New homestead - Shipping container or traditional?

[Frostnip]

Honestly, you could frame up a livable little efficiency-layout cabin in week or two, especially if you use an outhouse. If you're going to heat with a wood stove you'll probably want to keep the indoor plumbing minimal anyway, lest everything freeze up and cause damage when you make a run into town or whatever.

[terracore]

"Spraying a container with two inches of closed cell spray foam will not make it rust through and start leaking in months and if anything will make it last even longer."


I agree so long as the spray foam remains intact and doesn't allow water through.

We had a neighbor with a shipping container used for storage and it had been repainted, where the paint failed and water came in and got trapped by the same paint it rusted through and all their stuff got moldy. The issue is where water gets in and can't dry out and the weathering steel doesn't have access to air.

[Czechsix]

Originally Posted by 6.7traveler

Everyone is crapping on shipping containers as homes but this is Alaska so some things should be considered. All you really need to build a nice house up here is a few logs off your property and some scrap wood, old appliances and home furnishings found from the transfer station. The only materials you really need to splurge on and buy new is a blue tarp for the roof and some tyvek for the scrap wood walls. You could get real crazy and buy old windows off craigslist too.

An old school bus is also a good start for an Alaskan homestead. You can add on to the school bus with transfer station finds of pallets and rusted out vehicles when time and money allows.

Other building hacks to save money up here include never putting tyvek or siding on your house, ever. Also tarp out buildings. Framed out garages and shops are overrated, a nice tarp or two strung out between some trees is much better. Never ever buy a green or camo tarp for outdoor use, always use the bright blue ones for the most natural pleasing to the eye aesthetics.

Are you my neighbor?

[wharton]

Originally Posted by 6.7traveler

I'm sure what you say is true for sanding and painting a container but I disagree that it's true for spray foam. No sanding is required. Spraying a container with two inches of closed cell spray foam will not make it rust through and start leaking in months and if anything will make it last even longer. There's oodles of containers sprayed with closed cell foam on the outside and are doing just fine many years later. As long as you keep the foam coated from UV it will theoretically last forever. Two+ inches of closed cell also creates a vapor barrier. It would be the fastest, easiest and probably cheapest way to make a container easy to heat through an Alaskan winter IMO.

I agree that shipping containers, spray foamed or not, make for lousy dwellings and don't save any money on building costs.

As a retired professional builder, I can only wonder what people are thinking when they even give a fleeting thought to occupying a structure with nothing but a spray foam exterior. Spray foam is pretty toxic, flammable, and deadly toxic when burning. When used in any code compliant construction, it is inside the wall cavity and isolated from the occupants by a fire rated barrier, like 1/2" sheetrock. I've spent four summers in AK. and the Yukon, and have on several occasions, been covered in ash, as embers flew overhead, during one of the seemingly endless summer fire seasons. You really want to be in a metal box, surrounded by a flammable cocoon, while the black spruce explodes in the distance, the skies are black with smoke, and hot embers float over the flaming tomb you built, like snowflakes from hell?

Not to mention that exterior spray foam is about as attractive as a fly covered moose's butthole, and is a magnet for any burrowing, or damaging creature out there, from woodpeckers and rodents, to ants and termites. (Not that all of these are current residents in the region.) I've repaired a cabin after a bear sharpened it's claws on a corner, and tore siding and sheathing off, leaving fiberglass blowing in the wind. That inconsiderate act would be pretty rough on a container covered in foam, especially if the bear found it to be satisfying enough to really do some damage.

[Nik4me]

Don’t even think about container home anymore.
I second the foundation one summer and the house the next if the seasons are short and you still new and don’t know the lay out of the land.

Not to rain on your parade, but how are you going to support yourselves?
What if during a”building” summer one of you get hurt? How are you going to secure your materials if you have to leave all of a sudden for a medical emergency ?
What if you break up? Then what?
I would look into bringing a shed/ garage kit from closest manufacturer or the smallest log home kit you can find and ship to your land.
Why log homes?
The wood mass will help you you with your heating and keeping the house cooler in the summer. The house is sturdier and a better protection against animals. And you always can sell it if things are not working out...
If you can find someone like that but in AK?
https://shedsunlimited.net/blog/diy-...ic-garage-kits
Try the company below- they may be able to work with your budget, pretty sure...
https://superiorlogs.com/
I would investigate the type of foundation which I think people do not think enough.
How much snow will you be getting? Why not have a foundation high enough so you can open a door outside without being buried by the latest snowstorm?
If the land is suitable - basement not a bad idea for storage and utilities

[wharton]

Originally Posted by 6.7traveler

Everyone is crapping on shipping containers as homes but this is Alaska so some things should be considered. All you really need to build a nice house up here is a few logs off your property and some scrap wood, old appliances and home furnishings found from the transfer station. The only materials you really need to splurge on and buy new is a blue tarp for the roof and some tyvek for the scrap wood walls. You could get real crazy and buy old windows off craigslist too.

An old school bus is also a good start for an Alaskan homestead. You can add on to the school bus with transfer station finds of pallets and rusted out vehicles when time and money allows.

Other building hacks to save money up here include never putting tyvek or siding on your house, ever. Also tarp out buildings. Framed out garages and shops are overrated, a nice tarp or two strung out between some trees is much better. Never ever buy a green or camo tarp for outdoor use, always use the bright blue ones for the most natural pleasing to the eye aesthetics.

Thanks for the laugh. One of the funniest things I ever saw on cable TV was an HGTV show about finding your "dream home" in Alaska. One couple is a husband who wants to run sled dogs,( no experience and from an east coast city, IIRC) and a wife that clearly isn't enthused about his "dream". They look at a cabin in the middle of BF nowhere, south of Anchorage. It had a great view, and.............well, um, did I mention it has a great view? The cabin screams that it was clubbed together by a nearly incompetent do it yourselfer. It is dry, and nobody even bother to fake a kitchen, since it has an outdoor kitchen. The outdoor kitchen is a few scraps of lumber clubbed together, roughly in the shape of a shed, and there are bits of blue trap still nailed to it, since it was once wrapped in them. The "dog yard" is a few marginal dog boxes, in a muddy field, and look like they ended up there during a tornado. The closest paved road and power are a 45 minute 4x4 ride away. The wife looked like somebody teleported her to the slums of India, and to be honest, it really wasn't too much better than that. Sounds like you might want to look this episode up, you might know the builder, or the architect, lol.