House in a can

THE HOUSE IN A CAN

When thinking about the Japanese situation with a need for thousands of houses for the people that lost theirs in the earthquake I developed a system using a 20 foot container as the foundation and building a house around it.

Everything you need to build the house is packed inside and solar panels for hot water and electricity are included.

The building is designed to be built in two or three days with a minimum of equipment.



It is transported to the site with a trailer, helicopter, or with a team of oxen and assembled with a crew of two or three by screwing and gluing the sandwich panels together. The house is structurally supported by poured concrete columns resting on a foundation beam placed in the ground.







The container sides are cutout and used as the floor structure and moisture protection, the insulated floor panels installed on them and the walls build up around the perimeter. The upper floor's supporting walls and gables are mounted on the top of the container and the supporting ridge beam is installed enabling the roof panel to be installed. The roof is sealed with a roof paint and the interior walls are taped and finished. There would be a water bag and rainwater collection system and composting toilet with a urine divert-er to be used as fertilizer. The Halcon sandwich panels are impervious to the elements, have a one hour fire rating and have a u value of 0.15 which leads to savings in heating and cooling.
These houses are meant to be permanent structures, easy to put up and have a very high resistance to wind and earthquakes. The sheet material on the inside and outside has no organic material so it is water resistant and will not mold, burn, deteriorate in UV radiation, can be painted, stuccoed or have other material applied to it.
It can be used in kitchen, bathrooms, showers, can be tiled on directly and is very stable laterally and diagonally.

It is lightweight and superinsulative and therefore perfect for the task. The panels can be manufactured with low tech machinery locally and with with a basic skill set. the equipment for a starter factory can also be shipped in a 20 foot container.

Thin film solar panels could be applied directly to the roof on metal or on the panels themselves.

The buildings would be shipped with bathrooms and kitchens installed and with all necessary tools included.


SEE THE FOLLOWING VIDEO FOR INSTALLATION ILLUSTRATION.

New uses for surplus equipment

I heard the story on NPR today about all the surplus equipment and supplies, including tons of concrete barriers that will be left behind as we start to withdraw troops.

One idea I had was to use the concrete barriers as foundations for houses to leave the Iraqis, instead of a mountain of trash.

The standard road barrier is an excellent foundation block and shipping containers can be used as houses with just a few modifications.

Shipping containers must be the perfect form of housing. If we want to move, we just pack everything inside, send it off, unpack it and move in.

Here are the plans for a 60 square meter house that has been modified to meet the climate in the desert.