Shipping Container for Olive Mill

[rox]

What's in the barn or behind those garage doors?

Could you remove whatever is in there and store it somewhere else and use that space for the mill? Could you put what's in there in the container?

On what Dave said about circulating the air, the smaller the space, the harder it is to keep the air clean. Will the mill get hot while operating? In a container, that heat might become opressive. Is it loud? If so, it's going to be allot worse in the container.

Eddie

Eddie we are not permitted to build a mill with people living on top. It is in the regulations. We have full time tennants in the apt now, we used to only do holiday rentals. So we got a quote for converting the garage to a mill (I could go back to holiday rentals and just not rent it during the milling period dunno if this would have worked with the regs but had a thought so got the quote) That contractor was the high one at 55,000 Euros.

For a good review of how we arrived here pls go back and look at post #38. Your approach is surely reflected in your gender. You know how you could get a budget building built as you have talents that you can deploy into the project at different points and you own various tools and equipment. My hubby is not handy at all, not at all. In fact he has never drilled one single hole since we moved here, I do that. I can't do cement work guys and all our buildings here are cement work. For just a shell with a slab, 4 walls, and a roof, no doors or windows 29,000 (might have been 30,000) But the floor was tiled. This is best price, now sewer hook up, no plumbing and no electrical.

We are just going to have to sacrafice to get ahead. In the last 6 years we have paid 60,000 euros to have our olives pressed. It will take us to long to accumulate the cash to build that building. I guess we are greedy, we want to hang onto all our investments and not sell assets to build this thing. it is kind of like the problems renters have, it is very hard to save for a down payment when renting, same theory. Sometimes you move into a cheaper less desirable rental so that you can save money towards your next goal. Same concept here. Fact is we simply cannot afford to build a building why we are paying that "rent" to the other mill operators unless we sell assets adn we dont' want to do that. We just can't afford it and I'm not ashamed to say it. To many people live beyond their means and simply "hope" things work out. We are not like that.

I wonder if you folks have ever utilized the high cube containers, they seem roomy enough to me, those high ceilings give you air to breath. There is a big difference between the high cube and the regular height containers.

Let's move forward with your specific suggestions which we really do appreciate.

EddieWalker: On what Dave said about circulating the air, the smaller the space, the harder it is to keep the air clean. Will the mill get hot while operating? In a container, that heat might become opressive. Is it loud? If so, it's going to be allot worse in the container.

Windows, that is how it is done here. Milling is Nov & Dec overheating is not an issue, being cold can be an issue. But I understand why you ask coming from Texas, ya'll are always worried about the heat. It is going to be very noisy and we will have to wear ear protection all milsl they wear ear protection.

Question we saw the inside of a single use high cube container and stood on the plywood floor. Eddie unter the plywood is there steel or is plywood all there is in containers?

Eddie Walker: Running a sewer line up and into the container is going to be an issue that I'm unsure of how you will accomplish this. There will have to be some tunneling and cutting through the floor. In my containers, the floor was hardwood, but I don't know what's under the wood, or what it takes to get through it. Then building up the floor for the dain can be as simple as pouring a leveling compound, using thinset or something else. The expense to do this isn't going to come close to what a concrete slab will cost, but the slab will be permanent and have the slope with a great big drain built into it. In my experience, that alone is worth whatever it costs.

Eddie: - can you please provide me a link to leveling compound? maybe I'll try an go look on YouTube for soemthing. I don't really know what thinset is but I am sure over here they have it as virtually all the floors here are tile floors. It is pretty easy to get cheap tile here, may not be all the same but there is so much sold it is competitive. The press is going to weigh about 2,000 kilos but spread over about 12 feet long. Will thinset support that?

I think we will try for what Jinman suggested try not to ever cut into the roof or floor and bring in sewer and water into the side. I don't know how we will do that so we will have to figure it out.

Eddie: I don't know what it takes to make olive oil or work the machine, but my fear is that with a very small space to work, you might not be able to do the best possible job. With enough space and a workable layout, you will be more effective and probably produce a better product. The container limits you to such a degree that I question whether it's even practical.

Non issue, it is the press and your proccess that takes great olives and makes it into great oil. The container does provide sufficient space. 40 foot is long! The press end to end is only going to be about 12ft long I think. The mill we visited this week they can process 4 tons (4,000 Kilos) per hour, the DLE portion is outside under a roof with 3 walls, inside the crusher, maloxer, and extraction took place in a room about 16ft x 16ft. No ventilation only windows. They had this big roof with 3 walls, with the cleaning opertion under that roof and then an aluminium building 16' x 16' flat roof to do the actual pressing. At the back end of the 3 walled shelter is the room with the huge tanks holding oil. Compare this to our mill which will press 5% per hour of what they press only 200 kilos of olives per hour. The part that takes room is your storage and we are not going to store our oil in the container we have an olive workroom on our lower level, walk out basement. I dont' think a 40ft container is enough to hold our entire operation including storage and bottling. We have pallets of bottles and pallets of boxes etc. A 40ft container is enough to handle simply the pressing part of the oepration, it is plenty big. I would not want to build a mill like theirs in the future as this is right by my house and I want something more pretty.


