Building a luxurious life from shipping containers, smart use of technology, and less cash then you'ld think.
I have, by nature, long been a creator of schemes, some hare-brained, some marginal, some of which have since been implemented quite effectively at large corporations who were quite happy with them. However, I've never been much good at discerning the deeply delusional from the decidedly doable.
So I've decided to start wrting these schemes up and seeing what responses they get.
Keep in mind that all numbers are very approximate unless I specify otherwise as are all approaches. I'm blue skying the idea here and many details will be provided just to give a sense of what type of approach might be taken rather than the one correct means possible. In other words, if I say that at this step we assume that our person will be able to find a few days of good weather that doesn't mean that the lack therof would bring the whole thing crashing down, just that this makes it faster to describe and while I'm inflating all the costs a bit to allow for some of those things not working out, I don't think you'ld be willing to read a version that didn't try to keep it at least a *little* brief.
One thing I've been looking into for a while now is a rather extreme approach to off-the-grid living.
Principles
It's based on five interlocking ideas.
- First of all, the use of standard shipping containers as a basic building block. They are astoundingly cheap in coastal cities. In fact, they make maving moving so much cheaper that that right there will pay off a third or more of their cost. They are so strong (designed to hold eight more containers on top of them with each one weighing over ten thousand pounds) that most usual issues in building a conventional residence (such as snow load) become laughable. And they are absolutely standardized. being as interchangable as 1" SCSI drives or ATX cases.
- Secondly, much of the viability of remote living comes down to esthetics and sensation. I contend that if you're living out in the middle of nowhere the extra little bit of cost to have ten varieties of munchies growing in the house, having a deep stock of frozen dumplings and using two inch lumber for floor boards and cast brass doorknobs, not to mention what is considered excessively large social areas, will more than pay off. It will radically change livability both day to day and make your home a more inviting gathering spot for others. It massively increases one's ability to both integrate into the surrounding community and take a leading role in it, and furthers the likelihood and viability of having long-term visits from others "like us". After all, if one's house is the desired gathering spot, and one can readily and cheaply have a graduate student (or even two or three) move in to work on their novel/design/code, then the famous "I have nobody to talk to around here" crisis pretty much fades away.
- Thirdly, that leading edge implementations of current technologies make living off the grid in comfort much cheaper and more pleasurable than people expect. This includes not only things usually thought of as off-the grid tech like wind turbines but also things like Airport/802.11b, use of LEDs for lighting and building one's own Peltier and heat-exchange-based refrigeration and HVAC system.
- Fourth, that a pragmatic mid-level implementation of permaculture built around the integration of a greenhouse into the structure of the house and built with what is considered a "Victorian" approach of low stone or brick foundations and a mixed-material skin can turn impractical climates into far more viable places to live. After all, being housebound during a nor'easter loses sting when one is sitting and eating fresh mango in a twelve foot tall brightly lit (LED supplemental lighting) sunroom and surrounded by ivy, a stream, and fresh vegetables.
-Fifth, that an aggressive use of surplus (for example, use of glass shelves from retailers going out of business as window and greenhouse glass) makes it possible to massively cut expenses and thereby allows "profligate" choices that would otherwise seem impractical.
Here's what I propose. Let's postulate a couple, Sue and Bob. They have been doing freelance stuff for a while in Boston and are pretty fed up. They decide to move out but don't want to trash the environment or have to live in a freezing isolated shack to do it. We are also assuming that our starting point is in early 2004.
Choosing and Buying Land
First they wander around some and do some research. Perhaps they do a few long weekend drives to areas they considers promising. they subscribes to relevant local magazines for a few years. They probably racks up some notable long-distance phone bills checking out options, maybe lose a day or two of billable work. Cost so far, about five hundred dollars.
Next they buy a cheap plot of land in Vermont. Based on rural Vermont land prices I've seen, a solid homestead (let's say seven acres) can be bought for about fifteen thousand dollars. This land is what brokers call "rustic". That means dirt roads at best, no phone lines, and far from anything. To preserve our safety margin, let's say twenty thousand dollars. They shouldn't have much trouble getting a loan for some of that (so add $4K for interest since the loan will be short-term), covering some with cash, and the rest with a financing deal with the seller of the land. Cost so far, perhaps $26K.
