumbing systems and how we connected the house to water and show you the heating and cooling systems that we installed in this house. To start how to go from raw land to a house with utilities. One of the most confusing parts of buying raw land is figuring out whether or not it's going to have access to municipal electricity and water. I looked at a whole bunch of different lots at zeros. I talked to the different real estate agents, and I never really got clear answers from the real estate people. They really don't know and they always just say, Oh yeah, you can drill a well, or you could do solar.

It's a lot more complicated than that. Those things are legitimate options, but really expensive and they're not guaranteed. For example, you could hear, oh, you could drill a well, but there might not actually be water under your particular part of land. That was an issue I ran into with the septic is that, oh, you can do this but in that case, that particular piece of land proved to have a lot of complications and it wasn't as straightforward as the real estate agents were telling me. The best thing that I've found is to go right to the local utility suppliers. In my case, it's Joshua Basin Water District. They have a really great map on their website that shows you all the areas that they cover. You can actually put in your APN number for your particular piece of property that you're looking at, and they'll tell you whether or not it can be connected to their water.

So don't take the word from someone that's actually trying to sell the land, it makes them money off of that deal. Go right to the suppliers, find out from them, you will be on hold, it's kind of a pain, but just get that done and you'll have better information. For the land that I purchased the real estate agent said they didn't know about electricity or water, but I looked at actually the satellite views of that lot on Google maps. I could see that there was electrical poles running right alongside, and that gave me a good hint that I'd have access to electricity. I called Southern California Edison, which is our utility provider and they confirmed that they would be able to provide service, although I would have to pay for a new transformer to be installed on the pole near me .

Connecting to utilities isn't free. I had to pay a fee to the Joshua Basin Water District for a new water meter. I had to pay for excavation to actually run the pipes from their meter to the house, and then to pay for different safety features like a backflow protection device and things like that ,that will really make sure that my house is working well with their system. Those are all costs as the homeowner that I had to take on. For the electricity I had to pay for a transformer to be installed on the pole. Now, because the transformer added weight I also had to pay for excavation and for them to add an extra support cable to make the pull more sturdy. And to pay for the excavation from the pole to the house and the wire and conduit that goes into there and, of course, for the installation of electrical panel and all the things that go with that.

So all in all, I spent almost as much money just connecting the house to electricity and water as I paid for the land itself. Let's go to an overview of the electrical systems and how we connected the container house to the utility grid. We located the house about 70 feet from the nearest utility pole. The meter and main breaker panel will be located on the side closest to the pole. All the wiring for the interiors will come off of that main breaker panel and the different containers will be connected via underground conduit. We installed a battery backup system that can provide electricity if the power goes out This system will also serve as storage for the solar panels. Let's go over the process of how we connected the house to the electrical grid. Connecting to the electrical grid is done by running a wire underground through some conduit from the pole to the electrical meter and main breaker panel.

The utility company wanted a straight run between the electrical meter and the pole. This is because the wire they're going to pull through the conduit is really thick and having lots of turns in the conduit can make it difficult. The conduit needs to be about four feet underground, and we need just a single right angle turn to turn up from this trench and into the bottom of the electrical meter. The problem with this is, is that the concrete foundation sticks out past the edge of the shipping container. We're gonna have to dig down into the dirt and then cut a slice into the concrete so that we can get this right angle turn that's flush up against the side of the container. Marco used a large concrete saw to make some slices right into the foundation. And then from there, he switched to a jackhammer to break away the pieces. We could have cast the conduit right into the edge of the foundation slab, but we hadn't had a chance to confirm that with the utility company exactly where they wanted the electrical panel. Cutting this notch into concrete went faster than they expected so it all worked out.

The electrical panel is quite heavy so Tony cuts some pieces of two by four that would allow the box to rest at the right height while he drove in self-tapping screws. With the electrical panel in place it was now time to dig the trench. The electric company gave us really specific specifications about the depth of the trench, the fact that it had to be lined with sand and that the conduit run had to be straight except for the right angle turn up into the electrical panel. All this took about two days, but finally we were able to get the conduit turn right up snug against the container. We filled in the space around the conduit with Quick Crete, fast setting cement. This is a premixed cement that comes in 10 pound tubs. Later, we had two additional conduit runs. One is for the battery backup system and the other one is to power the septic pump. The rest of the electrical installation went easily. We Installed outlets, lights, and ran wires, according to the electrical plan. An electrical plan is an architectural document that is used to tell the construction workers where to place all of the electrical components.

If you're using an architect to plan out a construction project, this is an important page to review if you're really particular about where you want to charge all your electrical devices. We also ran wires through underground conduit to connect the containers to each other. I welded up some pieces of steel square tube to make covers to protect these pieces of conduit. Connecting to the electrical grid was a lot of work and it cost a fair amount of money so a lot of people have asked why didn't go off the grid with solar. I'm going to go over why I went grid tied instead of off the grid. Photovoltaic panels or solar panels are really great. There's no moving parts. They last a really long time. And other than just keeping dust off of them, they're virtually maintenance free, storing the energy they produce for a completely off-grid home is the challenge.

There are a lot of battery options on the market. In fact, I'm going to show you a option from goal zero that we use as a small backup system in case the grid does go down, but to truly be full time off the grid, you need to rely on that battery bank for everything. That means you have to size it big enough so it can handle the worst weather that you might expect every 10 to 20 years. That's the inherent inefficiency, you have to size everything for the worst case scenario, but you're paying for that infrastructure all the time. If you're going fully off the grid with all your power coming from solar, you really have to take into account those anomalous weather activities. And not just that, you also have to think about when your demand or your usage might be higher than normal.

If you have house guests over for the holiday, if you size your system for the average day where it's just, you, you might not have enough capacity to have a lot of guests in place. If you size your system for these unusual situations, again, you get this really big system that on an average day, you're not really using it to its full capacity and all of this infrastructure, both the solar panels and the batteries are pricey. When you're designing an off the grid house, you are in the sticky situation of, do I design towards the average and be cost efficient or do I design towards the exception, but then spend a lot of money. A grid type house lets you use the utility grid as a free battery. When you overproduce you sell back the grid and when you under produce you draw from the grid.

This lets you keep your energy storage more minimal and just for emergencies and it really lets you design to the most common scenarios that you're actually living in. If you're interested in grid tied houses with net metering, check out the work of my architecture firm, Zero Energy Design. Grid tied is what we recommend in most cases. What I did for this container house is a little bit different. I'm connected to the grid for all my electrical needs but I installed a small gold zero backup battery system. In this way, if we have a power outage, I can still power a few key circuits in the house, namely the refrigerator, the Wi-Fi and lights and stuff like that. One of the reasons I went with this system is that it was super easy to install, which is what I'm going to show you now.

We're here today and we're installing a new goal, zero product. This is a home energy system and what's really cool about this is that it can provide a battery backup in case the grid goes down. There are a few main components of the system. We have the Yeti, which is the brains of the situation and that's a lithium battery. Then we have the maximum amount of storage that we can get in the lead acid batteries. The last part is a transfer switch so if a disaster happens or just a normal power outage, we'll be able to go out there, flip the transfer switch and be running off of that system. The reason I like the goal zero products so much isn't that they're good in an emergency is that they're good every day.

The whole system is portable and modular so I actually use this system for powering the majority of my construction tools during this build. Nothing needs to be wired together with an electrician. It's all just plug and play. I have used it to charge everything from my power tools to an electric motorcycle. We've only had one power outage in the last 18 months so I'm not getting a lot of value out of that. What I've been thinking of how to take advantage of this system on a more regular basis is I'm going to use it to charge my electric motorcycle and the majority of my power tools that are battery powered. This way I can install three small, 100 watt solar panels on the roof, plug that right into the goal zero. In that way I have a little self-contained system that I can use for these extra electrical needs and I'm getting value every day out of the gold zero system. In addition to having it be there, nice and ready if the utility grid goes down.

This is a very high level explanation. You can go much deeper into this topic and there are cool ways you can model our systems and really figure out what works best for you. I hope my brief explanation was a little bit clarifying. Hooking the house up to water was a lot less complicated than electricity. Once the water meter was installed, we just had to run pipes underground and then enter the container at two different points. We're going to have a single on demand electric hot water heater to service the whole property. We had to run hot water lines back from the heater to the other container. From there it's just about running hot and cold water lines to all the appropriate plumbing fixtures. For the underground pipes that are bringing water to the house we use PVC. I'm really not sure what my excavator and plumbers were thinking, why they just didn't go in a straight line, but it still worked.

