More than just a building fad, shipping containers (or intermodal containers) are quickly moving to the top as one of the most cost-effective, durable, and reliable building materials.
This is happening for a number of reasons, but the chief ones are strength, sustainability, affordability, storage, and portability. Because more and more people are using them and understanding their potential, more and more people are intrigued by them.
1. Shipping containers are really, really strong
It’s a solid steel structure that the government designed (and approved) to hold up under the harshest of conditions. Because of that background, they are built to last in every way.
People used early versions of today’s shipping containers in pre-World War II Europe. They made these containers from a steel frame with wooden walls, bottom, and roof. However, standardized use of the shipping containers we know didn’t actually happen until the 1930s and ’40s in the United States.
2. They’re a sustainable building material
Shipping containers are highly efficient energy-saving building units. Additionally, we can build units with used shipping containers that would have otherwise ended up in a landfill.
There are about seventeen million shipping containers in the world today. Of that seventeen million, experts estimate that a few million of them have actually been discarded due only to the shipping costs of sending them back to their port of origin.
Lesson: When you build out of shipping containers, you’re actually helping to clean up the planet!
3. Shipping containers won’t cost you an arm and a leg…
With thousands of shipping containers arriving in U.S. port cities every day, there is no shortage of containers. This makes for a cost-effective building material.
Additionally, the construction time required for a container home or office space is much less than a conventional build (usually 5 to 6 months). IPME cuts that time by 30 percent so that the overall cost is much lower, usually a 30 to 35 percent savings.
4. They stack easily for storage
Containers actually work a lot like Legos. They fit together side by side or stack on top of one another.
As you can imagine, this makes things easy for a builder.
5. They can go just about anywhere
You can easily transport them from one site to another by truck, train or ship. Because of this, prefabricated design is quite easy, and often more affordable.
Well, are you convinced? Shipping containers are a valuable building material that provides good things to everyone involved, and if you don’t believe it, just check out some of our projects.
If you really are interested in starting your shipping container adventure, contact us here and we’ll get you started.