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Shipping containers are the wrong thing to use for a home. Homes need to breathe and steel isn't going to cut it. They're also frigid in winter and hot in summer. People tried to live in them in Hawaii, there was always someone using the wrong type of materials to build a home off grid (yurts usually, which quickly got moldy due to the humidity). Steel will rust and sweat in humid, hot climates. Not exactly simple to put windows in, and they aren't easy to insulate or soundproof.
The adobe is your best material for a home. In New Mexico, they had walls 2' thick, you didn't need insulation or cooling due to that. Some have been around for hundreds of years, long after your shipping container will have turned to rust.
The dimensions aren't well suited as rooms. The standard shipping containers are 8x20 and 8x40. You can put more of them together to get more space, but 8 feet is an awfully narrow room - designed to fit on one lane of a roadway, not designed to shelter humans for extended periods of time. If I had to use a standard room block for a small home, I'd want it to be say 12x13, not 8x20 - both are about the same size in area (156 vs 160 sq ft), but the form factor is very different and it will live very different.
For someone who wants a small and economical house, I think it's best to avoid "tiny homes" and shipping container homes, and go with a conventional stick-built home of modest dimensions - roughly 650 square feet for a 1-bedroom or 950 square feet for a 2-bedroom home. Keep the foundation a simple rectangle and the roof a simple 2-plane gable roof - this reduces both material and labor costs in construction. It will be more conventional, but also more comfortable, and you'll have fewer problems with building regulations, zoning regulations, fitting normal furniture, fitting normal appliances, moving through the house and bumping into anyone else there, storing even a modicum of stuff, and reselling the place to someone else and getting your money back. The cost on a per square foot basis will be less than for a tiny home.
Last edited by OutdoorLover; 12-26-2023 at 05:18 AM..
P.S. As I write this, I am staying in a 1-bedroom AirBnB cabin on a farm in upstate Vermont - up here for a holiday. It is just 20x26 (520 sq ft), and has a shed roof and is built on a concrete slab foundation with radiant heat tubing embedded in the concrete slab and the concrete surface is tinted and polished to serve also as the finished floor.
As a small guest house, this place is pretty ideal and while I don't know the actual price, it's a pretty attractive modern dwelling that didn't cost much (in relative terms) to build. It's been thoughtfully designed. If I were going to live here indefinitely though, I'd need some closet space, a few more kitchen cabinets and want the rooms just a smidge bigger. If this were say 24x28 (672 sq ft), with at least a carport* to provide sheltered entry/egress and keep the snow off the vehicle, I think such a place would live fine for 1-2 people.
*Snowstorms, slippery footing and snow cleanup are a thing in northern New England
Last edited by OutdoorLover; 12-26-2023 at 06:24 AM..
P.S. As I write this, I am staying in a 1-bedroom AirBnB cabin on a farm in upstate Vermont - up here for a holiday. It is just 20x26 (520 sq ft), and has a shed roof and is built on a concrete slab foundation with radiant heat tubing embedded in the concrete slab and the concrete surface is tinted and polished to serve also as the finished floor.
As a small guest house, this place is pretty ideal and while I don't know the actual price, it's a pretty attractive modern dwelling that didn't cost much (in relative terms) to build. It's been thoughtfully designed. If I were going to live here indefinitely though, I'd need some closet space, a few more kitchen cabinets and want the rooms just a smidge bigger. If this were say 24x28 (672 sq ft), with at least a carport* to provide sheltered entry/egress and keep the snow off the vehicle, I think such a place would live fine for 1-2 people.
*Snowstorms, slippery footing and snow cleanup are a thing in northern New England
Wait until it’s “Mud Season” there. You wish you had a mudroom to store boots and shoes as well as coats and bulky cold weather gear.
Wait until it’s “Mud Season” there. You wish you had a mudroom to store boots and shoes as well as coats and bulky cold weather gear.
Don't let the great be the enemy of the good - you can make do with a small bench near the front door to sit on while hauling boots on/off, hang a coat rack with pegs on the wall over the bench and keep a rubber boot tray nearby... good enough.
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