Container Home: Applying Coal Tar Epoxy - 27 March 2016

This last weekend, I took Friday off to get the exterior wall that will be underground prepped. I had to first sand any rust spots. Next, the coal tar epoxy was applied. My wife came over and helped with applying the epoxy with really decreased the time. This was probably one of the most frustrating times I have worked on the place because not one, but two angle grinders went bad on me. I was in a time crunch because the epoxy needs at least 18 hours of drying time before rain moved in on late Sunday.

I meant to get a picture of the entire wall after I had ground down all rust spots, but I was in such a time crunch that I forgot until we were already half way through applying the epoxy.

Here is a picture half way through:

This is a picture after we finished applying the epoxy to the entire side.

While I was over there, I also picked up cinder blocks to use for supporting the drainage and sewage pipes. These blocks will be placed every 1 foot down the side. We will then fill in that part with a base of gravel.

Here is a picture of the sewage and drainage pipes. The blue pipe is the sewage and the perforated pipes are the drainage. They will be run through the cinder blocks at the base of the containers. Since there will not be any black water, drainage can be run out into the ground.

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Container Home: Installing First Structural I-Beam - 13 March 2016

I finished up installing all of the re-enforcement beams for the bedroom and bathroom. These beams will be used to re-enforce the walls when we bury the two sides in the ground. Here is a picture of the beams in place. I have six more beams to weld and the 40 foot wall will then be completely re-enforced. I still need to weld the beams in place going down the center of the containers to re-enforce the roof.

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Container Home: Installing First Ceiling Structural I-Beam - 06 March 2016

This was a one day work weekend due to a speech contest I was in on Saturday. I feel like though that I got a critical part well on the way, along with solving other parts of the house.

The first thing I did was to bring over the 6 inch i-beam to put in place for supporting the roof. This is a picture of me using a hoist to raise it up.

The hoist could only take the beam up so far, so I had to change over to ratchet straps. As you can see in the picture, there are hooks mounted in the ceiling. I am leaving those because they are so strong that literally a backhoe scoop can be attached to one and pickup the container. I am going to weld the hooks to the i-beam. 

The change over was scary and it took quite a while to secure the straps and slowly pull the beam on to the top. I attached four 400 pound capacity straps so there was little danger of it falling while also attaching a chain to the center and to the ceiling for added safety. 

Once I finally got the beam pulled to the ceiling, I then replaced two of the straps with chains for more protection against falling. With one strap on each end and three chains, I began tightening and securing the beam to the ceiling using jack posts. Once the posts were very tight, I removed the last two straps. This process took all day doing it by myself. It is a most dangerous task and I took extreme caution while doing it. Here is a picture of the final product:

When I return next weekend, I will weld it in place along with welding the beams in the walls.

My next breakthrough was realizing that I would not have to build and underground room for the water totes. There are solar panels available for water totes that keep them partially heated so they do not freeze in the winter. When I had decided to bury them, I did not know so much sunlight would come through the trees during the winter due to the leaves falling in the fall.

One more thing that I have been trying to figure out how to get to work on 12 volt DC is the fan that will blow air through the 12 inch culvert. The thought of using car equipment never crossed my mind until this weekend. The radiator fan is 12 volts and can be adapted to blow directly into the geothermal culvert piping. The culvert piping is 12 inches and I found that a 12 inch fan is also manufactured for some vehicles. This makes for an easy setup and also allows for easy control of the cooling system.

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