5 Problems with Shipping Container Homes

For those of you that don't know, my name is Devin Lorup and in 2022 I built this shipping container home out of five shipping containers named the Pacific Bin and it ended up exploding and being the most followed Airbnb in the world. In this video I'm going to be getting real with you guys and breaking down five reasons why I may be done making shipping container homes forever. And if any of you guys are considering building shipping container homes, you're definitely going to want to consider these five things before you take the leap. This video is going to be a little bit different than my normal style videos because this is going to be more of a hot take of me explaining my true feelings behind this home and if it was worth all of the sweat equity that I poured into this. There's two very unique builds happening by the end of this year so you're definitely going to want to make sure you're following along. So my first point is the cost to build this home. One of the biggest myths behind shipping container homes is that they're way cheaper to build than conventional homes. And to be honest, if you're doing a one-story, maybe two containers, maybe three on the bottom and they're not stacked in any unique way or you're just stacking two directly on top of each other, it most likely will be a lot cheaper. But the big kicker is once you add a second story here, that's when your costs start to stack up really quick. So for those of you that don't know, shipping containers are not meant to be stacked like that. They're meant to be stacked corner to corner like you see on the big freighter ships. At first glance you probably wouldn't realize that there's tons of extra structural steel involved. You'd probably notice the 4x4 angle going around the windows. But I did design it so that a lot of the beams and channels can be hidden in the walls so you can't even tell they're there. So it does seem like I just dropped these containers on top. But for example, there's a nine inch channel that runs right behind this that supports the whole upper part of that box there. And then there's another one right in here and same on the opposite side of the house. So they almost work as four posts holding up these upper two containers on each end of the house. You can see more of the structure from in here. There's some I-beams that were required here, some more nine inch channel in these walls, these walls, and over there supporting the rooftop deck. Structural steel is one of the biggest adds. Another one is the spray foam insulation. The spray foam was almost $20,000 which you do have to use a closed cell foam in shipping containers because the steel will pretty much work as a flash point for condensation. But that closed cell foam acts as a vapor barrier so that moist air is never able to get on the container and actually flash and turn into liquid. Another thing that plays into that is that you also have to frame out each of the walls inside so that you have a cavity for the spray foam to go and also a nice surface for the drywalls to attach to. So not only do you have to pay for structural steel but you do still have to pay for lumber. Granted it is less because you just have to frame out two by fours, not two by six or eights like you would do in normal conventional homes. So it's a little bit cheaper but your steel ultimately puts you a lot higher for the structure. Which leads me to my next point which is routing for mechanical, electrical, and plumbing components. In normal homes you have 12 inch floor joists. You have plenty of room to run all your plumbing, electrical. If you're on the second floor you can just cut in the lights for the floor below. But shipping containers you don't have that luxury. When you stack them on top of each other there's only a couple inches between which makes lighting the home really tricky. Especially if you're going to have this exposed metal aesthetic of the initial shipping container. There was so much planning that it went into the layout of this home to make it as livable as possible while still being functional. For example on half the house over here you can see we'll be cutting in lights in the ceiling and that's because there is a wedge roof sitting on top. But on this side of the house we just have up lighting and couldn't put any penetrations here because it's part of the water barrier system and we didn't want to be poking any holes up to an exposed deck and have water problems down the road. Before getting to the next point I do want to thank the sponsor of this video which is AG1. I can honestly say for the last six months I've been drinking AG1 and I don't know what I would do without it. Now that I've wrapped up my latest build the Cedar Hollow I'm finally able to have life get back to normal and I'm able to get back to the gym and really focus on my health. By far the biggest difference that I've noticed since I started drinking AG1 is my energy levels. Every morning before I was drinking AG1 I would have a couple cups of coffee and then in the afternoon I'd have a few more to just sort of like keep my energy levels up there. But with the B vitamins and magnesium in AG1 it's able to give you a nice sustained energy boost throughout the day which seems to last a lot longer and doesn't feel artificial like a random little caffeine hit from a cup of coffee. With so many big projects coming down the line having a healthy immune system is huge for keeping me on top of my game. I don't just put anything to my body and after doing some deep dives learning about the product and the team behind AG1 they're actively working to make AG1 the best product it can be. They only use the purest sources and their manufacturing and testing facilities test for over 950 contaminants and impurities. Three batches NSF certified for sport the gold standard for those who follow strict rules on the supplements that they take. As an added measure their manufacturing facilities are TJA registered. This regulatory body verifies the strictest