Once we got close to the surface, we switched to copper and installed the shutoff valve. Then the pipe goes up into a T that goes to a hose bit on one side and into the containers on the other. I've soldered copper before and it's a little bit tricky and because this is all going to be inside the walls and I don't want any leaks, I left all of the pipe sweating to the experts. The plumbers actually started on the ruffins before we even started on the framing. They came back periodically, as we framed out the walls that would support the shower heads, the supplies for the laundry machines and the hot water heater. The backend of this 20 foot container is going to be used as a laundry and mechanical space. After putting up sheet rock, we installed a ream on demand hot water heater, and it's been fantastic.

I was a little concerned at first because of the distance, but it all works really well and we've got plenty of hot water. Let's talk heating and cooling. We're going to use mini-split ductless heat pumps to both heat and cool the house. There are two major components to the system. The outside part is called a condenser. It is a fan and condenser coils that either extract heat from the building or add it back into it. This is done through tubes filled with working fluid and no air is actually blown into or out of the building. The inside unit is called the air handler and that uses the working fluid to either blow hot or cool air. Multiple air handlers can be connected to a single condenser. In the main unit I have two air handlers, one in the living room, one in the bedroom and they're connected to a single condenser.

The guest room has a single ceiling mounted air handler and the less often used office and storage space has two wall-mounted air handlers. All three of these air handlers are connected to a single condenser. Having two containers on a single condenser involves digging a trench and running the lines with the working fluid underground. The design of the system and the installation was all handled by Home Depot's Home Services Team. They send a team out first to measure the spaces and find a good place to install them and also to check out the amount of insulation that we're using so they could appropriately select components that would work for this house.

The installation team worked really fast and was able to install the whole setup for the whole property in just one day. The only thing that has to pass through the wall from the inside to the outside are some electrical wires, a hose to get rid of condensation and a couple of thin copper tubes that are insulated for the working fluid. Mini-splits have no ducts so they avoid energy losses associated with the duct works that central forced air systems have. Duct losses can account for more than 30% of energy consumption for space conditioning, especially if the ducts are in an unconditioned space, such as an attic. I wanted to use them for the container house though, because they don't take up a lot of space and they give you a lot of design flexibility. I didn't want to have to cut through more metal joist or lower the ceiling so that I'd make room for the ducts.

The installer hid all the lines and cables inside this nice housing. We used a channel at the bottom of the container to tuck away the set of lines that run to the second air handler. These mini splits come with a remote control that allows you to raise and lower the temperature and they have a variety of other settings as well, but we really wanted to take this up a notch. We installed these eco b smart thermostats, which give us all sorts of great control options. I'll put a link to these and the other systems that we used in the description box below. I've really liked the functionality of the mini splits and the wall mounted units don't really bother me, but some people find them a little bit visually obtrusive. What we thought would be cool is that for the smaller 20 foot container, if we tested out this brand new offering from Mitsubishi, and that is a ceiling mounted air handler. That involves dropping down the ceiling and we just did that with some two by fours and plywood.

I wouldn't want to do this for the whole 40 foot container because that's actually going to be living space, but here, the only area that I'm actually going to need to lower the ceiling is right over the bed and that's going to make it this really nice cozy nook. I took the disadvantages of this system and turned them into an architectural feature. I highly recommend mini split ductless systems for remodeling or for small homes that you're building from scratch. Not only did I use them here in Joshua Tree, I used a similar Mitsubishi system in my Boston loft as well. You can request a free consultation by calling 1-800-Home Depot and their experts will provide multiple options that are right for your home and that climate that you're in.

You wouldn't want cool or warm air coming right down on top of the bed, but don't worry this air handler actually shoots the air out at an angle so it's actually going past it. If you're in the bed, you won't get hit directly by the airflow. I know that was a lot of technical information. In the next few episodes we're going to get back to finishing the exterior of the house, painting it and start getting into the interior design as well. Sorry about the delay in this video, I've been really busy with the other homemade, modern stuff and a few other projects that I got going on, but I should be wrapping up the rest of this series within the next two to three months. If you're interested in the architectural drawings for this project, I'll have a link to where you can get those in the description box below. I'm starting to put together a list of all the commonly asked questions.

One of the last videos that I'll do for this series is just a Q and A session where I'll go through and answer all those commonly asked questions. Keep them coming in the comment section. All right, that's it for this episode. Thanks for watching. Be sure to subscribe and turn on notifications. I don't have a regular posting schedule. If you want to know when a video goes live, click that notification button so you'll get notified. I'm never going to be spamming out this account. The videos are going to come few and far between. So it's pretty safe to hit that bell. Alright, bye.

Building a Shipping Container Home – EP6 Painting and Anchoring

Hi, I'm Ben and this is The House I Built Out of Chipping containers. I've been interested in shipping container architecture for quite some time, but I had a really hard time finding good information about how to get building permits or how much would it cost. We did the research, we documented everything that we did and now we're so excited to share with you what we learned. So check it out. In this episode we're going to go over how we painted the containers and anchor them to the concrete foundation slabs. Let's start with what we did to prepare for the paint. After installing the doors and windows, we use fire blocking spray foam to seal the gaps between the windows and doors and the steel frames that reinforce the cuts in the containers. The reason we use fire blocking foam is so that it won't be damaged by the welding.

We then welded on trim pieces to cover this insulation. For the first few doors, we installed the steel frames first, and then ground away the mill scale to prepare them for primer. If I was to do this again, I would have done this preparation prior to actually installing the frames. It would just be a little bit easier to grind away everything. I used a combination of sanding sponges and the angle grinder to clean the steel. I then wiped down the frames with mineral spirits to remove any grease or dust that might be on them. I decided to try two different primers to see if they would hold up differently over time. First, I tried Rustoleum self-etching primer. This primer calls for the steel to be clean and rust free so I spent a lot more time on preparation. For the other frames I used the much easier to apply rusty metal primer, and I spent less time on prep.

I just wire brushed away any obvious rust with an angle grinder, and then wipe the frames down with mineral spirits before applying. The rest of the metal primer was way easier so for the remaining doors, I pre primed them before installing them. I did have to grind away a bit of primer in order to weld them into place though. Once the primer was dry, I sealed the cracks with GE paintable silicone. I've had really good experiences with GE sealants, and this is also the product that my painter recommended. Now, the single bead of silicone, isn't the only thing, keeping the water out. If you go back to episode three, you'll see how I used angle steel to create an overlap that will protect me even if this silicone should fail. I probably over applied the caulk, but I knew it would be fine once I was done painting. While I was working on the doors and windows, Tony started sealing up the roof vent.

We need soil stacks to vent the areas that have plumbing. And after spray foaming the joints from both the inside and out, Tony screwed down some flashing over the pipes. He very generously applied silicone caulk and he had to bend the flashing to get it, to fit the ribs of the ceiling panels. Once the silicone had cured, he cleaned the areas and then sprayed everything with Henry Stop Leak Roofing Spray. This spray foams up and creates a thick, waterproof coating. Even though I DIY most things, there are some tasks where I prefer a hybrid approach and feel that hiring professionals is definitely worth the time and money. Exterior painting is one of those tasks. Howard's brother Henry is a painter and he got started on priming the hardware on the doors and taping off the windows. For the exterior paint I went to Home Depot and picked up some PPG, timeless, exterior paint in a color called elegant charcoal.

I selected the flat slash mat option and I'm super happy with the color and durability so far over a year later, I'm really glad we hired Henry. It only took him one day to do each coat and he did such a great job spraying, even consistent coats that fully coated every detail on the containers. He also knew exactly what to tape off and didn't spend too much time prepping because he knew he was really accurate since he had a lot of experience with his own sprayer. For the inside we also use PPG paint, but this time in a color called crystal clear white and once again, we went with a flat finish. I love how this color of grade takes on different characteristics depending on the exterior light. Aesthetically, this home rivals any of the high end architecture projects that I did with my firm, but we did it all with things that are available from Home Depot. So consider PPG paints for your next project because I highly recommend them.

