Bird
Rest in Peace
Wow! Sounds like quite a project. I don't know anything that would help you, but I sure wish you luck with it.
Shipping Container for Olive Mill
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MarkV
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Hi Rox, like Bird said "quite a project". I will be watching with interest.
A couple of thoughts as I read your plan. I think of containers as being engineered in a way that the walls and ceiling all contribute to the structural integrity of the unit. A bit like an enclosed trailer used behind semi trucks. As a unit they are very strong but if you remove the walls they are not strong at all. I would consult with the container company and ask their opinion on how the openings you plan to cut and concrete floor system will effect the containers strength when moved in the future.
I was also wondering if you have a public sewage system or a private septic system? If you are on a septic will the residue oil and added load affect the system? Also, is it all right to add commercial waste to the public system if that is what you are on?
MarkV
A couple of thoughts as I read your plan. I think of containers as being engineered in a way that the walls and ceiling all contribute to the structural integrity of the unit. A bit like an enclosed trailer used behind semi trucks. As a unit they are very strong but if you remove the walls they are not strong at all. I would consult with the container company and ask their opinion on how the openings you plan to cut and concrete floor system will effect the containers strength when moved in the future.
I was also wondering if you have a public sewage system or a private septic system? If you are on a septic will the residue oil and added load affect the system? Also, is it all right to add commercial waste to the public system if that is what you are on?
MarkV
jinman
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Rox, I'm going to disagree a bit with Curly Dave about insulating your box on the inside. I think insulation may be one of the most important things you will do. Your box is metal and it will be cold outside when you are crushing olives. You have repeatedly spoke of how much water will be used in the process and how people will be working 24/7 (day and night) during your milling season. I think you are going to have a 3-month "rainstorm" inside the container if you don't insulate and vent that container with forced air in and out. The metal sides will be soaked with condensation and soon anything which can rust, will rust. I would want every exposed metal surface of the container either covered in bubble or foam insulation. Can you get insulation sprayed on the walls and ceiling? I just think you need to rethink the need for insulation based on what you are doing in the container. I also think you have to consider that even with a 3-month use, that container is going to set there for the other 9 months out of the year and it will need to be vented and kept dry. Your layup for the off season will be critical in getting the mill started and running when the crushing season rolls around.
Another point about rollup doors. Every rollup door I've ever seen takes a lot of headroom. Some of them require at least 24" of headroom for that big roll of door material when you open up the door. A container's barn door style of doors or sliding doors would be much better for conserving your inside space. Rollups work nice in barns and buildings with head space, but don't you want your doors to be more than 6' tall opening? Can you really afford to lose the space inside the cube?
Drains and plumbing are issues were I may be at odds with the group. I think you will love to have drains and plumbing connections on the side of your container rather than the hassle of having them on the bottom. Think of how RVs are plumbed. Access is always from the side and very convenient. If you bring plumbing and electric into the side and then route it up and down from the ceiling to meed the required codes, then you will be much happier in my opinion. I would fight every instance where someone wanted me cut a hole into the top or bottom of that cube. If you can "engineer" your mill so everything can enter and leave by the sides, I think you will be much happier with the performance and convenience. If you need floor drains, put them in place above the floor and exiting the side of the container. Secure them to the floor before pouring the concrete if you end up going with a concrete floor. Maybe a sloped floor where debris goes to one side and drops into a channel drain might work. To me, this is one of the most difficult design features, to get the floor debris to clear and not have to add tons and tons of concrete to the floor just to be able to create a drain system. It seems a slanted floor with a runoff into a channel drain at the walls could be a possible solution.
Finally, electricity in this environment would/will be a constant hazard. Everything around you is going to be a conducter. I'm sure there are codes there that require strict safety features. This portable olive mill inside a container will present some unique challenges to meet codes. Bringing in an expert early in this process is needed.
These are just some random thoughts of mine. I love your can-do spirit towards getting this built and into operation. I hope I've helped a little bit.
