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.