Before we get to how we secured the containers to the foundation slab, let me tell you a little bit about the sponsor for this video, Simply Safe. Simply Safe is an easy to use customizable home security system that is free from contracts and hidden costs. I got my system in the mail and I was really impressed with not only how many different types of security and home monitoring devices they provided, but also with how easy they all were to install. But what's more important than ease of installation is the fact that Simply Safe protects you like a pro with 24 seven professional monitoring with a 3.5 times faster police dispatch rate. When there is a break in Simply Safe alarm received the highest priority police dispatch because their security specialists provide real eyewitness evidence to the police department.

The Simply Safe specialists can notify police if an intruder is in the house, if they are armed and what they are doing, which results in 3.5 times faster dispatches. Simply Safe is a modern and comprehensive system that protects your home, both inside and outside. The video doorbell and HD cameras alert you to anyone approaching your home and smart logs and entering sensors guard the perimeter. Inside a layer of motion and glass break sensors plus privacy protecting cameras provide another layer of protection. Simply Safe is the number one expert recommended home security system and the Verge says it's the best home security system period. I like it. They have fair and honest prices with no contracts whatsoever. One of my favorite features is the simply safe lock. It only took me about 15 minutes to install this and it makes my home more secure by ensuring that it's always locked.

The majority of break-ins are people entering through unlocked entry point and so the Simply Safe lock is designed so that you can make sure your door is locked even when you forget to do it yourself. It can also keep track of who comes and goes and you can grant access from anywhere to guests and visitors, which is really great because sometimes I like to Airbnb the container house. Co to simplysafe.com/modern home to learn more. That's simply safe.com/modern home to better protect yourself, your home and your family. Back to the build. Once the paint is cured, I use spray foam to close up the space between the containers and the concrete slabs. The blocks at the corners of the containers hit the concrete, but everything else floats about one quarter of an inch above it. This foam will provide backing for the grout that I will apply next.

The film expanded out of the crack and I just used a knife to cut away the excess. We mixed up a batch of Quick Crete precision grout, and then pushed it into the crack all the way up against the foam. Generously applied the grout, using a really wide putty knife. I use this handy masonry tool to get a nice finish on the grout and the detail ended up looking nice and clean. I scraped away the excess and then use a sponge to clean everything up. This isn't just to give it a nice finished look. This is also critical for keeping out little critters environments from hiding out underneath the container.

Structurally, we were required to anchor the containers to the concrete slab foundations. We looked at several options before electing to use a combination of heavy duty angle steel, steel plates and threaded rod. One of the main reasons to secure the containers to the slab is to prevent movement during an earthquake that could shear the plumbing and electric connections. I measured the locations for the holes and then used my drill press to drill one inch diameter holes in the steel. These sections are three quarters of an inch thick and this took a while. We went through about three different drill bits to do all 72 holes. These heavy pieces of steel will be welded to the corner blocks on the containers. And then threaded rod will be inserted in the holes and into the concrete where an anchoring epoxy will secure them. I ground away a little bit of paint and some rust to prepare these pieces for welding. The building department required that I use a structurally certified welder to perform these specific tasks. I hired a local welder named Don, and he tack welded the plate to the long angle and then check the fit before welding the entire scene. He did all of this with a stick welder, and then he used a torch to cut off the excess.

While Don welded the rest of the pieces. I started prepping and priming the ones that were already done. I used some blue tape to keep the top parts clear of paint and then sprayed the steel with two coats of Rustoleum rusty metal primer. I placed the steel pieces and then mark the hole locations on the concrete with a Sharpie and then use my Milwaukee hammer drill to drill one in a quarter inch diameter holes, one foot deep into the concrete. This is a really incredible piece of equipment and I was super impressed with how fast it drilled through solid concrete. I typically use all Ryobi tools, but I do make exceptions for large industrial tools like this. I checked to make sure that the steel rods fit and then I painted the steel with a roller.

I squirted in some Quick Crete high strength, anchoring epoxy into the holes and then place the steel and used a mallet to drive in the threaded rods. This two part epoxy gets mixed together in the nozzle and is incredibly strong. It has a compressive yield strength of over 10,000 PSI and its pullout strength is 28,000 pounds of force. It's a pretty strong pullout game if you ask me. Once the epoxy had cured, Don came back and welded the steel angles to the corner boxes on the containers. This seemed to be the best option to us at the time, but let's go over to the studio and discuss our other options. Let's talk about anchoring containers to concrete slabs. Obviously these are some pretty heavy duty chunks of steel and they weren't the easiest things to work with. Of course, we look for a different alternative first.

Originally, our structural engineer suggested using something like these. These are called bridge clamps and they suggested using a slightly different variation of this, where this clamp part could slide freely and then you use a nut behind it on this really thick threaded rod to tighten it down. That would have been a great solution, but there are two issues that we had with this. This specific bridge clamps that met the specifications were about $350 each and we needed 12 of them. The other issue is with this detail, we would have had to embed one foot of this type of rod into the concrete before we actually poured the slab. That means we would have had to be pretty accurate with our measurements and our placement and I just didn't want to have to have only one shot to get that perfect. This other solution involving this heavy duty three quarter inch thick angle steel certainly was cumbersome, but it wasn't too hard to do. It was very flexible. Even if we got the placement of the containers just a little bit off.

I get a lot of comments about how this container house is totally overbuilt and frankly, I totally get it. I had the same impression when I look at the details that are required, but it's really not about this sort of common sense approach. It's really about what you can prove through calculations and more importantly, getting a licensed engineer to stamp the drawings. If you don't have that, it doesn't matter how smart you think you are. How clever of a detail you have or how overbuilt you think something is. You simply can't build it unless you can prove it through calculations.

That being said, I do want to hear your ideas. Even the ones that might be a little bit out there because I plan on building more of these shipping container houses. I'm willing to look for the engineers that will put the numbers behind it and actually stamp these kinds of details so we can start publishing some options that are a little bit easier than what we did for this first one. Ideas and opinions are welcome, but false certainty is just a waste of time. If you say that, you know, for sure that you can do something or that would hold, then prove it, put your numbers where your mouth is or shut up. The one thing we don't need about shipping container houses is just more wild misinformation.

This house is the first of many. I hope to improve all the details with each iteration and I'll try to provide the best explanations I can for why I did things, even if they don't make sense on the surface. I'm also working on trying to get an interview with the engineers that worked on this project. So you can actually hear from them why they pick the things that they did. Our next episodes are going to focus on building out the interiors, the kitchens and bathrooms and all that stuff. And then we'll conclude with a final house tour, as well as an episode dedicated entirely to breaking down the budget. If you're interested in obtaining the PDF plans for this project, there's a link in the description box below, just click that and it'll take you to Gumroad where we sell them. Thanks for watching. And thanks to Simply Safe for sponsoring this video. Bye.

Building a Kitchen in a Shipping Container Home – EP07

Hi, I'm Ben and this is The House I Built Out of Shipping Containers. I've been interested in shipping container architecture for quite some time, but I had a really hard time finding good information about how to get building permits or how much would it cost. We did the research, we documented everything that we did. and now we're so excited to share with you what we learned. So check it out. This is episode seven, and we're going to build out the kitchen. Shipping containers are quite narrow and once you add insulation and framing, you are left with just a little bit over seven feet drywall to drywall. I thought that a galley style kitchen would be well suited for this long narrow space. And so we put all the cooking stuff on one wall and then a combination of open shelving and cabinets to create a pantry wall on the other side.

Everything in this kitchen came from Home Depot and to be honest, I was a little surprised with how many modern options they had that were perfectly suited for a smaller home like this. I made an appointment at my local Home Depot and met with the kitchen and bath teams there to come up with the design. We had some really nice features that are typically associated with high end custom homes like this waterfall edge to the countertops and check out these solid maple drawer organizers. These are from Thomasville who did all the cabinets for this project. We took our architectural drawings into our local store and from there, we were able to work out which ones of their products would fit into our design. They even provided a nice little rendering for us. From there, we confirmed the complete list of components and set a schedule for when their installers would come and do their thing.

We started installing the kitchen cabinets after the drywall was finished, but before the flooring went in. For the wall behind the cabinets, we use green board moisture resistant drywall on the lower half, just to give us a little bit of extra protection and then use regular drywall up above. We brought the cabinets in and started to lay them out, just to check the fit relative to the design. This process lets us know where we need to cut holes in the back of the cabinets to allow access to the electrical plugs and plumbing stub outs behind them. I drilled some holes and then use my jigsaw to do these cutouts. We removed the doors and face panels from the cabinets just so they wouldn't get scratched and beaten up while we were doing the rest of the installation. We screwed the two cabinets that were next to each other together so that we could position it as one piece.

