So the girlfriend and I have been toying with looking at land purchases. The idea is that although we dont have the money to buy a house/buildings now, we should buy the land now because it surely wont be cheaper later on. Theres one place, 80 Acres with a stream for $120k, that sounds nice. I wouldnt mind burying a cargo container into a hillside just to give me a place to stash stuff until the day the construction starts, but apparently the UK has a nice little industry with portable buildings that look like they just re-tooled a cargo container manufacturing plant. Check this out:
http://www.portakabin.co.uk/productsandservices/products/portable/pullman/

You know, from the “weekend cabin/retreat” standpoint you could do alot worse than rehabbing a cargo container.

11 thoughts on “

  1. The question then becomes, “what does a cargo container cost?” I can’t imagine it would be very cheap with the cost of steel like it is.

  2. one

    little item is there is going to be no complete safe place place to live within your lifetimes. build it to last the long years ahead. Wildflower

  3. Au contraire….apparently, since we import such huge amount of stuff, there a plenty of these things to be had. Certainly a new one would be expensive but as I understand it, the docks are full of ‘gently used’ ones and brokers abound.

  4. I did some digging a few weeks back. Looks like new 8×40 container is about $2000 delivered. Add about $500 for a high cube model – it gets you an extra 1’2″ of internal height, which would be handy for putting in raised floor to hide plumbing and wiring and such, and it would be handy for hidden in-floor storage.

  5. http://ilsc.natick.army.mil/SSS/ISO.htm

    The above link is the type we used while I was in the AF for our field hospitals. The whole unit collapsed down to a standard shipping size, and either one or two of the walls expanded out once you got it set up. A good experienced four man team could set the thing up in less than 30 min from drop off, but we could do it in about the same with only two people since we taught it every week.

    The next few links are just different versions available.

    http://army-shelters.com/default_ISO.html

    http://www.elliswatts.com/custom_mobile.htm

    http://www.army-technology.com/contractors/field/gichner/

    http://www.saginawproducts.com/ground/mobil.html

    This link has a good image of a deployed hospital, and if you look in the upper/middle right you’ll see an ISO set up and how it connects to the TEMPER sections. http://www.military-medical-technology.com/article.cfm?DocID=99

    If they even seem remotely interesting, just google “ISO Shelter” for buttloads more. I personally would love to have one, but I have no idea what they would sell for to a civilian, even if it was a surplus model.

  6. And I forgot to mention that we shipped tons of material inside them, then set up the shelter when we got on site, so you can very easily leave it closed as a storage unit and expand it as needed for habitation.

  7. I was thinking that the value of the container as scrap steel would make it too expensive, but a quick search on ebay for “shipping container” shows some 20 and 40 foot containers for sale for less than $2k. That seems pretty reasonable to me. Though one seller advertises them as “theft-proof and virtually impregnable”. He underestimates the efficacy of an oxy-acetylene torch.

  8. Off-topic

    Friend on a board asks:

    Can anyone tell me or show me the difference between a sten MKIII and a MkV???

    Is it just the stock only? or some other changes to the design of the receiver, etc?

    I thought of you and google, and I’m too lazy for googling right now. 🙂

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