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News / Business / Clark County Business

Home partially made from shipping containers rising in east Vancouver

By WILL CAMPBELL for The Columbian
Published: October 6, 2015, 6:01am
5 Photos
A new home being built using 11 former cargo shipping containers is under construction at 4211 S.E. 164th Ave. in Vancouver. The home is the first of its kind in the city, although the use of shipping containers for homes, offices and cottages is catching on locally and nationally.
A new home being built using 11 former cargo shipping containers is under construction at 4211 S.E. 164th Ave. in Vancouver. The home is the first of its kind in the city, although the use of shipping containers for homes, offices and cottages is catching on locally and nationally. (Photos by Amanda Cowan/The Columbian) Photo Gallery

A new environmentally friendly housing trend is making its first appearance in Vancouver with the construction of the city’s first house made partly out of used shipping containers

Located at 4211 S.E. 164th Ave., the large house being built around 11 former shipping containers is turning the eyes of passing motorists, who pull over to check out the unique structure. “Twenty to 30 people come up to my driveway every day,” said Edward Merced, the home’s designer and owner, in an email to The Columbian. It’s not just neighbors who have noticed the project: The home improvement network HGTV is interested in developing a segment on the home.

Merced is using three containers that are 20 feet long by eight feet wide, and eight containers that are 40 feet by eight feet, as major components of his 4,006 square-foot home. Some containers are stacked and rotated and are integrated into a wood-framed structure with a slanted roof. Merced declined to give any further information.

While the container home is unique in Vancouver, the unusual idea of building homes, small offices or outbuildings out of containers is catching on locally and nationally. While profitability is uneven, depending on costs of improvements, land and permitting, some see opportunities for creative new uses of containers that would otherwise site idle or be recycled.

Jeff Wallach, a Portland housing developer, was able to use this new technique to revitalize an old apartment complex in the city’s Multnomah Village, adding shipping container offices in the back courtyard to complement each apartment. “People in the apartments could go out back, walk fifty yards, and have additional space to work,” he said.

Wallach said containers offer the opportunity for profitability. Each finished container costs around $15,000 after permitting and being insulated, and can rent by themselves for $300-$350 per month, he said.

“That’s a pretty healthy profit,” Wallach said. “I would repeat this process somewhere else if I saw the right place.”

Montainer, a Montana-based firm specializing in used container sales, is marketing fully-improved, 192 square-foot shipping containers for about $65,000, including plumbing and other amenities. It says the containers can be used for backyard cottages, vacation retreats, primary homes, and offices.

“It is a streamlined product,” says Montainer co-founder Patrick Collins, who touted the ease of acquiring, improving and securing permits for container buildings.

The business is doing well, and the company has pre-orders from a couple of Portland-Vancouver-area customers, Collins said. “We’ve got far more pre-orders than we’re going to be able to produce in the next year,” he said.

A unique project

Jason Stanek, a Vancouver structural engineering consultant who developed the structural plan for Merced’s house, made sure the house met city code requirements for roof, wind and seismic loads.

“It’s such a unique project, we had to go through a lot of different steps for approval,” said Stanek, who had not previously worked on a shipping container home. The biggest issues with the project involve mounting the crates to one another and to the concrete foundation, he said.

The city sent it to a third party for review that went back and forth to figure out what to do and how to get it approved, Stanek said. He praised the city for being “very open to see this project go forward.” “They were excited to see it get done.”

Sree Thirunagari, Vancouver’s building official, was involved with the process for meeting building codes.

“We don’t dictate construction material, design and so forth,” he said. Thirunagari says there is very limited information on shipping container houses to help guide the city’s review.

According to Stanek, these buildings must only undergo the structural engineering or permitting process if they are to be mounted to a foundation. Simply cutting a hole for a window requires a complete restructuring and reinforcement of the container.

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“These cargo units as a whole have incredible capacity to resist the forces of the elements and carry their cargo loads, Stanek said. After all, they are stacked ten-high and can absorb rocking with the waves on the open ocean even when loaded with 50,000 pounds of cargo, he said. Given their design strength, he said, “why is there a question of the capacity of these units for a building structure?”

Portland architect Bob Schatz, who has designed three buildings made from shipping containers including one on Portland’s trendy Northwest 23rd Avenue, expressed some concern about his own experience with building commercial units out of the containers. Schatz said the final price of the units is not low enough to attract a large market.

“A cargo container project works well if you’re doing a lot of the work yourself, and also if you’re not getting it permitted,” he said.

Limited living space in the containers is a downside; Schatz pointed out there is only seven feet of width after installing insulation and drywall. With those size constraints, “You’re kind of fighting the system,” he said.

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