No wall or floor is perfectly flat so we use shims underneath and behind the cabinets to make sure that we had a flat surface along the top and that all the front faces were in plane. We then secured the cabinets and I started working on the side panel that's going to reinforce the waterfall edge on the countertops. After double-checking the measurements I cut two pieces of three quarter inch thick furniture grade plywood, and screwed them together to make an inch and a half thick panel. I then added a strip of one by two Poplar trim to the inside edges of this panel. This will just make sure that when I slide the refrigerator in next to it there'll be some space in between the front and back edges to provide a roomier fit. I screwed on some L brackets so that it had plenty of places to securely attach it to the wall. I stayed pretty late on this night to finish this part because first thing, the next morning, the countertop guys were coming and they needed this panel in place so that they could take accurate field measurements before cutting the quartz.

The Silestone quartz countertop installation guys came and they used quarter inch thick, Luan plywood, and a hot glue gun to make a template that precisely fits over our cabinets. I love learning from trades people. They have so many repetitions of doing the same thing that they develop all these quick and efficient ways to make. In particular, they use sheers to cut the Luan strips of plywood super-fast and that's something that I just never would have thought of on my own. They took the templates with them back to their workshop so that they could accurately cut out the quartz. We got started on the open shelving, both the open shelves and the microwave have metal tracks that get installed directly to the wall. Once these are in place and nice and level snap in the shelves and microwave. If it seems like we are rushing through this project it's because we certainly were. Home Depot had scheduled a massive photo and video shoot for this project and hired a professional production company with a nonrefundable deposit to do so.

We were really under the gun to catch up on all the time loss during the permitting process. Mike from Modern Builds knew that I was under a really tight deadline to finish before the film crew came in and offered to help with the window trim. Adam used one by two Poplar to trim out the kitchen window. This kitchen is quite small and I needed some unusual lengths for the shelving on the left side of the kitchen sink. I just ordered some longer shelves and use my compound miter saw to cut them to length. The tracks are aluminum so I was also able to cut those with the compound miter saw. I just made sure to go nice and slow so that the blade wouldn't catch. The shelves are quite easy to install. You just screw in one side of the track to the shelf itself and the other piece of the track directly to the wall.

Now the shelves can just snap right in. When I cut the shelves, I saw that they were hollow inside and I decided to use this as a design feature. So for the upper shelf, I put in a Poplar plug to make a solid end, but for the lower shelf, I decided to use that hollowness to make a four inch deep shelf that would hide sponges and dish rags. All the appliances are from a brand called Higher. We selected them because they make really nice high end compact designs that are perfect for small apartments or houses like this. We selected a 24 inch wide electric range and an under counter refrigerator that had stainless steel drawers. We then put the cabinet doors back on and we're all ready for the countertop guys. And we could have gotten recommendations for installers for the cabinets from Home Depot, but I really liked this hybrid approach where I do the parts that I feel comfortable with, but things like countertops, I leave to the pros.

The countertop guys arrived on time and it sure didn't take them long to get started on the installation. I selected quartz countertops by Silestone, one and a quarter inch thick in a color called white Zeus extreme. I really liked the durability and stain resistance of quartz countertops and I typically go with a more solid looking color like this. I just find that stylistically, they tend to age a little bit better than the heavily figured options. The top piece went in nice and easy, but I had my fingers crossed because I know how hard mitered connections can be. And I was a little worried about how perfectly the side panel would fit in. They did a quick test fit, and I thought it was really cool how they use these suction cup handles to help maneuver these heavy panels around. The fit was pretty good, but there's just a couple spots that needed to be shaved down.

They took the panel outside and ground away just a little bit so that would all fit in perfectly. They knew that the side panel was a good fit and they were able to install the under mount stainless steel sink. All they had to do was put some construction adhesive on the side panel and glue it to the plywood that I had installed. They also put a special bonding cement between the pieces of quartz. Now this isn't a very DIY friendly process, but I have done DIY concrete countertops before and I'll put a link to that video in the description box below. Once this cement had cured, they're able to clean it up and polish it.

They also drilled holes in the countertop that'll be used for the kitchen faucet and for the button that will turn on the garbage disposal and made an asymmetrical backsplash out of hexagonal tile. This was a design detail that I've been wanting to do for a long time. I made a whole video just about this one DIY project. That's on the Home Made Modern YouTube channel and I'll put a link to that in the description box below. That wraps up this side of the kitchen. I'm really pleased with how it turned out. There's just enough countertop space for food prep, but it still doesn't feel like this kitchen is overwhelmingly in a small 320 square foot cabin. I'm very happy with all the design choices and product selection. Although the one thing I might do differently, if I was to build another one of these is use a smaller microwave. It just feels like it takes up too much visual space.

On to the pantry side. The easy move would have been just to do entire open shelving set inside this dry walled recess. We thought it would look a little bit nicer and more upscale if we used a combination of solid Oak shelves with some Thomasville pantry cabinets. This space is only 12 inches deep so we actually use cabinets that typically would be used as upper cabinets in a more traditional kitchen. Tony nailed in some two by four framing and then installed these four cabinets. He screwed all four of them together so that all the face frames are perfectly in plana. In this way he only has to set this one big super cabinet. Tony put some plywood down underneath, and then used shims to get everything level and square.

Typically the guys worked from 7:00 AM to 4:00 PM and this space is really small. So as much as possible, I try to work outside during the day and then once they called it quits, I would pick up on interior construction. Now that the pantry cabinets were installed, I could cut two by fours to finish the framing up above them. I basically made a two by four ladder that was all screwed together and then screwed it into place. The framing on the right side came out a little bit farther than we originally intended to. I was left with the decision of cutting the shelves at an angle or letting the drywall that sticks out farther, create a consistent vertical line. This is what I ultimately chose because it just seemed like it would be a little bit easier and reduce the probability for errors.

With the framing done we now added the last few pieces of drywall and then taped and plastered all the seams. I'm using three quarter inch thick, solid Oak for all this shelving. It really took my time cutting all the horizontal shelf pieces to just the right length. I knew that the drywall on the right side probably wasn't perfectly flat. So I took individual measurements for the shelves that were at different Heights. I cut the vertical spacers for the lower shelf, slightly higher than the upper ones. This just looks better visually in my opinion and it allows you to store larger items lower to the ground. I did a test fit, just dry stacking, the vertical pieces on top of the shelves.

This way you could get really precise field measurements for cutting those top two critical spacers that will align the top of the shelves with the top of the cabinets,. We brought all the Oak boards back to make a ranch and Mike helped out with the sanding. We sanded them all to 220 grit and then finished them with simple finish by maker brand. This is a fantastic all plant based natural finish, and I use it when I really want to make wood a little bit warmer and really bring out the natural color. We used our VOB finished nailer to nail the boards into place, making sure to keep our edges properly aligned. Everything was going smoothly and we worked our way up to the middle shelves, where we have a lot of outlets. We thought that this shelf would be a good place for storing a lot of the smart home features and also recharging your phone.

But one of the plugs was on the side that had Oak paneling so Mike had to use a jigsaw to cut a hole out of the Oak. Super big shout out to Mike for helping out with this project. This is pretty typical out here at maker ranch. When somebody's got a really big project and a tight deadline, we normally all gravitate around them and see if we can help out. Be sure to check out the Modern Builds channel. They're doing some really cool stuff, including a bus renovation that's happening at the same property as the container house. We installed the rest of the Oak shelving and we're ready to start figuring out the trim. We're going to use one by two solid Oak for the trim. Mike held up a piece and measured where to cut it. And after sanding it and finishing in, I used a finish nailer to fasten it into place.

The trim acts as a picture frame and frames out all this storage so that it looks like one cohesive unit. I love that there's white empty space on both sides and above and below it. Jesse then came in with a hammer and nail set to recess a few of the nails that weren't driven all the way in. I like my interiors to be clean and modern and a little bit on the minimalist side, but a wall of all white cabinets to me is just a little bit too oppressive. I think we came up with a nice balance between the Oak open shelving and the Thomasville cabinets. We'll have links to all the products that we use on the Modern Home Project website. This touchless Moen faucet is one of my favorites. It's just really nice when you're cooking chicken or something like that, to be able to turn the water on, to wash your hands without actually touching the faucet itself.

