How to Install a Shipping Container Home
Installing a shipping container, and or shipping container home onto the ground and or it’s platform/foundation.
Before the delivery day of your shipping container or shipping container home there is a lot of work needed to be done . Depending on your final use of the shipping container you will need to create some type of a foundation. The first layer of the foundation is usually crushed rock and sand, or called in Costa Rica “elastre”. Rock spread out to cover the area so you are not dealing with mud and lot erosion, especially during the rainy season.
All containers must be placed on some type of platform above the ground if they will be in one place for a long period of time.
First the holes were created and a 1mx1m (8” thick) was created deep inside the hole, this was about 3 feet deep. Then plastic container were placed on the base and filled with cement and rebar. The rebar penetrates though the barrels and into the 1mx1m platform. This structure should be enough to support a 20ft standard ISO steel-shipping container. With the larger shipping containers you will need to place extra cement filled barrel in the center.
As shone in the photos above, the next step is to place treated 4x4s in place to support the sides of the shipping container. These naturally must be level. Now you can install the tubes for anything underneath the shipping container.
This should only be the septic coming out of the toilet.
The space between the shipping container and the ground should be planned out before you begin construction. This bottom space can be used as storage space for many different yard items, or the perfect doghouse space.
Now the time has come to where you will be unloading the shipping container and placing it on your new foundation. This can be done with a backhoe and or a crane. Most backhoe and cranes have in stock the chains required to lift off the shipping container and swing it in place. You will need to connect rope to two or four of the corners of the shipping container in order to steer it into place and set it down on it’s foundation.
Once the shipping container is in place then you can secure the four corners into the 4 by 4-wood beams with long screws. Or if you were not using the wood beams as your technique for the foundation and instead you were using just the cement barrels then you would create a steel nipple on each top of the barrel to support the shipping container.