A place to live while building your primary home

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A place to live while building your primary home

Generally speaking, while building a home, most people will not complain if you have a shipping container on your property. Contractors routinely put shipping containers on a property where they are actively building. Living in one is not the same, but many do it and take the legal risks. We recommend permitting the structure, which will cost you significantly more money, and we leave this decision up to you. We are not responsible for any bldg violations you might encounter doing this without permits. Please call us to discuss this in greater detail. We offer a single container structure that is legal and permitable. In fact, one of our clients received her permit for a single 40’ container home in April 2008 because of our draftsmen and Architect walking everything through the County. We can do the same for you. Folks going it alone have generally been shot down. Some folks do not believe this. If you want, you can try it and see for yourself.

This is what we recommend:

Single 40’ premium condition used Hi-cube with-

Refurbished and painted exterior, finished with ceramic paint to reflect heat.

3 windows (4’x5’) and a 36” steel covered door. We recommend, but do not require removing the double metal doors and welding container wall metal to cover up the gap. The double doors and hardware are very ugly, plus insects and humidity can easily cross thru the rubber seals. A door or window can be installed within the welded metal.

Basic 36” x 36” shower stall, toilet, sink and basic bathroom hardware/accessories.

Efficiency kitchen with single counter top and upper/lower cabinets, sink.

Overhead fluorescent lighting (4 lights), 8 electrical outlets. (We are not wild about fluorescent lighting, but it is very economical. We can install other lighting if desired.)All wiring, outlets and switches are completely inside the walls for those wanting insulation and drywall. For those not wanting this, you will get wiring inside metal conduit that is directly visible, and the corrugated walls will be visible and difficult to clean where they meet the floor. Going with no insulation and drywall will save you quite a bit of money, but it can get very cold at night.

This design has a shed style roof with metal roofing for the most economical roof possible.

Total cost as outlined above is about $17k on Oahu, about $1200 more for neighbor islands. This would be without insulation and drywall, using conduit for wiring. Price is an estimate and does not include the roof structure. (We build our offices and these on Oahu at our Kalaeloa facility). You would be responsible for hooking up septic and water and power on your site. We can recommend labor for that if you don’t have people in mind.