compliance standards in the world. Go to drinkag1.com backslash devinlarv or scan the QR code to get your free welcome kit that includes this awesome canister, the shaker, a year supply of vitamin d3 k2, and five extra travel packs of AG1. So thanks AG1 for sponsoring this video. And my next point is that none of the contractors, architects, structural engineers that you're working with have ever worked on shipping container homes or maybe some of the structural and architectural people will have dealt with them but it's going to be a very few majority of contractors that have worked with them. So you're going to have to be combing through the plans really thinking through every single step of the build which is why you see a lot of homeowners that are very DIY and hands-on with their build tackling container home builds because there is so much that goes into it and you have to be sure that everything is done right otherwise you're going to have problems years down the road. Now I'll give you a little insight into one item that I never see talked about on YouTube or Instagram regarding container homes and that is proper ventilation inside the home. So my home for example has a mini split system where there's five heads two on the main floor and then one in each bedroom upstairs. So each of the mini split heads provides proper heating and cooling to the air but you still do have to have ventilation throughout the home where you're pulling in new air and exhausting out old air otherwise you're going to have humidity build up inside the home so you definitely want to make sure that your ventilation system is set up correctly. If you don't have your ventilation set up right you're going to run into some mold issues down the road where humid air flashes and condensates so it makes like a little water droplet on your steel gets onto all your wood framing and starts to rot away and mold starts to grow on the framing so ventilation is key. If you are considering building a shipping container home I can't recommend enough checking out my plans set down below there's a code where you can get 70% off of the construction plans there's still a few codes left they will save you so much time and so much money not having to go through the whole planning process and waterproofing details you could just reference all mine and build yours exactly how you want and a lot of the architectural details are able to be used on any sorts of layouts of container homes especially if you're doing two-story unique builds like this this is a perfect set of plans so you can also shoot me an email if you have questions down below at info at the pacificbin.com. As I'm editing this I realized I didn't record point number four which is that container home construction takes a lot longer than conventional construction with me just wrapping up the cedar hollows build I now know how quick you can build a home when you're just doing stick frame builds which is a lot quicker you don't have to weld all the way around windows there's no big structural welding you have to do you pretty much just build the walls on the ground stand them up and you're good to go so definitely know that if you're getting into this it's going to take you a bit longer but the payoff is in the really cool aesthetic that you're left with at the end. Which leads me to my fifth item which is you're fairly constrained when designing the home you essentially have 8 by 40 foot cubes that you're just stacking however you want which if you are designing a home hop on amazon and get some of the little brio train car 40 foot containers and you can stack them and play around with designs but laying out how the cubes stack together is fun from the outside but then once you look at your inside footprint it's really tricky to try and space plan and get everything to lay out perfectly so that it all works well together so it does constrain you in the sense that you can't just frame out five more feet on the house or design that two feet bigger so you are stuck with those 40 by 8 foot sections but that is one of the direct trade-offs for having a really cool looking structure that's just these metal cubes so end of the day will i be building any more shipping containers i really don't know to be honest this thing was a ton of work but i think now that i've gone through all the steps once the second round would be a lot easier and there were some lessons learned that could definitely expedite the construction process and just make things a little easier especially using the same contractors to build again and i guess one of the biggest things for me knowing that i wanted this home to be a short-term rental is that the design is so unique and there's nothing like it in the area there's all sorts of a-frames out here there's all sorts of little riverfront cabins but there's nothing that looks like the pacific bin so it really is a one-of-one which when people book vacations they want to stay in extremely unique looking homes in the next one to two years i most likely won't be building any more shipping container homes mainly because i'm trying to stock down the debt from this and the cedar hollow and i just need to take a little bit pulling back on the reins but who knows maybe two to three years from now i'll be itching to get behind the welder again and we'll get back at it like i mentioned earlier i do still have my construction plans and a few of the bin 70 70 off codes listed down below in the link if you're interested in building shipping container homes i've had so many people reach out and say hey this detail saved me so much time i was trying to figure this out or i was wondering how to do this certain thing so it really will save you a lot of time and a lot of money because there are a lot of scams out there where you buy container home construction plans where it's just like yeah stack the boxes and you're good to go that's that's not how it works anyways thank you guys for following along thanks ag1 for sponsoring this video and we'll see you in the next one peace