After having bought the land, they probably take another trip or two up. There are several things to take care of, the most urgent of which is lumbering. They will want to hire somebody to lumber off some part of their land (let's say one acre) in return for some percentage of the wood. The deal will leave them with quite a pile of lumber which they will have asked the crew to plane into boards two inches thick. Of course, this will be mostly new-growth pine, and of varieties most furniture makers would consider "trash wood", as well as being green. Bob and Sue provide them with a framed tent (add $300 to costs) and ask them to stack the lumber, divided by shims, so that it can start to cure.
The Big Box Arrives and is Groomed
Next the interesting stuff starts. Bob and Sue's next move is to buy a forty foot storage container and has it dropped near their current residence. We're talking a standard shipping container except that they has been careful to get one that is extra tall. So the dimensions (externally) are nine feet wide by eleven feet tall by forty feet long (pretty much). they bought a used one and being near a major port it will have been very cheap. Let's say four thousand dollars. Then we'll add two hundred for rental of the parking/working space and another two hundred for having the thing delivered.
They rent a sandblaster and strip off all the paint that they can, inside and out. Their not expecting to get it perfect but to find any rust spots and clear off loose grime and muck.
(At this point our scenario is trying avidly to branch as ideally this would be the time to cut some holes in the roof and install windows but I'm going to leave that as a couldabeen as most folks won't be in a position to do that cheaply and effectively.)
Sandblasting and cleaning has cost another two hundred and used up two days. Ideally they had a friend helping, and they lay on a couple of coats of industrial primer, which is pretty cheap in five gallon buckets (let's add fifty dollars for that) and since they bought a pretty decent paint sprayer (add another hundred) and industrial primer dries about as fast as you can look at it, the job goes pretty easy.
We now add the first gamble and assume that they can get a stretch of days with good weather or that their space is indoors. This lets Sue and Bob use their handy-dandy paint sprayer to lay on six coats of Rustoleum and/or equivalent industrial enamel.
Now I know from personal experience that that many layers of heavy enamel where the last layers are Rustoleum will last for at least ten years outdoors and look and hold fine (I've even done it on plywood exposed to wind and heavy rain) and I'm expecting the same, so if you think that more than two coats is overkill, trust me on this, I have my reasons. But, since all but the last coat can be anything durable and we're assuming that Sue and Bob are pretty good planners, this won't cost as much as you think, because they will have been getting such paints whenever they could, with no respect for color or brand (anything reputable and not in storage too long is fine), probably buying at a closeout or ugly colors. That having been said, this step only costs another hundred and seventy five.
Stocking and Packing
Now they goes shopping. This includes:
-) two or three top-opening freezers, bought used, and a few five gallon or larger coolers
-) some electrical/electronic stuff (we'll get back to this)
-) a few "vintage" door knobs and other bits of architectural details
-) three matching surplus four foor tall index card cabinets (let's say twelve drawer) and two matching horizontal file cabinets
-) spices and other cooking materials
-) about a hundred videos, CDs, and books
-) twenty two-inch construction styrofoam sheets (4' by 8' , of course). Maybe also some homosote and durock
-) about fifty varmint-proof dry-goods storage containers, from one pint to three gallon (mostly big)
-) laundry bins, dozens of big ol' Rubbermaid laundry bins, ideally in green, yellow or brown, certainly not blue.
-) stainless steel catering/steam table trays
-) dozens of glass shelves
-) some old computers and computer stuff
Bob and Sue will have already bought the following, a 500 watt wind turbine with ten foot post and base ($900), several marine batteries and a 400 watt trace inverter ($500), a thermoelectric (Peltier junction)cooler ($70), ten battery-powered closet-sized flourescent lights ($30), two solar battery chargers ($200), several battery-powered fans, twenty white LED flashlights (very low end) ($40), two good quality oil lamps with three gallons of lamp oil ($120), ceramic filter/terra cotta base water cooler ($140), ten five gallon office water cooler water bottles (swiped from the office), another hundred and fifty books ($300), a fifteen foot by fifteen foot flat-sided tent ($200), loads and loads of high end silicone caulk ($200), enough twelve-gauge wiring for a small house ($30 surplus) Bob and Sue will also have delivered to or buy in Vermont the following: a small basic, cast iron woodstove ($250), four pre-hung two-foot by two-foot double sash windows, a rubber tire four wheel cart (basically an adult wagon) ($250), some more canned goods and other storable food and groceries.