EdC: 2. The shiny aluminum bubble insulation, it is called something like Refletix in the states, works pretty well and does have an easily cleaned surface. The "R" value is low but it reflects a lot of the radiant heat back into a building and that helps a lot. The Reflectix and a small 1500 watt radiant heater made my unheated garage in Great Falls MT habitable in the winter when it was -10C and below outside. Admittedly I was active but it does help. It also is very thin so would not take away any of that 8 foot width.
3. I don't recommend concrete for the floor, I don't think the container would handle it without being greatly reinforced. How about marine grade plywood over sloped joists and then painted with a non-skid epoxy?
4. Definitely coat the floor with something like a non-skid paint. The floors are very very slick when wet.

Thanks for giving me the practicle experience of the aluminum bubble insulation. That is a very valuable piece of information for us to have. The press is going to weigh about 2,000 kilos once we add in the decanter. Would you think wood floors would support that? I don't think my husband nor myself have the skills necessary to build a slanted floor out of wood, unless you guys can tell us how to do it and it is easy. Maybe somethign crazy like put sand down sloped and then put two layers of plywood on top of the sand. Something like that we could do. Otherwise we would have to bring a mason in to do the cement floor, if the container would support it. How much the floor can support needs further exploration but I was pretty sure that shipping containers by standards have to support a lot of weight.


Fallbrookfarmer: Hi Rox,
My 2 Euro worth. I have to agree with the gist of most of the discussion here is that you would be better off to start with a more permanent structure to begin with.
If you were to start with a metal/pole type building, you could later add a stone facing or some other type of covering to make it more attractive.
BTW, We once spent a week in Salon, after being unable to find a room in Aix, Great little town. I remember they had a parade with farm animals dressed up. Cool.

Thank you! We do have a very nice city don't we? It's really very pretty. I think it is really neat that you can relate having stayed here.

Jinman & CurlyDave I'll reply to your specific posts as you ahve multiple ideas, pahlease everybody please keep the ideas coming.

 

[rox]

rox:

1. I think you might need more concrete than 6Sunset6's calculates. We hadn't gotten to how deep the central channel needs to be when he did that. There is an interaction between the number of places you put outflow drains and the depth of the channel. While you can decide on on a depth arbitrarily, you are far better off to go back to the mill you currently use and measure their channel depth.

I pay attention to things I am interested in. I have been interested in buidling our own mill since our second year so I notice how things are built. I feel confident based on what I have seen in 6 years of going to mills that a 1" deep floor drain is sufficient. Maybe 2" wide was a bit wide and 1 1/2 wide would probably be better. This week my husband and I discussed the channel floor drain while we were there standing on it at the mill we visited. I put my hand in it. I'm the first one to ask for expert help and advice when I don't know something but I saw enough floor drains in mills looking at how they were contructed etc. that I feel pretty good about 1" deep being enough.

2. Ventilation. You certainly need ventilation. Right now I see two reasons, and don't know which one will have the higher requirement. One is water vapor as we have already noted. The second is volatile organics released from the olive processing (think smell & possibly other stuff).

I LOVE the smell of an olive mill it is just like perfume. There are no foul orders unless you are pressing olives that have first been fermented and that stinks to high heaven. We don't make that type of oil, if we would do an odd batch for a customer we would do like allt he other mills do, opent he window.

My brother in law owns a HVAC engineering business I think I'm going to ask him about ventilation.

You have more than enough electricity to do put in a forced draft vent (fan). We can leave the details until later when we know requirements. One thing you will definitely need is what is called make-up air. Essentially for every cubic meter of air you exhaust out, you need to let a cubic meter in somewhere. Nothing fancy, just screened openings low on the walls, near the floor, but don't forget them.

Nobody has this in their mills, nobody. Everybody just opens windows as needed and closes them when not needed. Where the oil is stored temerate is controlled with air conditioning and heat in order to preserve the oil, but in the actual pressing not a big deal. In fact I bet I am the only one who even would have heat and simply because I am from Wisconsin so I am very sensitive to cold. At the other mills they just wear winter jump suits when it's cold out and keep on working.

3. Insulation: the more ventilation you have the less good insulation does you. In addition to the heat losses through the walls, you have to heat the incoming air to whatever temperature you maintain inside.