Another point about rollup doors. Every rollup door I've ever seen takes a lot of headroom. Some of them require at least 24" of headroom for that big roll of door material when you open up the door. A container's barn door style of doors or sliding doors would be much better for conserving your inside space. Rollups work nice in barns and buildings with head space, but don't you want your doors to be more than 6' tall opening? Can you really afford to lose the space inside the cube?
Drains and plumbing are issues were I may be at odds with the group. I think you will love to have drains and plumbing connections on the side of your container rather than the hassle of having them on the bottom. Think of how RVs are plumbed. Access is always from the side and very convenient. If you bring plumbing and electric into the side and then route it up and down from the ceiling to meed the required codes, then you will be much happier in my opinion. I would fight every instance where someone wanted me cut a hole into the top or bottom of that cube. If you can "engineer" your mill so everything can enter and leave by the sides, I think you will be much happier with the performance and convenience. If you need floor drains, put them in place above the floor and exiting the side of the container. Secure them to the floor before pouring the concrete if you end up going with a concrete floor. Maybe a sloped floor where debris goes to one side and drops into a channel drain might work. To me, this is one of the most difficult design features, to get the floor debris to clear and not have to add tons and tons of concrete to the floor just to be able to create a drain system. It seems a slanted floor with a runoff into a channel drain at the walls could be a possible solution.
Finally, electricity in this environment would/will be a constant hazard. Everything around you is going to be a conducter. I'm sure there are codes there that require strict safety features. This portable olive mill inside a container will present some unique challenges to meet codes. Bringing in an expert early in this process is needed.
These are just some random thoughts of mine. I love your can-do spirit towards getting this built and into operation. I hope I've helped a little bit.
MarkV- I am in kind of a pickle here because the company we are buying the container from doesn't do this as part of their business, they repair containers so even if I did ask them I don't think they are qualified to say. Nother words, I'm not sure I would trust their anser. I got the idea by looking at the seabox website and seeing the pictures but since I am not buying from them, I dont' think they would help me by giving out the information. If I dig around my 3-mails I did get a quote from them but they said no shipping company would ship it overseas because of the modifications.
We do have private sewage and what a system, the field is prolly 1,000 feet from our house with a lift station etc. Surprisingly there is very little that goes into a sewer from an olive mill. By law we have to collect the olive paste residu and the water that has been pressed out of the olives so the only thing that goes down the sewer is the wash water from washing the olives and water from cleaning. We would not be permitted to to put the straight olive waste water into a city sewer system, it's toxis. However it works very well for weed control, very effective on pig weed so it has value to us. We have a lot of pig weed I think.
Dave please don't stop making suggestions I'm counting on your out of the box thinking to help. I checked around for casters, and I dont' think we can afford them, 6Sunset6 has been really helpful with the calculations so i went and looked up the empty container weight, added in the weight of the equipment (which will be inside the container until the new buidling is built) and the concrete, bumped it up a little higher for a margin of error and came up with 31,000 lbs. I'm thinking we will get our neighbor who owns the moving comany to move it forward lengthwise with his big forklift, and we will just stick logs under it and push pull lengthwise (picture pushing ont he cargo doors) down the straight path to it's desitnation. If that doesn't work well then we will probably have to get pros like you said.
Maybe a sloped floor where debris goes to one side and drops into a channel drain might work. To me, this is one of the most difficult design features, to get the floor debris to clear and not have to add tons and tons of concrete to the floor just to be able to create a drain system. It seems a slanted floor with a runoff into a channel drain at the walls could be a possible solution.
Finally, electricity in this environment would/will be a constant hazard. Everything around you is going to be a conducter. I'm sure there are codes there that require strict safety features. This portable olive mill inside a container will present some unique challenges to meet codes. Bringing in an expert early in this process is needed.
These are just some random thoughts of mine. I love your can-do spirit towards getting this built and into operation. I hope I've helped a little bit.