The higher electric range is really nice. It's super easy to clean because it has a continuous glass surface on the top. I love how it reflects the hexagonal backsplash. If you wanted to save money, I would suggest subbing out the refrigerator, which is really nice, but a bit on the pricey side for a cheaper under counter option. In a small kitchen like this, though, I do recommend spending a little bit more to get high quality durable cabinets. The cost differential will be minimal because of the limited quantity and the concentration of use will be greater. That's why durability is super important. After working around the clock, we made it just in time for the scheduled photo shoot that Home Depot had and I'll put links to some of the content they created in the description box below. This was just about 11 or 12 weeks after we got the permits and everything wasn't actually finished.

But in typical professional photo shoot fashion, you just hook up some generators and make it work. Obviously we continued to work on the project after this photo shoot, but this was a big deadline slash milestone that really pushed us to make decisions a lot quicker and progress the project. In the next episode, we'll continue to focus on the interiors and show how we built out the bathrooms. If you're interested in getting the architectural plans for this project, there's a link to them in the description box below and check out our DIY furniture and home renovation channel, Home Made Modern. I know everyone's not going to have the ability to build an entire shipping container house, but on that channel, we have a whole bunch of modern DIY projects, many of which can be made with very little skill and a minimal amount of power tools. Thanks for watching. Don't forget to subscribe to this channel if you haven't already and keep those questions coming in the comment section. We're planning on doing a Q and A episode so we're collecting the questions from all the videos on this channel. All right. That's it for now. Thanks everybody. Bye.

How to Build a Shipping Container Home – EP08 Building a Bathroom

Hi, I'm Ben and this is the house I built out of shipping containers. Now I've been interested in shipping container architecture for quite some time, but I had a really hard time finding good information about how to get building permits or how much would it cost. Well we did, the research, we documented everything that we did. And now we're so excited to share with you what we learned. So check it out.

This is episode eight, and we're going to build out the bathroom. The bathroom for the main container is located in between the kitchen and the bedroom. It's a walkthrough bathroom because we wanted to avoid wasting space on hallways. I'll show you some different floor plan options that we considered at the end of this video.

Even though it's small, this bathroom has some really cool features like this Moen smart shower system, complete wall covering with many hexagonal tiles. And my favorite feature, this transition between the hexagonal floor tile and the wood flooring in the bedroom. The openness of the floor plan is what led us to try to think about clever transitions between the spaces and the narrowness of this seven foot wide space made us make unusual decisions like this very narrow vanity, which doesn't encroach too much into the walking space.

Now we tried to make up for the storage space lost with the small vanity with this really cool mirrored cabinets that has drawers that slide out from either side. All of the materials and products used in the bathroom came from Home Depot and I'll put a link to a Roundup webpage that has links to all the individual products, including the tile, the cabinets, as well as the plumbing fixtures. The nice people over at Moen, and wanted me to try out their new smart shower system.

In general, I prefer analog tech, but this does have some cool features. You can create different user settings for the exact temperature that you like your shower at, and then just hit one button and it'll alert you when your shower is ready and what better way to celebrate a custom shower experience than with a nice close, comfortable shave, which brings us to the sponsor for this video, Harry's. Harry's is a men's personal care brand that is reinventing the way you shave Harry's founders were tired of overpaying for gimmicky over-designed razors. So they bought a razor factory in Germany, and now they help millions of men shave each day in a premium hassle-free way.

Harry sent me their starter set and right away, I noticed the quality of the razors. They have weighted handles with textured rubber grips and a five blade razor cartridge. They even include a travel cover to protect your blades when you're on the move. It's a great value with refills starting at just $2. Harry's is offering a special deal on their trial sets, where you will get everything you need for a close, comfortable shave. You can redeem your trial set for just $3 when you go to harrys.com/modern home. Once again, make sure you go to harrys.com/modern home to redeem your offer and join the 10 million people who have already tried Harry's.

All right, but enough of that, let's get back to the building, but let's backtrack a little bit and look at the plumbing infrastructure that goes underneath and behind all these really pretty pieces of tile and plumbing fixtures. We use black pipe for the drains that go to the septic tank and for the vent stacks they go up through the roof of the container to vent out any unwanted gas. These drain pipes go above the concrete foundation and amongst the steel beams that make up the structural floor of the container.

Now, remember we had to cut some of those out, but we insulated around them. And then again, added another layer of insulation on top, we use copper pipe to provide clean water to all of the fixtures and started wrapping up the plumbing ruffins. The Moen smart shower has a specialty valve that needs an access panel, so we framed out an area for that right behind the shower wall. Once the ruffins are done, we can start closing up the wall.

Now, first we have to add that layer of plywood. And then the drywall goes on top. We use standard drywall and most of the rooms, but in the bathrooms we use the moisture resistant green board. We use red guard, waterproofing and crack prevention membrane over the green board. This rolls on just like paint. Once the red guard is fully cured, we were ready to travel on some thin set and start adding the mini hexagon tiles.

Now, if you want to save some money, tiling is a definitely a DIY friendly task, especially with these sheets that have a mesh backing. The tricky part about tile is just keeping your cracks and lines consistent. And these sheets with the mesh backing, make it really easy to do that. That being said, we are under a really tight time crunch to finish before the big photo shoot that we had scheduled, so I brought in some pros and they knocked out this whole bathroom, in about two days.

We put cement board down on top of the plywood sub floor before adding the thin set and the tile. Now we're going to use a hexagonal tile for the floor, and we're going to blend that into the wood flooring. I started laying out the portion, that's going to go into the bedroom so that Marcos would know how far to extend the cement board.

Tony had already installed the shower pan because the wall tile had to go over the flanges on it. We're using fusion pro grout in bright white. I've used this for a bunch of projects. It's a little bit more expensive than typical grout, but it comes premixed. It's super stain resistant and it has a little bit more flex, which is going to be really important when we do the transition between the hexagonal tile and the wood flooring. The tile guys finished up for the day and Jesse and Tony stayed late to install the glass shower enclosure. This just involves screwing some metal tracks to the wall, a little bit tricky because you have to drill through the tile and then inserting the glass panels and adding in a few pieces of hardware. I'll put a link to a special page on the Home Depot website that has all the products that we use for this container house. So just check the description box below.

When the tile guys came back, they knocked out the floor in no time at all. Blending hexagonal tile into wood flooring is a design detail I've wanted to do for a long time and had already worked out the rough design simply by taking a knife and then cutting away the mesh and the tile sheets and fitting the pieces together until it looked the way I wanted it to. We're shooting for something a little bit of organic, but not so complex that it would make it too difficult to cut the wood. Before the tile guys called it a day, I had them secured these pieces that encroach into the bedroom so that I could spend the night figuring out how to put the wood flooring around them.

This flooring is about the same thickness as the tile, so I'm going to have to add a layer of plywood. That'll bring the surface up even with the cement board, I got some pieces of half inch thick plywood, and I'm just going to use construction adhesive and some screws to secure this to the sub floor. I'm using an engineered flooring product that's pretty thin. If I was going to use solid wood flooring, that would be closer to three quarters of an inch thick. I would have to trim back that cement board to the profile of the tile.

Now I made sure to order a few extra sheets of this tile so that I can make a template that I use for showing me exactly where to cut the wood flooring. Basically I just cut these extra sheets of tiles to mimic the existing tile that was already glued down and then placed them over the flooring boards so that I could trace the outline with a pencil. Now this did present some complications for laying the flooring boards, because typically I would start from the wall. In this case, I'm going to have to start from the tile and then work my way to the walls.

Once I had traced all my outlines, I use some painter's tape to temporarily fastened the boards together and then use my Ryobi multi-tool with a plunge bit to cut along the lines. I don't use a multi-tool that often, but it's so good in applications like this because you can just cut straight lines and tight corners. When I laid out the floorboards, I was careful to make sure I didn't end up with any tiny little slivers that could easily break. After doing a quick pass over the whole collection of boards. I then finished cutting all the way through them individually.

I then did my first test fit and found that I had to trim out a little bit more on some of the boards to get everything to fit perfectly. My plan was to tape them together and then apply a construction adhesive and glue them down as a whole. But they all came apart, once I tried to lay them. The edges of the floorboards have sort of a tongue and groove type channel. So you insert one into the other at an angle and then snap them down. I really wanted to make sure that these were firmly secured to the sub floor. So I made sure to spread the construction adhesive evenly, then I put some boards and some heavy boxes of tile down on top of them to hold them firmly, pressed into place while the construction adhesive cured. We did a good job of getting the flooring around the tile, but not so great of a job establishing a line parallel to the walls. So in the next video, I'll show you how we fix that.