We are assuming that they already own a moderately current laptop with a DVD drive.
Now they pack a lot of their possessions and all this gear into the container, putting the freezers (unplugged, of course) and coolers together at the front (last area loaded) and surrounding them with the construction foam.
The last thing that they do before they leave is go to Chinatown and buy several hundred dollars worth of frozen dumplings, steam buns, fish balls, fish, and a few other such things because nobody understands better how to make frozen savory foods of the sort that ex-city-dwellers miss then the Chinese. Ideally they also buy some frozen Indian food and quite a lot of frozen tropical fruit paste (papaya paste, for example, keeps well) and probably some Mexican. Dry ice is then laid in the base of the freezers and they are filled with food. The remaining two coolers are filled entirely with dry ice and the whole assemblage is closed in with the construction styrofoam and other stuff to create an instant maxi-cooler.
They then either puts a rig under the container and tow it to Vermont or pay to have it delivered to the site while they travel separately. On the way out of town they stop by several different nurseries, buying a different variety of dwarf lemon or lime tree at each.
Prepping the Land
When they reach his land they first do three things, pitch a tent on the nearest flat ground and move in, put up a post for the wind turbine, and either rent a backhoe (ahh! Komatsu! ahhhhh! BobCat!) or hire someone with one. The wind turbine is hooked up and the trace inverter and batteries gotten running; this provides modest amounts of power onsite. Most of this may end up initially used to run the freezer with the food in it. The solar battery chargers are put at separated locations so that if one is in shade, the other isn't.
Next they dig an outhouse and cover it with a tent. If we assume that this project is all being done on minimal money they'll be using this for a while. If they have the cash and time they may set up a composting toilet. Somewhere else they set up a shower run off rainwater. Realistically they'll be periodically sleeping at friend's places or renting a motel room occasionally to get a proper bath and a real night indoors.
With the backhoe a space is cleared (on the lumbered land) for the container as well as about a fifteen foot by fifteen foot area beside it. A significant distance away (say, sixty feet) Bob asks them to dig out the hole for a small foundation. Say, twenty feet by twenty-five feet and four feet deep.
They may also ask them to dig a channel about three feet wide by about sixty feet long by about six feet deep starting at the edge of the property and placed so as to best serve as a channel for communications line from the nearest road.
They pile the resulting soil wherever it is least in the way, perhaps using some of it to level the road/path out. If they have the cash, they has a minimal foundation poured in the big (twenty by twenty-five) hole. Just enough to keep it from filling back in. Whenever they accumulate enough more small rocks, they spread them on the path from the road to the house.
Social Engineering
They now take their hundred and fifty extra books and do a shameless bit of social engineering. These books will be in fields of interest to them, some specifically for younger readers. they now donate a third of these books to the local library and a third to the local schools, and sell the rest to the local bookstores for whatever price they'll pay. After all, what cheaper way is there to increase the odds of finding people with their interests? They would be well advised to volunteer at these places but they may not have the time or temperment. Eventually they will get around to turning their surplus computer gear into good basic systems and donating or selling them off locally at nominal cost. Again, this gets them in touch with local folk and provides a chance to create fellow users. If they're Linux folk, they will create Linux systems. If they're Mac heads, then they'll all be Macs. If they're into databases, then they'll load PostgreSQL with tutorials on every machine they do.
Personally I think that encouraging database and open source training in rural areas is a very good idea as work in both fields can be done by telecommuters, both fields encourage interaction and the development of rigor and cognitive skills, and both fields will continue to need experts for a very long time to come.
Homesteading Begins
They now have a flat slab foundation poured on the fifteen foot by fifteen foot flat spot and have posts sunk and concrete poured around them at one side where the container will sit. As soon as the posts are usable they moves their tent to the flat concrete and have the container tipped onto the posts. Tipped? you say. That's right, tipped. You see, they will want the container rotated on its side so that it is now nine feet tall and eleven feet wide. With the inset beams that are a standard part of shipping container design, there is strength to spare either way.
