westcliffe01
Veteran Member
I am preparing for relocating to a remote building site. The site will be at about 8000ft elevation and with the remoteness and the kind of weather one has in the Rockies, I have no intention of slumming it in a camping trailer or tent and I will need to keep my possessions somewhat safe from casual pilfering anytime I make a trip into town.
I have looked at shipping containers and a regular container has the roof just too low to be comfortable and no way I could park my backhoe in one either. But the high cube containers look high enough and they are slightly wider too (you can put a "regular" container inside a high cube). But locally I can only get 40foot high cubes and they are impractically heavy to move with anything I own even empty.
So I was thinking about getting a 40 footer and cutting it in half and then just framing the end with 4x4x1/4 steel tube and steel plate. I figure I only need 1 set of doors on each half anyway. The best finishing arrangement I have seen is welding angle iron horizontally (lengthwise) for attaching paneling and then spraying the inside with foam prior to fitting paneling. I'm somewhat reluctant about fitting windows because of the degree it reduces security, but I may do a heavy steel door on the side so that one can get in and out without always opening the pair of main doors. I was thinking of fluorescent lighting on both sides where the roof meets the wall, that way there would be plenty of headroom in the middle. I have at least a year to get my act together and everything prepped. I imagine I will get the loaded containers picked up by semi and delivered to the nearest county road and from that point I would have to winch them one at a time onto my gooseneck trailer and drive them to the site with my F250. I'm pretty sure I can figure a way to avoid any crazy slopes, by taking appropriate detours...
One container would be configured as the shop/power station with my mill, lathe, surface grinder, welding equipment, work bench, sheet metal tools, and genset with its own fuel tank and water storage tank for heat recovery from the engine. The second would be "home" with a bunk bed, shower hand wash basin, portapotty, propane hot water heater, a kitchinette and a small living room with some books. There will be a small wood stove in each, central to the living / working areas. The roof thimbles would probably be custom made, since with flat roofs they would have to be totally water tight. I will have solar panels for basic power for lighting and running the laptop and powering some appliances through a battery pack and inverter. For anything needing more serious power I have the diesel genset and the objective is to store as much heat as possible from every run of the genny to provide for stored heat to carry through the night with help from the wood stove as needed.
I was intending to do radiant heat with the lines going down on the container floor (which is spray foam insulated from the bottom first) with plywood filler strips and then some laminate flooring over the top. After living with oak flooring, I think I will skip real wood floors where the floor is intended to be the heat source... This will mean that by using a mixing valve, the radiant heat should work over a wide range of inlet water temperatures, provided it is over 100F. There will be a diesel fired boiler as backup heat source if I do not have good reason to run the generator, its consumption per hour will be considerably less than the genset and it will not need a comparable amount of maintenance either... Most likely I will run a supply and return PEX line underground from the "shop" to "home" after placing the pair of containers on the leveled pad, similar to what people use for outdoor wood fired boilers. The thought was to use the pair of containers as the foundation for a small barn by roofing it over, enclosing the gap at one end and fitting a roll up door at the other end. The width would depend on how I can configure the roof. Once I have a barn, then it should be relatively smooth sailing from that point...
I will probably be able to occasionally hire some labor from some of the surrounding ranches for heavy jobs but I am trying to plan this entire venture based on working by myself. I figure that the season for working outdoors is not much more than 7 months a year and I may need to take full time work off site during the winter in order to replenish funds for the next years building fund. At some point I hope to be able to work from home, since intellectual property is what I do, but that may take a few years to work out a suitable relationship with possible customers. For the moment, I think I have reached the end of what I can bear in the automotive industry so I need to finalize my plans for my "working retirement"...
I have looked at shipping containers and a regular container has the roof just too low to be comfortable and no way I could park my backhoe in one either. But the high cube containers look high enough and they are slightly wider too (you can put a "regular" container inside a high cube). But locally I can only get 40foot high cubes and they are impractically heavy to move with anything I own even empty.
So I was thinking about getting a 40 footer and cutting it in half and then just framing the end with 4x4x1/4 steel tube and steel plate. I figure I only need 1 set of doors on each half anyway. The best finishing arrangement I have seen is welding angle iron horizontally (lengthwise) for attaching paneling and then spraying the inside with foam prior to fitting paneling. I'm somewhat reluctant about fitting windows because of the degree it reduces security, but I may do a heavy steel door on the side so that one can get in and out without always opening the pair of main doors. I was thinking of fluorescent lighting on both sides where the roof meets the wall, that way there would be plenty of headroom in the middle. I have at least a year to get my act together and everything prepped. I imagine I will get the loaded containers picked up by semi and delivered to the nearest county road and from that point I would have to winch them one at a time onto my gooseneck trailer and drive them to the site with my F250. I'm pretty sure I can figure a way to avoid any crazy slopes, by taking appropriate detours...
One container would be configured as the shop/power station with my mill, lathe, surface grinder, welding equipment, work bench, sheet metal tools, and genset with its own fuel tank and water storage tank for heat recovery from the engine. The second would be "home" with a bunk bed, shower hand wash basin, portapotty, propane hot water heater, a kitchinette and a small living room with some books. There will be a small wood stove in each, central to the living / working areas. The roof thimbles would probably be custom made, since with flat roofs they would have to be totally water tight. I will have solar panels for basic power for lighting and running the laptop and powering some appliances through a battery pack and inverter. For anything needing more serious power I have the diesel genset and the objective is to store as much heat as possible from every run of the genny to provide for stored heat to carry through the night with help from the wood stove as needed.
I was intending to do radiant heat with the lines going down on the container floor (which is spray foam insulated from the bottom first) with plywood filler strips and then some laminate flooring over the top. After living with oak flooring, I think I will skip real wood floors where the floor is intended to be the heat source... This will mean that by using a mixing valve, the radiant heat should work over a wide range of inlet water temperatures, provided it is over 100F. There will be a diesel fired boiler as backup heat source if I do not have good reason to run the generator, its consumption per hour will be considerably less than the genset and it will not need a comparable amount of maintenance either... Most likely I will run a supply and return PEX line underground from the "shop" to "home" after placing the pair of containers on the leveled pad, similar to what people use for outdoor wood fired boilers. The thought was to use the pair of containers as the foundation for a small barn by roofing it over, enclosing the gap at one end and fitting a roll up door at the other end. The width would depend on how I can configure the roof. Once I have a barn, then it should be relatively smooth sailing from that point...
I will probably be able to occasionally hire some labor from some of the surrounding ranches for heavy jobs but I am trying to plan this entire venture based on working by myself. I figure that the season for working outdoors is not much more than 7 months a year and I may need to take full time work off site during the winter in order to replenish funds for the next years building fund. At some point I hope to be able to work from home, since intellectual property is what I do, but that may take a few years to work out a suitable relationship with possible customers. For the moment, I think I have reached the end of what I can bear in the automotive industry so I need to finalize my plans for my "working retirement"...