Shipping Container for Olive Mill

[TBDonnelly]

Rox, The link is about a Frenchman who composts for Heat and Methane Power. Perhaps it might be worth looking into for your mill project?

"Here's a great story from Reader's Digest about Jean Pain. Jean developed a system that heats his home and generates electricity from a compost heap! Jean puts his methane digester inside a compost heap to keep it warm and generates electricity with a methane powered generator system. Then he siphons off excess heat via coiled water hoses and sends it to the radiators in his house."

Composting for Heat and Methane

Don

 

[rox]

6Sunset6 brought up a good point about the roll up doors. I don't think on the end it would matter structurally as the thing is not that wide. If we cut out steel for in the center for a roll up door do you think we would have to weld some kind of frame, like a header type of thing in order to maintain structural integrity.

Most likely we will not cut the holes ourself, the place we buy the container from does modifications, we went down there and looked. Their price seemed reasonable so we will probably have them do it. I just wanted to know how it is done. And probably once we own the thing we will probably end up having to cut in for something we didn't anticipate and will have to know how to do it. I have always wanted a reciprocating saw anyway so when it is needed I'll get one. Thank you for the many tips on number of blades that might be required etc.

Next- I know nothing about welding, nothing. When our pergula was built the contractor brought a little machine with him, and I only saw for a brief minute and then had to leave, but I believe he was welding as he attached heavy iron lengths together.

If we would need something welded, say a shelf to hold up a hot water heater are there small portable welding units that can be brought on site and weld something? How expensive are welding machines? If they cost a lot then i figure I can expect to pay a lot for the service. If this is all steel and we don't put in any interior walls then everything is either freestanding, screwed or welded. How hard is it to screw into the thickness of steel on a container? And how do you do it?

 

[rox]

Don- You bring up a very good point about composting. What we could do and some do do is compost the olive paste residu. Here if you compost you have to do it in concrete type bins, basically a back wall and 2 side walls of concrete. We ahve a very high risk of fire here and especially for us if our trees burned down. it can be done and it can be done safely. To start with I think we will probably spread it on our fields as it is excellent fertilizer. Another idea I do really like is that you take the olive residu and form it into bricks and let the brisk dry and you use it for fuel in a fireplace or wood stove. They are doing this now in spain and generating electric from burning the blocks. however you have to find a way to effectively dry the bricks, in spain they have big ovens, apparently just letting them lay around to air dry doesn't work. We are going to start simple and then graduate to ever more adventerus projects. First I was an olive farmer now I am about to become a moulinier, it is very exciting and keep me young.

 

[CurlyDave]

I'll like a roll up door simply becasue someone will be inside working 24/7 during the harvest and it freezes at night here in November even we get snow sometimes during the day. I think a roll up door is going to be nicer to operate than pushing the heavy doors open and closed. Many times and hour the door is going to be opened as olives are brought in and oil is taken out. Figure a batch takes an hour. Depending on price we might get 2 roll up doors, one for an end and one in the middle.

You have me worried now about the floor. Why is it a big deal? I don't know, what I don't know Dave. I don't think it is practical to do the idea of of dividing the floor into cells and a drain for each. We will be moving around on a hand cart 60 liter tanks of oilive oil that weighs my guess 120lbs. Lots of times at the mills they like to just slide them on the floor, kind of pull them across the floor. And don't forget those 50lb crates of olives we will have to push around to get in position to dump. Typically you bring in the olives into the mill to warm up a bit before pressing so there is going to be a lot of movement of crates of olives on the floor. Floor drains are an impediment to dragging things across so one long channel down the center is what I have seen. What are your thoughts on why this is going to be hard to do/build? I am thinking plain concrete also but maybe someone has a better idea.

Rox:

I don't know the cost of roll-up doors where you are, but in the US, they are $600-1000 per door for 8' wide by 8' tall. Installation is not going to be free. By the time you have finished getting two roll-up doors installed you will be almost doubling the cost of the container. If you want it and can afford it, go for it, but I was getting the impression that cost was a big issue here. It sure would be for me for a building I was only going to use for 3 years.

The reason floors are an issue is that to get the drainage to work properly, you need to have slope. To get rain water to run off a patio, about 1/4" per foot is typical. You want a higher slope to get olive oil, paste, leaves, etc. to run off. I don't think that paste & leaves will run off by themselves, they will have to be hosed out. To get relatively fast drainage you need a greater slope. For instance, I just measured the slope on the centerline of my bathtub and it is ~3 degrees, which works out to 5/8" per foot. My guess would be that you want your floor to slope between 1/2" and 1" per foot.

Side-to-side the container is 8 feet, and if it slopes to the center, you might decide to pour concrete 2" thick in the center and 4" to 6" thick at the sides. Now think about what to do lengthwise.

One possibility is to put one end of the container higher than the other and have the runoff all go to one end. With a 40 foot container, one end would have to be 20" to 40" higher than the other. There are two problems here. One is that 40' is a long ways to push debris with a hose and it will be time-consuming and use a lot of water. The second issue has to do with your doors. If you decide to pay for roll-up doors you have no problems with a 3 degree tilt. If you keep the hinge open doors, they will operate poorly at such a large angle. They are heavy and they will want to swing to the "downhill" side. They might move dangerously fast, and it will always be an effort to operate them.