Turn, Slice, Reset
Now they have holes cut in the side for several two foot by two foot windows and then they do something interesting. They have the entire "top" (formerly a side) of the container cut out starting about three feet in from each side. In other words, the central five foot (eleven minus three for each side) by thirty-four foot (forty minus three for each end) section of new roof is chopped clear out. Along the edges of this cut and reaching to the sides are inset strong steel beams, getting back the rigidity that this has just cost. Then eighteen inch upright posts are put in along the edge and another frame built at the top. Now the big slab of corrugated metal that was just cut out is put back, supported eighteen inches higher up then it had been.
What was the point of all this shenanigans? The proportions that are desirable for a shipping container are not the ones one wants for a house. By making these two changes the resulting living space, even with the loss of volume from insulation and interior finish, will be almost ten feet across and, in the center of this "room" almost nine feet high. Also, by infilling half of the resulting ceiling frame with double layers of glass shelves from their surplus purchases, they get far more light quite cheaply without reducing compression strength. The frame is also extended about a foot up past the roofline, providing an enclosed rooftop bed for later soil placement.
Making a Box a Home
Now starts the conventional housebuilding. In goes wiring and very minimal plumbing along the floor and side corrugations. This gets filled in with blow-in foam and covered with the construction styrofoam. The foam sheets are in turn covered with half-inch underlayment plywood (flooring slab aereated concrete would be much better but it may not be available locally cheaply enough) and the walls with durock and homosote. These are then skimcoated with plaster and surplus kitchen and bath fixtures are set in. In a few more years, when it has seasoned, the wood that is still sitting under a tent (remember that?) will be used for floorboards and perhaps wainscotting. For now a few pieces are used where shrinkage won't be a big deal, such as interior inset shelves.
Since the structure is oddly long by most home standards, the card cabinets and horizontal file cabinets are set in side by side at one end, making a four foot high raised platform. If they have chosen well, this platform will neatly run the width of the container. They then put deep shelves above this and cabinet doors in front of the shelving, gaining a great deal of storage space without sacrificing precious floorspace. They will also, incidentally, have doggone near superinsulated that side of the structure. Someday they may want to pull out the individual drawers and paint them as they will now be subject to condensation. Perhaps they will eventually cover the drawer fronts with something homier.
When the wiring was being done a line of wire will have been put in along the edges of the walls. They will wire onto this circuit most of their LED flashlights, which are for now the cheapest way by far to get LED lighting. If they's gettin' all Martha Stewart they'll wrap them in rice paper or otherwise make them look less like cheap plastic flashlights. Each room will have one switch for these, or perhaps a variable potentiometer. In other words, a brightness knob.
Cuddling Up With a Soil Blanket
Next more styrofoam or equivalent is put along the lower outside of the walls. Then some of that dirt from the digging is put into place along three sides of the container, covering the walls to a height of the window sills and, in some point, perhaps even higher. All of this turns their container into an earthberm house, cutting heating and cooling costs way down. At this point the laundry bins, which have been used until now as construction site drop bins, have their bottoms slashed and are laid inside this little synthetic hillock. There they become a very low-cost retaining means for a few years while plants put their roots down and provide more permanent stability. Perhaps a dwarf tree or two are planted on the slope of the hillock.
Generous quantities of asphalt or equivalent are poured on the roof. Perhaps scrap styrofoam is shredded to add low-weight drainage space. Then more soil is placed on the center roof panel, superinsulating it, not to mention making it virtually fireproof. The soil is modestly planted with blueberry bushes and other foodbearing perennials but is mostly left to regrow local plant life.
The remaining roof surface is provided with gutters to ensure that water runoff reaches a rain barrel. This water will be added to the house water supply.
Inside the house, they set up a small garden lit with flourescents and LEDs, it is modest indeed but should give them a few fresh veggies year round. Chances are it will be in the kitchen near the stove and other heat sources. At the least those lemons and limes from their dwarf citrus trees will be mighty welcome come winter. Outside they plant greens as these are the only plants that will continue to provide food after the frosts come. Some onions go in, as well as other perennials and varieties that self-propagate. His nearby resources should take care of themselves. Maybe they puts up some trellises with ivy on them to start a windbreak along the walking path. Maybe they plants bean vines by those trellises to fill them in faster and get more free munchies. Maybe not.