We use painter tapes to cover up the wood and then grouted in between all the tiles, once again, using fusion pro grout in bright white. Initially I was apprehensive about the space in between the tile and the wood. I was worried that there'd be a little bit of flex and that the grout would pop out. That's why I did a series of experimental projects earlier in the year, where I tested this type of grout as an inlay material for wood. And because this ground has a little more flex, it held up really nicely. With the floors done, we are now ready to bring in the toilet and install the vanity.

Installing the vanity like this isn't too tricky as basically like placing a cabinet or almost a piece of furniture and then just anchoring it to the wall. We didn't place the sink and faucet and brought in the plumber to connect the drain pipe, but we were able to connect the supply pipes ourselves.

Now I love the durability and aesthetic of completely tiled walls in the bathroom, but it does make tasks like hanging the mirrors and towel bars a little bit more tricky because drilling through tile. Isn't that easy. That being said, once we screwed the frame for this mirrored cabinet to the wall, the rest of the pieces just plugged right in. This cabinet basically installs like a heavy picture frame. And the only really trick is just making sure you getting it level. So you don't want your drill bit to slide up and down or to the side when you're trying to drill through that slippery tile. I cut some three quarter inch thick poplar to trim out the pocket door that separates the kitchen from the bathroom.

Pocket doors are great, but you do need to make a thicker than normal wall to accommodate them. So we couldn't use one on the bedroom side, since that wall cavity is housing, the control panel for the smart shower. I made an access panel out of the dry wall and plywood solid Oak bookshelf that hangs over it to kind of conceal it just a little. Now I almost didn't do this shelf because I considered using a barn door sliding system to create a door on this side. But instead we went with a linen curtain. We just thought it'd be a little bit more ethereal and light looking. I'm mostly happy with the bathroom. I'm not sure I'd use the smart shower system again, and it's not a knock on that product, it's just that the existing options already worked so well. I absolutely love the floor transition detail though. And it's holding up great after a year of heavy use.

But let's for a minute talk about the layout of the floor plan itself and why I chose a pass through bathroom with such a shallow vanity. This layout allows visiting guests to access the bathroom without having to walk through the bedroom, moving the bathroom to the end of the container would provide a more efficient layout for the bathroom, but now the bedroom is a pass through space and you'd have to consider some Murphy bed type options in order for the bed, not to become a major barrier. A skinny bathroom along one side with a hallway to bypass it is another option, but this just eats up more square footage because that hallway is going to need to be about three feet wide and isn't very useful space.

Now I am in the process of planning out another container project and for this one, I most likely will do a loft layout like this, which does feature a bathroom at one end. But for now I'm very happy with how this one came out. Although I'm thinking about doing a custom vanity that runs the full length of the wall that it's up against. Thanks for watching. Be sure to check out our other episodes of this project and don't forget to subscribe to this channel. If you haven't already.

How to Build a Shipping Container – EP09 Building the Bedrooms

Hi, I'm Ben and this is the house I built out of shipping containers. Now I've been interested in shipping container architecture for quite some time, but I had a really hard time finding good information about how to get building permits or how much would it cost? Well, we did the research. We documented everything that we did, and now we're so excited to share with you what we learned. So check it out.

Today, we're going to build out the bedrooms. This video is sponsored by Omaze click on the link in the description, and you'll have a chance to win your very own tiny home. In the previous episode, we showed how we did that transition from the bathroom flooring into the bedroom. There's two bedrooms in this house and each one of them is placed at the end of one of the containers. There's a queen sized mattress in the main unit and a full sized in the guest unit.

Now, after doing that tricky detail where I blended the hexagonal tile into the flooring in the main unit, installing just the basic flooring in the guest unit was a snap. We're using a wide plank engineered flooring that clicks and locks together and has a whitewashed French Oak look. In the main container I installed the boards running the long way, but in this little short guest unit, I'm running them perpendicular to the length of the container. The floorboards come precut, and they do a really good job of staggering the joints. But since the space is so short, I had to make a lot of cross cuts. So I just started installing the pieces and using my nail gun to nail them down. And my sister, Jesse cut the pieces to length. I really liked the idea of a cozy bedroom nook, but I also want plenty of space where the Airbnb guests can store their luggage.

So that's why I decided to do this raised deck just about 12 inches off the floor. I screwed two-by-sixes to the walls. Now, remember I have plywood in all these walls, so I have plenty of strength for the structural connection, but even so I still made sure that I screwed through the plywood and into the studs themselves. I then use joist hangers to nail in additional two-by-sixes to create support for the top deck, which will be made out of plywood. I then measured the size of the deck and cut a piece of three quarter inch pure bond, Oak veneer plywood to fit.

Now I want to take down the color of the oak a little bit. So I use a very thin wood stain in antique white. For the front edges of the bed decks. I'm going to use a piece of three quarter inch solid Oak. And I also hit this with the varathane antique white. Now the stain gives us the right look, but to protect the wood, I'm going to coat them with two coats of varathane polyurethane. While the polyurethane is curing, I cut some five and a half inch wide trim boards to cover the front faces of the two by sixes and use my nail gun with finished nails to Fasten these in place.

I check the fit of the plywood and it looked pretty good, but I did need to cut a notch out of the back of it so that you could access one of the electrical outlets. I didn't place the solid Oak front edge and drove in some finished screws to fasten it. I covered the heads of the screws, some wood putty. And I kind of liked the idea of taking this small space and making it even cozier. And I liked the idea of sort of a modern canopy bed, so I installed a curtain rod and installed these linen curtains from Magic Linens on it. This is the bedroom where we did the dropdown ceiling to accommodate the flush trimmed air handler. And the whole thing came out really cozy, and there's still plenty of room to store suitcases down below. This guest unit is just under 140 square feet of interior space and a lot of that goes towards the bathroom. That's why we put these glass doors parallel to each other so that they can bring in lots of light. And if you open them both up, you get plenty of cross ventilation.

Now, before we get to the second bedroom, let's hear a word from our sponsor for this video, Omaze. Omaze is giving people a chance to win and customize their very own tiny home. That's right. You can win your very own tiny home built by modern, tiny living with up to a hundred thousand dollars of value. And the taxes are covered too. You can fully customize this tiny home of your dreams, whether you want to add solar panels, a party deck on the roof or even a home office. So what would you do if you won the prize? What customizations would you include? I'm starting to think that a roof deck from my tiny container house might be a good idea. Now, one of the things that I like about Omaze is that they work with different charities. And for this campaign, they're working with Path and Path is on a mission to end homelessness and now more than ever, their work is saving lives.

So Path will remain on the front lines of the COVID-19 crisis to help the most vulnerable. So to potentially win your own tiny home of your dreams and support path, which is a great cause, go to amaze.com/the modern home project. That's amazing.com/the modern home project, or just click on the link in the description box below.

And now for the other bedroom. Now, if you remember in the last episode, we had some issues getting to flooring to line up with the wall. So I just covered that with a two by six and then covered the two by six with a white trim board. Now this isn't just a hide my mistakes, although it's partly because of that, it's also to create a shelf for charging your phone. The shelf extends all the way under the platform for this bedroom, which we made mostly the same way. And this Oak shelf will be right under where the outlets are. The one difference would just be that we used a nail gun to nail the plywood and Oak to the two by sixes, instead of screwing them. This is just a little bit easier to conceal with wood putty.

The bed is really the only piece of furniture that fits in this room. So I imagine will be used for lounging, watching Netflix and stuff like that. So I wanted to make sure that it had access to a lot of different plugs and outlets for charging phones and laptops. So I drilled a hole at the foot of the bed and installed a grommet so that you could run a nice cloth colored power cord through the grommet, and then plug it into the wall. I also added a shelf underneath the window where you could set books, a glass of water, or once again, your phone for charging.

Now I normally get a lot of people freaking out about how we didn't drill holes into plywood deck to ventilate the mattress well. Well with these Tuft and needle mattresses that isn't necessary, just as long as the surface that it's resting on isn't retaining moisture, which this plywood, which can drive from the bottom. Isn't also how cool are those little retro looking Conway, electric extension cords for the first bedroom we are going for a cozy reading nook. And for this one, we want it to be a light, airy destination at the end of this long container. The linen duvet cover and curtains from magic linens really helped make this possible. All right, let's head over to the studio and talk about what's next for this series.

