Putting together a container home/shop for transportation to a remote site

[vdubnut62]

 Last time I checked, loader/backhoes weigh in the 8,000 lb+ range.

My old 410 John Deere backhoe goes between 15700 and 16200 and change.
After you cut the landing gear, ICC bumper and rear suspension out from under a reefer, it is on the ground. Then you have at the very least close to $1000 in tires wheels and scrap to sell.( or weld the scrap up for a co-gen base)
I agree that a container is structurally stronger though.
Ron

[LowGear]

I can see we have some budget range and scope here.  So we pour a 6 inch slab in the trailer with some 18" holes here and there for footings.  Is chain-link fence considered a good rebar?  Let your beneficiaries figure out how to get rid of it.   

I've heard not all steel buildings are created equal or are their sellers. 

Casey

[BruceM]

I've used the spray foam (polyisocyanurate) kits for several projects.  Great stuff but very expensive.  Don't believe their board foot estimates, you NEVER get that optimum figure.  Add at least 30%. 

I spent over $2K in foam for a dinky travel trailer refit, 2" in sidewalls, ceiling, and an inch under the floor.  The bill for a 50' container would make my eyes bug out.

[Westcliffe01]

It looks like the spray foam averages $2.50/sq ft.  Doing the walls and roof (inside) would probably be more cost effective with rigid foam, using expanding foam only at the edges to provide a decent air seal.  Underneath the floor would really be best done with Spray foam to seal it well and one could embed some chicken mesh to prevent rodents from getting into it very much.  Fiberglass under a floor is a complete joke...  I will have to contact a few local vendors and see what the quotes look like.

Now a steel building, on the other hand, really will benefit from spray foam since it adds a lot of rigidity to the structure and cuts drafts.

The Flexospan company has much heavier gauge panels available than any other I have seen listed.  Their deck panels go all the way to 16ga.

[BruceM]

Spray foam does marvelous things for sound deadening sheet metal panels.  It has just enough rigidity to dampen vibration.  I sprayed a little on the underside of my engine shed metal roof (on purlins no solid wood deck).  When cutting holes for some vents, I was amazed, it sounded like I was cutting wood.  In steel boxed electronics with fans (emi shielding), I found that just lines of "foam in a can" back and forth over the surface do a marvelous job of sound deadening. Without the foam, metal boxes often seem to act as sound amplifiers.

The air/water/vapor sealing capability of spray foams is awesome, only the price keeps me from using it more widely.

All steel buildings that must be fully heated are usually not worth it in the end, as a decent job of insulation is very expensive.  The thermal conductivity of the steel frame means all structural steel beams have to be boxed.  A friend who built a home this way said that though he was thrilled with the cost of (contracted) completed shell, his total finished costs were more than if he had built a conventional wood framed structure, because of all the special interior "boxing in" and insulation costs.

[Westcliffe01]

The best lead I have so far on equipment is on this site http://www.applegatefoam.com/Foam-Insulation-Equipment/Spray-Foam-Equipment.shtml



$8500 gets you set up with the equipment you need to do your own work.  It looks like the consumables run $365 for 5 gal each of part A+B which yields about 40cuft of rigid foam at 2lb/cu ft.   Or to put it a different way it works out $9.13 per cubic foot of finished foam. At a 2" thickness it is $1.52/sqft.   So lets do the math for a 40x40' barn with 10' high walls and a shed style roof.  The walls are 160ft long x 10' high = 1600 sq ft.   The roof will effectively be slightly larger than 40x40=1600sq ft.  So somewhat more than 3200sqft to insulate.  Assume 2" thickness (a heck of a lot better than an uninsulated building).  That yields 533cu ft of material or 13.33 of these foam "kits" or $4866.66

The 40' high cube shipping container has a wall and roof/ceiling surface area of 40x2x(10+8.5) = 1480 sq ft.  That works out to $2250.

It seems that when one includes the packaging and their disposable hose/nozzle the DIY type kits run at a price that is basically double the price of the raw materials themselves.  And you end up with a ton of junk to dispose of after every job too.  Even insulating the container would result in over 12 propane sized cylinders to dispose of, along with the hoses and everything else.  I'm sure that if one could obtain the materials in a bigger measure than 5 gal it would reduce the cost substantially, but it seems larger volumes can only be purchased by licensed contractors.   

If one knew of a small group of people who needed some spray foam insulation work done, it would help cover the cost of the equipment in pretty short order.

[Westcliffe01]

mmmmm This website http://sprayfoamdistributors.com/?page_id=27 seems to suggest that the bulk materials run between $1500 and $2000 for 110gal.  On the low end, that is only 37% of the cost I previously calculated.  Or $832.50 in material to do the container and $1800.66 for the 3200 sq ft of barn.    Quite the difference, no ? I get the impression that training is included in the price for the equipment, but licensing is something I would have to investigate.

This website lists the actual 110gal kits.  http://www.soythane.com/p-101-soythane-2000-2-pound-closed-cell-foam.aspx  Close to the $2000/110gal mark.  Still half the price of the 10 gal kits.  It seems modest from a material cost standpoint, it just needs some equipment to heat it, feed it at the right proportion (1:1) and then atomise it.

[Lloyd]

mmmmm This website http://sprayfoamdistributors.com/?page_id=27 seems to suggest that the bulk materials run between $1500 and $2000 for 110gal.  On the low end, that is only 37% of the cost I previously calculated.  Or $832.50 in material to do the container and $1800.66 for the 3200 sq ft of barn.    Quite the difference, no ? I get the impression that training is included in the price for the equipment, but licensing is something I would have to investigate.

This website lists the actual 110gal kits.  http://www.soythane.com/p-101-soythane-2000-2-pound-closed-cell-foam.aspx  Close to the $2000/110gal mark.  Still half the price of the 10 gal kits.  It seems modest from a material cost standpoint, it just needs some equipment to heat it, feed it at the right proportion (1:1) and then atomise it.

It seems the answer is to start an insulation company.

Then as soon as you get your discounted value sell it to the employees, or employee. Minus what you think a fair price for the insulation job.

Lloyd

[Westcliffe01]

Most of the formulations I have seen require a 1:1 mix ratio.  The actual mixing itself takes place in a chamber in the gun, so the 2 chemicals remain separated up to that point.  One of the systems sold at the soythane.com website is a cartridge type system where the hardware is even cheaper at $600, but then they make you buy their cartridge supplies.  It sounds like the old razor blade story...  The cartridge gun also looks like a bear to handle and once you hit the trigger your committed and have to finish the entire cartridge.  The principle is simple though, a pneumatic ram drives the pistons of both components thereby getting correct mix ratio and pressure automatically.

I'm racking my brain to see if there is a less expensive way to do this, even after shelling out $3000 for the heated lines and "proper" gun, which I think would definitely be worth it.