Waterworks
This brings us to water. Here the various approaches are massively different but I'll still stick to one. Along the edge of the clearing, ideally at the highest spots, they will build some odd looking contraptions. These will look like giant upside down umbrellas, with rigid frames, canvas or plastic fabric, and held closed with adjustable springs. At the base of each of these fabric cones will be a line to a water tank.
Stop for a moment and picture what these would be like. Each rib is held in place with a spring. A mechanism equalizes tension among the springs on a given device. If it starts to rain, the frame will start to open, pulled open by the weight of the rain. The heavier the rain, the more they open up. As they open up they collect water, which is then guided to the tank. This means that a collection of narrow posts, able to be made so as not to upset the neighbors, can open to ten times their normal size in serious rain and collect enough water in a climate like Vermont's to give them plenty for washing, food, and maybe, eventually, for a toilet.
By their nature these devices can be any size (though they get more vulnerable to wind and uglier as they get bigger) and can be put in as opportunity allows. Chances are they will initially mount a few by the tent and get around to doing more permanent ones as they have the time.
Moving Day
As soon as the floor is in and urethaned you can be sure that they will start to move in their stuff. With the walls done, more will transfer. By now it's time to put in the wood stove, which will likely go in the kitchen. The coolers and freezers will go against a wall and a vent put in place to allow them to be cooled with air from outside instead of using valuable electricity. At this point everything going in will go in and the rest get packed under the tent to survive bad weather.
If a phone line can be set up cheaply to the edge of the property, then they may buy local phone service or even high-speed internet access. If so then these will be run in the channel that was cut earlier. In that channel will have gone several lengths of institutional plumbing conduit. If they have the ready cash they will have sprung for four foot diameter pipe, which is actually quite cheap (usually made of terra cotta or precast concrete and sold in bulk to contractors). This gives them an accessway big enough that whatever they eventually chooses to run through it will have ample space. For now it stays mostly empty and just runs their telcom cable. This goes the sixty feet into the property, where it reaches a cheap laptop or even a PDA running voice over IP on 802.11. This way they doesn't need to run any wire across the property and can get the rest of the conduit laid in whenever they gets around to it.
It is my contention that with what's happening these days in robotics, by 2010 it should be pretty cheap to buy or rent a tunnel-digging robot. Given the size of the market it doesn't seem excessive to me to conclude that in the not-too-far future robots will be built that will dig at a designated depth, along an assigned path, laying cable or even pouring and sectioning concrete. Perhaps they will instead dig a tubular channel and spray a rigid wall into place as they go. Either way, when that day comes, the resale value of "rustic" property, now regularly cut far down by the astronomical cost of getting a phone and electric power, will rise sharply. more robot issues
But for now, with a phone connection in place (perhaps they will offer to share their access with their neighbors), Sue and Bob are back in the world and able to earn money.
Let's leave them to get back to their normal lives for the rest of the year.
Second Year Jobs
With the winter fading away we hope that Bob will be ready to get back to house-making. After checking the condition of the fifteen-foot slab in front of his container, they may choose to reenforce it, laying down more concrete, with tile or other pleasant surfacing over that. If they's being really snappy, they'll have a sandwich built, with insulating foam or foamed aerated concrete laid on the existing surface first and tile put on top of that. This gives him a tile floor that starts acting a bit more like an interior surface. What they will certainly want to do is ensure a slight slant in the finished surface such that water runs off to one side or two sides.
If possible, rather than tile, the floor will have been built out of large and thick slabs of granite, slate or marble. I have found that in central Vermont, if you're not picky, there is plenty of rejected stone from the quarries in Barre and other parts of Vermont and New Hamphire. A person I met had built a ten foot tall retaining wall of rejected tombstones that, having had mistakes made on them or cracked in some way, had just been left in a growing heap outside of a stonemason's shop. In any part of the country where quarries are still active this is a viable approach. The goal here is to build a floor that is massive enough to retain heat for the house but built at minimum cost and attractive enough to eventually be an interior floor.
they may then buy one or two more containers and place it along the sides of the flat open slab, probably butting one end against the already set up container. In this case, the new container(s) get the same treatment as the first. Posts are sunk and the container(s) mounted, stripped, given windows, primed, painted, insulated, and finished. We'll say that Bob buys and sets up two twenty-foot containers, creating a central enclosure surrounded on three sides with rooms. The containers extend beyond the central space acting as wings on what is becoming a viable house. Chances are that for now Bob doesn't cut links between all three, opening perhaps one corner and entering the other new room from a door opening onto the central space.