I agree that insulation outside the container might be better than inside, but there is a cost. Not only do you need to install the insulation, you also need to make it weather proof. You may end up building a wood or metal structure that costs as much as the garage I was talking about. I think you need to get further along and then tell us the cost of electricity for radiant heaters and the installed cost of insulation. I can calculate how long it will take to for the insulation to pay off, and you can decide.

I will check next week about the cost of that bubble insulation as well as the cost of concrete. We are required to have a smooth cleanable surface inside so that is prolly the only insulation we would use if we do insualte. Cost will be a determing factor.

I see Eddie has found the thread.

I had considered tents before I suggested the metal garage. In the US, a tent would cost about the same as the least expensive metal garage and last for a much shorter time. Tents not legal for a mill

But, I am still in agreement that a container is not the best for your purpose. I also agree it is not the best solution a buidling is better, but we can't afford it. Although not the best solution it will work, it will provide sufficent space and meet code. Now weather rox freezes her butt off remains to be seen LOL

Again, I will still make suggestions on it, but think about what we are saying. I was trained as a chemical engineer, and I have designed more than a few chemical processing plants. Never an olive mill, but I did do a sugar mill once.

Please look at the schematic again the press is a mini press made by the biggest and best press manufacturer in the world. They spun off the mini presses as a seperate marketing entity but the same workers who build the big presses build these mini presses and the same engineers. I am attaching the schematic again so you don't have to go hunt for it.

 

[rox]

Rox, you need to have the word "pond" in your title for Eddie to see it. He's moved on from shipping containers a long time ago. Maybe a PM might get his attention.

I am still thinking about the insulation and humidity issue on the container. I think the external insulation as MarkV suggested would work to a certain degree, but you still will have a huge mass of metal to heat up in the structure of that container. Those cold walls will be like blowing your breath on the windshield of your car on a chilly morning. Just consider how much warm air it takes to clear off your windshield on your car. Now consider your warm/humid environment inside that container and the walls will be dripping. The current mills that exhaust air by opening the windows don't have cold metal walls. Their walls are insulated I am sure, either by conventional methods or by the fact that they are concrete block structures. The humidity is there inside the mill, but it just doesn't condense on the walls/roof like it will inside your container. So, I think you will need a good inside insulation and a waterproof cover for cleaning. The insulation will allow you to quickly warm the space without the thermal lag of all the metal in the container and the wall covering will be a vapor barrier as well. I would suggest that there may be pre-insulated vinyl or plastic panels available to do just what you are talking about. Think about the insides of refrigerated truck trailers. Perhaps that industry has a good product in standard sized panels for you to use.

Also, a dropped ceiling with drop-in panels for the roof might also be a very easy to install and be especially functional for lighting and running electrical power in a protected area. The ceiling would give you probably all the insulation you need for the roof. Also, the support rail matrix for a drop ceiling would probably only need one anchor in the middle of the ceiling, maybe not even that. It might span 8' with no support. Those "T" channels are pretty strong.

Just more ideas for spending your money.

Many thanks for taking your time to think about our project and comment we do appreciate it.

Next week i will get quotes on the aluminium bubble wrap insulation then we will see. Drop ceiling is going to be a non starter to start with, sorry, costs to much. I am taking the attitude of this can be a multi year project as well. CurlyDave said he would do the payback calculations once I give him the cost of the insulation. Certain things we need to do to open the doors, the floor, plumbing, and electrical have to be done to start. Heating and insulation don't necessarily have to be done to open the doors but planned for. Could be done or could not be done. No mills run heating during the harvest, I guess the equipment must keep it warm enough to keep the oil fluid. It is during storage that temperature must be controlled. But I am worried about rust. I am thinking vents that you can open and close might be good.

Not only have I spent a lot of time in olive mills in France I ahve attended numerous seminars where they bring in Phds from Italy, where 95% of all the presses are built, and have seen many pics of mills from Italy and Spain. It is not food processing like you would think nice and neat and clean, these mills are in old buildings with stone walls where the paint is falling off, not in France our mills tend to be a bit nicer. There are hoses running all over the floor and debrie that falls out and needs to get swept up, tools laying around. It is really kind of messy looking but once the olives enter the press everything is clean and sanitary running though stainless steel equipment. But the process and the area that happens before the olives hit the crusher can be kind of messy. One thing is consistant even at the best run mills there is always drama and a low level of chaos. This doesn't have to be nicy nicy looking just functional. However everyone builds a very nice boutique to receive the public and sell the oils. But behind the curtain stuff is flying all over LOL.

 

[EdC]

Rox

The experience with containers I was mentioning in my first post consisted of buying about 50 of them and then having them modified for the US Air Force. As I mentioned, I was told the strength is mostly in the perimeter frame but I will certainly try and contact the company rep I was dealing with and see if they think the stock floor can support a 5,000 lb load on a footprint that is about, guessing here, 15 square feet?