Hi Ben here. So the series is winding down, pretty much showed all of the building and all we have left is a few more episodes. Now we're going to do one where we show a complete tour throughout the home. Maybe do a little bit of like a band a life of as if I was living there full time. In reality, we've been having this on Airbnb for quite some time, and we've been getting some really good data about how much revenue it's generating. And we'll say that information and package that all up into little, probably be the final episode for this series, which we'll talk about the budget, all the construction costs, things like that, but also show return on investment through Airbnb and potential sales offers, if we do decide to list it.

So still probably two to three more on this container house, although that could change, if we decide to add like a swimming pool or things like that, but that by no means, means that we're done with this channel. Actually I'm very excited to announce that I secured a another piece of land, not too far from this container home where I'll be building another house from scratch. Now this time, it won't be a container house. And I'm really excited about it because we've had a lot of questions and comments saying, Oh, why'd you do this? Why'd you do this well now we'll get to show a whole different way to build a modern home. And probably in frankly, a much more cost efficient way since we won't be dealing with the hassle of containers, we're gonna use much more conventional systems for construction. So thanks again for subscribing and for watching all of these videos, I really appreciate it. The series has done way better than what I expected. The few numbers are just extraordinary, considering that we launched this channel from scratch. Although we got a little bit of help from the homemade modern audience, so shout out to you guys, but thanks for watching.

And Oh, if you're interested in getting the architectural plans for this container house project, there's a link to them in the description box below. Now we've sold a ton of these. We sell them for a hundred dollars, which is way less than a typical house plan. That being said, do not buy this, if you think this is going to be this solution for getting you an affordable living situation. Container houses are great. They can be built cost effectively, but going through financing and all that stuff is what it, even if it is affordable, not that accessible, unless you have a disproportionately large amount of money for the down payment or the whole does a contingency during the construction process.

So, we'll be working towards more projects that are more aimed at more affordable type of housing in the future. That's what my aspirations really are, but for now enjoy the rest of the container house series. Keep your eyes open on my Instagram, or I'll probably be teasing the next property and what we're working on there. So thanks again. Goodbye.

Oh yeah. And one more time. Don't forget to go to omaze.com/the modern home project for a chance to win your own tiny home.

Building Permits and Foundation Design for a Shipping Container Home | EP01

In Episode 1 we will go over the basic considerations for buying shipping containers, explain how we got building permits for a shipping container house and show how we constructed the concrete foundations. 

Buying the land:

Buying raw empty land without buildings on it is different than buying a house.  It’s more difficult to secure financing for land.  I paid cash for this 10-acre lot.  It was listed for around $24,000 and I offered $20,000.   I checked to make sure it was close to water and electrical utilities before completing the deal.  I asked the seller if they had commissioned a survey of the property in the last 10 years and when they said no I explained that I would be offering less than the asking price.

Survey:

The first thing I did was to commission a surveying firm.  I emailed several local firms and asked for a quote for a full topographical survey and plot plan with all building setbacks shown.  The building setbacks are key because they tell me where I can place the house.  I want the house to be somewhat close to the boundaries of the property to reduce the need for building a long drive and to reduce the cost of connecting utilities.  The survey cost me $4000

 Buying the Shipping Containers:

 We purchased one trip condition hi-cube containers.  California requires that shipping containers used for homes have documentation showing that have not had toxic or radioactive materials in them. This normally means that you need one trip condition containers with appropriate certificates.  I bought my containers from Container Discounts and paid $4800 each for the 40-foot hi-cube containers and $3250 for the 20-foot hi-cube container. Hi-cube containers are a foot taller than typical shipping containers. If you are interested in learning how to buy a shipping container i strongly recommend calling Container Discounts. They are very knowledgeable and have good prices.

I bought two 40-foot High Cube Containers and one 20-foot high cube container from Container Discounts

Permits:

I recommend going in person to the local building department showing them the survey and asking them for a checklist of everything that needs to be completed to get building permits.  The survey is important because it shows the building dept. both the physical nature of the property and documents its legal boundaries and history.  I explained that I wanted to build a shipping container house and asked for a complete checklist of everything I would need to get done and submit in order to get building permits.  Getting building permits is a little bit different in each county. My property was under San Bernadino County’s jurisdiction.

Architectural Design

I used the architecture firm I co-founded, ZeroEnergy Design, to produce the architectural drawings.  Even though I am a co-owner I made sure to pay the firm for the hours of preparation that this task would take.  It would be unfair to my partners if I used firm resources for my own personal project. I paid $5000 for the creation of the architectural drawings.  I didn’t need a lot of detail in the drawing set since i was planning on building a lot of it myself. I just needed a construction drawing set that would get me through permitting.

Structural Engineering

I sent the architectural drawings over to the structural engineering firm I hired, and they created the structural details and created a package of calculations showing that these details would meet all code requirements and result in a safe and strong building.  This package of drawings and calculations was required by the building dept.  My architecture firm primarily practices on the east coast and does not have a stamp in California so I had the structural engineering firm stamp the drawings.  The building dept. gave me the option of having either the architecture firm or the engineering firm stamp the documents. 

Hiring a general contractor

I am new to the Joshua tree area, so I hired a general contractor to help me with the project and recommend local specialty trades people like plumbers and electricians.  We agreed on a time and materials contract where I would pay advances every week based on what we expected to do.  He would then provide receipts showing how the advance was used.  This is a pay as you go system that is good for unconventional projects where the owner is involved.  For straight forward normal construction I prefer a fixed price contract.  With a project like this builders would tend to overbid on fixed price since there are so many unconventional parts.

Foundation design:

We ended up building a monolithic on slab on grade concrete foundation.  We worked on designs for some piers that would have saved in material costs but then the space underneath the container would have been classified as a crawl space and the bottom of the container would have to be 18” off the ground at a minimum.  This would mean I would have to build stairs and railing for all the decks. 

Grading the site and excavating for the foundation

I rented a bulldozer and hired an operator to level a portion of the site where I wanted to place the house.  I then rented a back hoe to dig out the footings for the foundation.

Building the forms

The forms were built out of 2x8s screwed to steel stakes that we hammered into the ground.

Building wood forms out of 2x8s for the foundation of a shipping container house.

Reinforcement

We used #4 rebar to reinforce the concrete.  This was wired together to match the structural drawings. 

Foundation forms ready for concrete

Concrete Day

Concrete day was pretty exciting.  We had to pump the concrete to one of the foundation slabs because the truck couldn’t get close enough without driving over the other forms. 

How to Build a Shipping Container Home – EP08 Building a Bathroom

In this episode of The Modern Home Project we will build out the first bathroom for the shipping container house. We will go over the egress challenges of pl...

Hi, I'm Ben and this is the house I built out of shipping containers. Now I've been interested in shipping container architecture for quite some time, but I had a really hard time finding good information about how to get building permits or how much would it cost. Well we did, the research, we documented everything that we did. And now we're so excited to share with you what we learned. So check it out.

This is episode eight, and we're going to build out the bathroom. The bathroom for the main container is located in between the kitchen and the bedroom. It's a walkthrough bathroom because we wanted to avoid wasting space on hallways. I'll show you some different floor plan options that we considered at the end of this video.

Even though it's small, this bathroom has some really cool features like this Moen smart shower system, complete wall covering with many hexagonal tiles. And my favorite feature, this transition between the hexagonal floor tile and the wood flooring in the bedroom. The openness of the floor plan is what led us to try to think about clever transitions between the spaces and the narrowness of this seven foot wide space made us make unusual decisions like this very narrow vanity, which doesn't encroach too much into the walking space.

Now we tried to make up for the storage space lost with the small vanity with this really cool mirrored cabinets that has drawers that slide out from either side. All of the materials and products used in the bathroom came from Home Depot and I'll put a link to a Roundup webpage that has links to all the individual products, including the tile, the cabinets, as well as the plumbing fixtures. The nice people over at Moen, and wanted me to try out their new smart shower system.

