Well it is now September in Costa Rica and the shipping container home building business is preparing for its newest container home model.
After the completion of our last shipping container home, we went back to the drawing board in order to come up with a different model, with out the opening of the deck. We decided as we market and continue our 20ft studio apartment. We wish to create a different type of door opening system. We like the glass door effect that our last product has, so we plan on maintaining that aspect of the studio apartment.
The new door option is a door that will open up like a garage door, maintaining the upright position and sliding open. This option does remove the deck/platform. However, the container homeowner can build a deck themselves on their property. A deck that is permanent along with the construction of the container home platform that is required prior to installation.
With our new model shipping container home, we wish to explore the second floor options. We want to take advantage of the strength that the top of the standard ISO shipping containers have.
As we explore the many options of the shipping container home construction business, we constantly face structural and design challenges. All of these challenges are in the permit and regulation departments of Costa Rica. The engineer department of the country has yet to recognize the container home building construction. This is the same in many states in the USA a well.
Now the USA is a very different place to build a shipping container home. The prices of materials are a bit higher, construction costs i.e. cost per square foot is much higher than in Costa Rica.
The design fees are higher, and the permitting process is very rigorous. We receive many questions about the cost of a container house here in Costa Rica, and it’s quite different. The budget cost varies according to location of your project. For example a low end of costs for residential construction can be as low as $90/SF in some areas of the US, as well as Costa Rica. In fact, location of the project in Costa Rica can be very costly due to the soft soil.
With a steel shipping container house, the structure must be analyzed structurally to comply with requirements of the Code both in the USA and in Costa Rica, which requires more time and usually more money. So even though the shipping container home building process can save you money, it really depends on where you will be building.
The shipping container home construction represents a very green building material, and a form of recycling. The most money is saved on the on the larger scale projects, especially when building upwards. ?Structurally, the shipping container homes are an unbelievably strong building material and very suitable for housing along the coast where high winds and flying debris can be expected during tropical storms and hurricanes.