 

[jake98]

They do decks and shower pans with fiberglass now, considering the contours, that might be worth a look too.

 

[jake98]

Your approach is surely reflected in your gender.
[/COLOR]

How do you guys do that smiley face thing??

 

[ToadHill]

As far as the residue from pressing goes, is there any way you can compost it?

 

[EddieWalker]

How do you guys do that smiley face thing??

 

[CurlyDave]

OK rox, here is an outside the box suggestion.

I know you aren't allowed to process olives in your existing garage, but can you store them and heat them in the garage?

If you can do that, the way I would set this up would be to put a warming station in the garage.

Then I would get a 20 foot container. You say the equipment can be installed in a 5.6 meter length, which is 18.67 feet. The equipment can all be installed inside the container. And I don't really think you want to do anything in that container other than process olives. From reading the literature on it, and looking at the drawings, it appears that this mill is pretty self contained. You dump olives in one end and pump olive oil, dirty process water, and depleted olive paste out at various locations.

Set the mill in the container up close to your garage. Get a some wagons which can be used to haul pre-weighed olive crates to the input end of the mill. Dump the olives into the hopper and go back for more. I don't know what your olive oil carts look like, but you either need to get ones with wheels big enough to roll on your gravel, or put them on wagons with big wheels.

Here is the kind of wagon I am thinking of - Harbor Freight Tools - Quality Tools at the Lowest Prices I have exactly this one and it will easily carry hundreds of pounds of material over my gravel driveway. I have also seen ones with wire mesh sides, but don't have a link to them.

You will probably need more than one, but they are inexpensive. You can either pull them by hand, or use some kind of tractor or vehicle to tow them. If you can use your neighbors mini-excavator with forks that would be ideal. Instead of wagons, put the boxes and oil containers on pallets and fork them around.


You don't have to bring the wagons into the container. Dump the olives into the hopper by hand and pump or drain (depends on how the centrifuge works) the oil out into oil carts already on the wagons.

This eliminates dragging anything heavy over the floor and opens up the possibility of concrete, vinyl, or fiberglass over the floor.

When you say that tile floors are acceptable do you mean ceramic tile or vinyl tile? Are vinyl floors like those used in kitchens (similar to rolls of linoleum) acceptable?

If you can put seamless vinyl from a roll on the floor that is vastly easier than concrete, as Jake says. But to have that material last any length of time you have to keep all the olive crate dragging, oil cart moving, etc out of the container.

There is a second reason to eliminate olive crates and oil carts from the part of the container with the machinery--they won't fit. The pinch point is the centrifuge. If you place it the way shown on the schematic, it is 1.94 meters wide and the inside of the container is only 2.33 meters. This means you can have 18.5 cm (7 1/4") of room on each side. You might think you can do better by turning the centrifuge sideways, but the 1.70 meter length there does not include the space for that nice big, fat olive paste hose that I see in the flow chart picture.

No matter how you slice it, access to the container will be from each end, and there will be a nearly complete blockade as far as moving or dragging anything past the centrifuge. This is a very good reason to make the container as short as possible.


How many operators does the mill require? I don't mean people loading olives, or removing oil and waste products, just people babysitting the machine itself. My sense is that you only need one person to start it up, watch it run and maybe make adjustments from time to time. And, once it is running that is only a part time job. If this is correct, I would design the operation so that this person was the only person who went into the container. The people feeding the machine and taking away product don't need to go in there.

Now, if you need ventilation anyway, just keep the original swinging doors on the container and open both ends wide for ventilation. The only reason to consider heating the container at all is if you have to go in there to repair the equipment. Especially since that is how all of the other mills do it. rox, you can buy a lot of snow bunny suits for the price of the heaters and electricity you will need to heat that container. Especially with both ends open.

The other thing to think about is that the picture on the MillFlowChart shows what I would call a skid-mounted olive oil press. Now, I know you aren't planning to buy this, but is something like that legal for use in France? The reason I ask is that I don't see the bowl shaped floor and channel running down the middle.

If the skid mounted unit is legal, you might want to consider the extra cost of the skid mount vs. the cost of a floor with channel. How wide is that metal platform?

I bet you it would be possible to slide that skid lengthwise into a container and never have to worry about the floor.

 

[rox]

Rox

The experience with containers I was mentioning in my first post consisted of buying about 50 of them and then having them modified for the US Air Force. As I mentioned, I was told the strength is mostly in the perimeter frame but I will certainly try and contact the company rep I was dealing with and see if they think the stock floor can support a 5,000 lb load on a footprint that is about, guessing here, 15 square feet?

MANY thanks!!!!!! That would be awsome if you would do that, Merci