In general, I prefer analog tech, but this does have some cool features. You can create different user settings for the exact temperature that you like your shower at, and then just hit one button and it'll alert you when your shower is ready and what better way to celebrate a custom shower experience than with a nice close, comfortable shave, which brings us to the sponsor for this video, Harry's. Harry's is a men's personal care brand that is reinventing the way you shave Harry's founders were tired of overpaying for gimmicky over-designed razors. So they bought a razor factory in Germany, and now they help millions of men shave each day in a premium hassle-free way.

Harry sent me their starter set and right away, I noticed the quality of the razors. They have weighted handles with textured rubber grips and a five blade razor cartridge. They even include a travel cover to protect your blades when you're on the move. It's a great value with refills starting at just $2. Harry's is offering a special deal on their trial sets, where you will get everything you need for a close, comfortable shave. You can redeem your trial set for just $3 when you go to harrys.com/modern home. Once again, make sure you go to harrys.com/modern home to redeem your offer and join the 10 million people who have already tried Harry's.

All right, but enough of that, let's get back to the building, but let's backtrack a little bit and look at the plumbing infrastructure that goes underneath and behind all these really pretty pieces of tile and plumbing fixtures. We use black pipe for the drains that go to the septic tank and for the vent stacks they go up through the roof of the container to vent out any unwanted gas. These drain pipes go above the concrete foundation and amongst the steel beams that make up the structural floor of the container.

Now, remember we had to cut some of those out, but we insulated around them. And then again, added another layer of insulation on top, we use copper pipe to provide clean water to all of the fixtures and started wrapping up the plumbing ruffins. The Moen smart shower has a specialty valve that needs an access panel, so we framed out an area for that right behind the shower wall. Once the ruffins are done, we can start closing up the wall.

Now, first we have to add that layer of plywood. And then the drywall goes on top. We use standard drywall and most of the rooms, but in the bathrooms we use the moisture resistant green board. We use red guard, waterproofing and crack prevention membrane over the green board. This rolls on just like paint. Once the red guard is fully cured, we were ready to travel on some thin set and start adding the mini hexagon tiles.

Now, if you want to save some money, tiling is a definitely a DIY friendly task, especially with these sheets that have a mesh backing. The tricky part about tile is just keeping your cracks and lines consistent. And these sheets with the mesh backing, make it really easy to do that. That being said, we are under a really tight time crunch to finish before the big photo shoot that we had scheduled, so I brought in some pros and they knocked out this whole bathroom, in about two days.

We put cement board down on top of the plywood sub floor before adding the thin set and the tile. Now we're going to use a hexagonal tile for the floor, and we're going to blend that into the wood flooring. I started laying out the portion, that's going to go into the bedroom so that Marcos would know how far to extend the cement board.

Tony had already installed the shower pan because the wall tile had to go over the flanges on it. We're using fusion pro grout in bright white. I've used this for a bunch of projects. It's a little bit more expensive than typical grout, but it comes premixed. It's super stain resistant and it has a little bit more flex, which is going to be really important when we do the transition between the hexagonal tile and the wood flooring. The tile guys finished up for the day and Jesse and Tony stayed late to install the glass shower enclosure. This just involves screwing some metal tracks to the wall, a little bit tricky because you have to drill through the tile and then inserting the glass panels and adding in a few pieces of hardware. I'll put a link to a special page on the Home Depot website that has all the products that we use for this container house. So just check the description box below.

When the tile guys came back, they knocked out the floor in no time at all. Blending hexagonal tile into wood flooring is a design detail I've wanted to do for a long time and had already worked out the rough design simply by taking a knife and then cutting away the mesh and the tile sheets and fitting the pieces together until it looked the way I wanted it to. We're shooting for something a little bit of organic, but not so complex that it would make it too difficult to cut the wood. Before the tile guys called it a day, I had them secured these pieces that encroach into the bedroom so that I could spend the night figuring out how to put the wood flooring around them.

This flooring is about the same thickness as the tile, so I'm going to have to add a layer of plywood. That'll bring the surface up even with the cement board, I got some pieces of half inch thick plywood, and I'm just going to use construction adhesive and some screws to secure this to the sub floor. I'm using an engineered flooring product that's pretty thin. If I was going to use solid wood flooring, that would be closer to three quarters of an inch thick. I would have to trim back that cement board to the profile of the tile.

Now I made sure to order a few extra sheets of this tile so that I can make a template that I use for showing me exactly where to cut the wood flooring. Basically I just cut these extra sheets of tiles to mimic the existing tile that was already glued down and then placed them over the flooring boards so that I could trace the outline with a pencil. Now this did present some complications for laying the flooring boards, because typically I would start from the wall. In this case, I'm going to have to start from the tile and then work my way to the walls.

Once I had traced all my outlines, I use some painter's tape to temporarily fastened the boards together and then use my Ryobi multi-tool with a plunge bit to cut along the lines. I don't use a multi-tool that often, but it's so good in applications like this because you can just cut straight lines and tight corners. When I laid out the floorboards, I was careful to make sure I didn't end up with any tiny little slivers that could easily break. After doing a quick pass over the whole collection of boards. I then finished cutting all the way through them individually.

I then did my first test fit and found that I had to trim out a little bit more on some of the boards to get everything to fit perfectly. My plan was to tape them together and then apply a construction adhesive and glue them down as a whole. But they all came apart, once I tried to lay them. The edges of the floorboards have sort of a tongue and groove type channel. So you insert one into the other at an angle and then snap them down. I really wanted to make sure that these were firmly secured to the sub floor. So I made sure to spread the construction adhesive evenly, then I put some boards and some heavy boxes of tile down on top of them to hold them firmly, pressed into place while the construction adhesive cured. We did a good job of getting the flooring around the tile, but not so great of a job establishing a line parallel to the walls. So in the next video, I'll show you how we fix that.

We use painter tapes to cover up the wood and then grouted in between all the tiles, once again, using fusion pro grout in bright white. Initially I was apprehensive about the space in between the tile and the wood. I was worried that there'd be a little bit of flex and that the grout would pop out. That's why I did a series of experimental projects earlier in the year, where I tested this type of grout as an inlay material for wood. And because this ground has a little more flex, it held up really nicely. With the floors done, we are now ready to bring in the toilet and install the vanity.

Installing the vanity like this isn't too tricky as basically like placing a cabinet or almost a piece of furniture and then just anchoring it to the wall. We didn't place the sink and faucet and brought in the plumber to connect the drain pipe, but we were able to connect the supply pipes ourselves.

Now I love the durability and aesthetic of completely tiled walls in the bathroom, but it does make tasks like hanging the mirrors and towel bars a little bit more tricky because drilling through tile. Isn't that easy. That being said, once we screwed the frame for this mirrored cabinet to the wall, the rest of the pieces just plugged right in. This cabinet basically installs like a heavy picture frame. And the only really trick is just making sure you getting it level. So you don't want your drill bit to slide up and down or to the side when you're trying to drill through that slippery tile. I cut some three quarter inch thick poplar to trim out the pocket door that separates the kitchen from the bathroom.

Pocket doors are great, but you do need to make a thicker than normal wall to accommodate them. So we couldn't use one on the bedroom side, since that wall cavity is housing, the control panel for the smart shower. I made an access panel out of the dry wall and plywood solid Oak bookshelf that hangs over it to kind of conceal it just a little. Now I almost didn't do this shelf because I considered using a barn door sliding system to create a door on this side. But instead we went with a linen curtain. We just thought it'd be a little bit more ethereal and light looking. I'm mostly happy with the bathroom. I'm not sure I'd use the smart shower system again, and it's not a knock on that product, it's just that the existing options already worked so well. I absolutely love the floor transition detail though. And it's holding up great after a year of heavy use.

But let's for a minute talk about the layout of the floor plan itself and why I chose a pass through bathroom with such a shallow vanity. This layout allows visiting guests to access the bathroom without having to walk through the bedroom, moving the bathroom to the end of the container would provide a more efficient layout for the bathroom, but now the bedroom is a pass through space and you'd have to consider some Murphy bed type options in order for the bed, not to become a major barrier. A skinny bathroom along one side with a hallway to bypass it is another option, but this just eats up more square footage because that hallway is going to need to be about three feet wide and isn't very useful space.

Now I am in the process of planning out another container project and for this one, I most likely will do a loft layout like this, which does feature a bathroom at one end. But for now I'm very happy with how this one came out. Although I'm thinking about doing a custom vanity that runs the full length of the wall that it's up against. Thanks for watching. Be sure to check out our other episodes of this project and don't forget to subscribe to this channel. If you haven't already.