The Tower Arises
Ideally, Bob will have by now found a really cheap supply of shipping containers (ocassionally a company has a local supply and just wants them gone, now) and is on great terms with his neighbors. If so, they then has the backhoe also dig an eleven foot by eleven foot hole about six feet deep. In this a foundation will be poured such that a forty foot container can be upended, creating an instant tower. The big variable here are his neighbor's tolerance and his available cash and time.
If they has accomplished this then they is doing well, for on the top of this tower can be mounted three thousand watts or more worth of wind turbines (any more would get loud, expensive, and visually obtrusive) and an antenna for his 802.11 system. Up at the top, within the roof, can be mounted water tanks, giving excellent water pressure. Along some small percentage of the sides (limited by esthetics as most of the tower should end up covered in ivy, shingle, or other neighbor-friendly surfaces) can be laid photovoltaic panels designed to look and be applied like shingle. The only significant early costs will be buying a staircase ($600) and installing a floor for the top level ($400) as the top should not be too difficult to access for maintenance. After all, what if a cable goes down on a day that Bob has the flu and would really rather not get out of bed. they will not want to climb a thirty foot ladder. Someday when Bob has some extra cash they might want to give his tower a pretty roof, but it certainly doesn't need it for any structural reason.
When it is time to move the water tanks up to their final position Bob will need a pumping system with at least thirty feet of head ($300).
Ideally, if Bob has the means, they would be well advised to sheath at least part of his tower in something more attractive and waterproof. Personally I would suggest a layer of aereated concrete block covered in a skin of brick. Of course the tradeoff for the height of his cladding is that the taller the cladding gets, the less it can support its own weight. A ten foot tall heavy cladding will add to the strength of the tower. A full cladding might take away from it. As for the upper section, a more aggressive version of the treatment given the original container (sandblast, cut and place small windows, primer, 10+ coats of enamel, 3+ coats of Rustoleum) should do just fine. As mentioned above, the addition of wooden shingles or trellises to hold ivy (on two inch spacers to reduce root damage) might be advisable.
Starting the Living Machine
The biggest thing left to complete this house is what it will have in place of a septic system. This will consist of a combination of plants, microorganisms, and animals into which waste matter will be fed and out of which usable water, fertilizer and food will come.
Now, before we get started let's get one thing clear. As the Biosphere II project showed, our current level of knowledge is not up to the job of creating a sealed and fully self-contained artificial ecosystem. That is not our goal here. The goal is to create a system that can, for a price about that of a conventional septic system do about as good a job of processing household waste but will do so as part of an integrated collection of plant and animal life that will then provide other things of material and emotional value to the household.
Let us start by building a wall across the front of that fifteen foot square. This wall will be built of cinderblock and doesn't need to be any too pretty. It will be about two feet tall. It will then be given a surface on the inward-facing side of brick. If Bob is conciencious they will have first taken this opportunity to remove soil from under three or four points along the edge of the slab and inset posts beneath it, then filled the earth back in.
Bob will now dig a three foot deep, five foot wide trench in front of this wall, into which they will pour yet more concrete. This need not be too terrribly thick and can be thought of as creating a fifteen foot long by five foot deep by five foot wide (exterior dimensions) swimming pool. This pool will be lined with baffles running across the four foot gap, forcing any water to take a zig-zag path as it makes its way from one end to the other. Over the baffles will sit removable grids on which will sit plants with their roots hanging down into the water.
Notes:
Speaking of robotics, the time may come in next few decades that servant-level robot will be cheap enough to be practical. Wouldn't it be nice to be able to have a robot emerge from the end of the conduit, pick up packages, the mail, or groceries, and carry them back through the conduit the hundred or even several hundred feet back to the house, and leave them on the counter? If this seems an absurd luxury to you, then perhaps you have never lived in the country or in other circumstances where a few days fever and the associated weakness mean incapacity. To my mind this issue alone is enough reason to eventually create a two-foot or larger diameter tunnel from the road to the house.
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