Jinman,
I guess CurlyDave was right about the floor. When he first looked at the project he said the floor was going to be the hardest part which surprised me as it never crossed my mind that it was an obsticle. 6Sunset6 has been real helpful here and now with your added advice it makes me pause to see that this really is kind of a challange. I think what I will end up having to do is build a model. My husband the other day grabbed a rectangual Kleenek box to demonstrate something to me, using the Kleexe box as the container, so I'll probably use a kleenex box and starws to build a model so I can visualize it. One thing I am not very good at at all is elevation. I have a very hard time visualizing elevation. When we built our last house our excavator/landscaper friend was going over all these elevations how he would do the job and I finally had to walk away. My husband handled it as I was wasting everyone's time because I have difficulty visualizing it and I was slowing everybody down. So the slope floor is an effort for me to "see" with the plumbing etc. I'll prolly jsut ahve to build a model, sad but true.
My husband agrees with you about the vents. They make vents here, for bathrooms. Mainly since they all stink so much since as ther are no stink pipes installed on the toilets. So vents they are experts at over here. There are vents that have a built in fan that the fan turns based on the airflow. We think that is what we are going to do. The climate here int he summer is very dry but since December it has rained at least 3 times per week, but usually at night so we will have "humidity issues" in the container. When you are up and milling all the milsl simply use windows, they open their windows is how they manage it.
We are grateful that we have a good friend who is a retired electrician, he owned his own electrician business for 40+ years, he is very very capable so we will rely on him. You can read the schematic of how much electric is used by the by the machinery by looking at the schematic in Post# 8. Plus if the equipment is sitting on a concrete floor that is good right? We have no concerns about our mill equipment rusting virtually everything si made out of very thick stainless steel. But i dont' want the container to rust so you bring up a good point there. If we don't insulate and install vents maybe that would be enough? Foam insualtion is nto a problem. The only insulation we could use and not cover it with a wall (read $$$) is the bubble wrap with foil as that would pass as a sealed surface that is cleanable.
6Sunset6- The expelled toxic water from the olives is not that big a problem there really isn't much since our mill is what is called a 2 phase mill, we do not introduce water into the milling process, other than initially to wash the olives. In the whole season we prolly will not fill a 1,000 container and we have a few of those we wil use. The water that is used to wash the olives goes down the sewer legally, and not much water is used. You do not change the water with every batch of olives you press. The big problem is all that olive paste residu. Picture a pallet with residu 5ft high. We are going to have to dispose of prolly 1 -2 pallets every day of the paste resisdu. I told my hubby that this is his problem. I'll take care of the inside and what I pump outside is his problem to figure out. Once it leave my container he owns the problem.
MarkV
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Rox, sorry I misunderstood what the plumbing drains would be used for. I thought you would be washing all the residue down the drain and saw that as a problem for a septic system.
I was thinking about your insulation and recalled working on a commercial kitchen many a years ago. Code here required that all surfaces with in the kitchen be a smooth water proof finish for washing and sanitizing. Do you have any similar requirements for your application? Do olive mills get inspected by some authority?
You encouraged thinking out of the box so here I go. The washable surfaces started me thinking about insulation on the exterior of the container rather than the interior. You will see people here use a mobile home as a base that they build a non-structural facade around and add a roof to resemble a more traditional house. That got me thinking could the container, or possibly two side by side, be converted with an exterior finish and roof in the future to be your more esthetic and permanent mill? It just seems you will end up with a very expensive storage container in a relatively short time after all the modifications. If it could be incorporated into the permanent mill you would have less duplication expenses like plumbing, electrical and such.
MarkV
I was thinking about your insulation and recalled working on a commercial kitchen many a years ago. Code here required that all surfaces with in the kitchen be a smooth water proof finish for washing and sanitizing. Do you have any similar requirements for your application? Do olive mills get inspected by some authority?
You encouraged thinking out of the box so here I go. The washable surfaces started me thinking about insulation on the exterior of the container rather than the interior. You will see people here use a mobile home as a base that they build a non-structural facade around and add a roof to resemble a more traditional house. That got me thinking could the container, or possibly two side by side, be converted with an exterior finish and roof in the future to be your more esthetic and permanent mill? It just seems you will end up with a very expensive storage container in a relatively short time after all the modifications. If it could be incorporated into the permanent mill you would have less duplication expenses like plumbing, electrical and such.
MarkV