The other option would be to level the container and have a central drain. This means the floor at the entrance and exits would need to be 10" to 20" higher than the floor at the center, in addition to the side-to-side slope. This is a lot of concrete, and is why I suggested dividing the container into four drainage cells. If you did four cells, and had 2" of concrete at the center, the maximum thickness you would need at the "crosswise peaks" would be 4.5" to 7". This seems a lot more reasonable to me.

The drains themselves would be on the centerline of the container. I expect you would mount the machinery along the centerline, so you wouldn't drag anything across the floor drains. There would be "hills and valleys" in the concrete.

Now, I am making some assumptions about the necessary slope of the floor. You might check to see if there is a regulation on that.

 

[6sunset6]

Floor first
2.33m wide by 12 m long = 28 square meters
Then thickness of the floor I said 2 inch min that 5cm and 1/4 inch pitch over
1.65m makes it 2.75 inches on the high side. say average 2.5 inches = .0635m
.0635 X 28 =1.78 say 2 cubic meters. not much
Now This floor has to be really stiff or it will flex and start breaking up.
I think a little thicker with rebar in it would really work. 3 cubic meters of concrete would result in a slab almost 10cm thick. Talk to the concrete guys.
Now to welding. It depend on how thick the wall is whether or not it can structurally hold something . Welding on thin sections usually results in a lot of warping. You might be better off drilling and bolting . The bolts will create a thermal leak so tape a piece of insulation over it. You might have to use a plate on the outside so the bolt head is not pulled through.
Welding is fun but takes a lot of practice to make it work. And A LOT of practice on vertical surfaces. Don't even think about overhead. Hire a local welder. By the way , and you probably know this , but if you know what you want and listen to the trade guys recommendations and don't change things half way through the prices are not too bad.
I thought I was all done with metric conversions. You can burn out your brain doing them. I spent 3 weeks in Provence once I will come visit and help.

 

[rox]

CurlyDave, wow that is a lot of concrete. Let me add this, there is a regulation for an olive mill that the floor must be bowl shaped, basically thye are saying they want some slope but they dont' say how much. Perhpas the following will make a difference. In mills floors are cleaned ofen like every hour or so. Usually a power washer is used, aiming towards the center drain and then an extra long squeegee on the end of a long broom handle is used to squeegee the waste into the center drain. So we dont' expect that it will naturally run into the drain by itself. With this additional info what is your slope suggestion. And actually slope is a poor word choice. What is easier for me to understand is you need 2" at the sides and 1/2" in the center. I'm thinking a heavy slope is not what is required and would be a PIA when having to put in a desk and other stuff.

Another thing I am unsure about is the center channel drain, the one I saw yesterday was about an inch and a half deep. Do I have to cut through the floor to stick it down, or do you build up the concrete?

This is going to be a long thread for sure.

 

[rox]

6Sunset6- Excellent!!!!! Many thanks for your calculations, at least it is a start for us. We plan on using tradesmen. I guess I need to know about the floor in advance so the container guys can cut out the man door to the right height. I ws trying to look up what is the thickness of the steel the windows will be placed in. Will some type of frame need to be welded into the walls to hold the windows? It is hard to find this information but on this link page 7 near the bottom I think it says but I don't know how to read it. http://www.steinecker-container.de/container/Container2/Spez-Container/Spez_openSide.pdf

We have another neighbor down the road who is a welder + the guy who built our pergula I think he was welding as well.

This is not going to be a throw away in 3 years project we will move it to an ideal spot on our property an reuse this container for storage. You can never have to much storage...

 

[6sunset6]

I think just enough slope for water to run off. As you say push off the solids with with other forms of energy. I think the center channel can be formed in the concrete. Not necessary to hang it below the floor. I don't think you want to do anything that will degrade the structural integrity of the floor. It needs to be stiff.

 

[CurlyDave]

Just another thing to think of, I would suggest removing the plywood floor before pouring concrete just because wood expands and contracts a lot more than concrete, and steel would be a much better substrate underneath.

For a channel in the center, I would build up concrete rather than cutting a slot down the center of the container floor. The slot will weaken the container significantly.

Let me think about this for a while, I am beginning to have an idea...

 

[rox]

Just another thing to think of, I would suggest removing the plywood floor before pouring concrete just because wood expands and contracts a lot more than concrete, and steel would be a much better substrate underneath.

For a channel in the center, I would build up concrete rather than cutting a slot down the center of the container floor. The slot will weaken the container significantly.

Let me think about this for a while, I am beginning to have an idea...

Thanks. We will have the container mod guys pick up the plywood floor for us. We will want all that plywood of course. I am sure they have replaced many a plywood floor. What this company does is repair containers. When we visited they were working on a container for Perrier, the water company. They were hanging that aluminium bubble wrap type insulation inside the container. So they don't do mods as a full time business, but say they can do it no problem at all. They also sell used containers.

I might can the roll up doors idea and go for doors on both ends but then install an extra wide man door. I really do want them though, it will be so nice in the future to drive up to the container on the tractor and use a remote to roll up the garage door and then drive in.