I have read enough forum posts to know that burying a 40' shipping container is not likely to be a good idea because they were not designed to have pressure from all sides, as the soil would provide. Has anyone looked into the minimum costs it would take to make a shipping container "bury-able"? I am thinking of things like angle iron for reinforcing all corners, covering all sides with an additional layer of steel - or some other substance.
Reinforcing a 40' shipping container
- Thread starter pengyou
- Start date
Help Support Homesteading & Country Living Forum:
to me.using a shipping container for a bunker,or any thing else underground..is about as good as taking a B.B. gun to a bull fight.on account,(and if i remember right.) buying a shipping container,then reinforcing the sides and roof.then making ALL of the outside of it water proof.then burying it.will cost more then.building a bunker from scratch,and that's with concrete and rebar..even then..the chances of things going wrong with the shipping container is still there,after getting every thing done up right..
I saw one guy had dug a hole about three feet wider than the container and put it in it. It was 6" deeper than the height of the container. He put up a metal corrugated form over the container and the gap around the sides, extending a couple feet onto the surrounding soil. The slab he poured was level with the ground, and he built a storage building over the whole thing. The hidden stairway gave him access to a place to store stuff.
First coat the entire exterior with plastic water proofing spray paint. Surround it by three sides then lightly cover the top (and I mean lightly). Build into side of hill and cover front and top with brush. This makes it nearly impossible to spot.
watch doomsday bunkers to get an idea on reinforcing a shipping container for buryal long term! the steel bunkers they make are reinforced with steel I-beams on the outside ! a shipping container would have to be done the same way to get any depth on it ! not to mention needing atleast a foot of sand or fine gravel around the walls and base /including drainage! most importantly dont forget that with anything you build under ground you need forced air of some kind because all of your deadly gas's like C02 ,h2s, methane, all at the rite ppm will kill you! ppm=parts per million!
Said it before, and will say it again. Shipping containers make great ABOVE-GROUND bunker material. But, when you account for the design flaws, cost to move it and position it (hiring a crane), you're just much better off building a standard concrete underground bunker the old-fashioned way. Even if you got the container for FREE, it'd likely be cheaper to do a concrete one of equal size.
Try a school bus, will be the same price or cheaper than a container, the inside will not be hazardous to your health like the paint or wood floors of some shipping containers.
They are already reinforced with roof/side ribs every 30 inches or so, is already double walled, per federal regulations they are designed to take a dynamic roll over accident at their empty weight with the roof collapsing no more than 12 inches.
This means the bus is already designed to take 2 to 3 feet of dirt on the roof without collapsing and this is before you run a line of 4x4's down the center of the bus reinforcing the roof ribs.
The side walls are strong enough to handle fill dirt or wet concrete if you go that route.
Drive it in the hole, jack up and block the frame, it is also a must to block the outside walls since the cross beams holding the bus above the frame are 8ft long 2in. angle and usually 10 gauge.
If you dont block the outside frame the floor cross beams will bend under the many tons of dirt you put on the roof.
And lastly putting some plywood over the windows so the fill dirt doesn't break them, and even laying some metal roofing on the roof and sides of the bus as an extra water proofing might be a good idea.
They are already reinforced with roof/side ribs every 30 inches or so, is already double walled, per federal regulations they are designed to take a dynamic roll over accident at their empty weight with the roof collapsing no more than 12 inches.
This means the bus is already designed to take 2 to 3 feet of dirt on the roof without collapsing and this is before you run a line of 4x4's down the center of the bus reinforcing the roof ribs.
The side walls are strong enough to handle fill dirt or wet concrete if you go that route.
Drive it in the hole, jack up and block the frame, it is also a must to block the outside walls since the cross beams holding the bus above the frame are 8ft long 2in. angle and usually 10 gauge.
If you dont block the outside frame the floor cross beams will bend under the many tons of dirt you put on the roof.
And lastly putting some plywood over the windows so the fill dirt doesn't break them, and even laying some metal roofing on the roof and sides of the bus as an extra water proofing might be a good idea.
i heard of someone trying a school bus once.and it caved in from the dirt on top of it..
I worked out the math, and it was cheaper for me to build with concrete block. It took no real skill as I just layer block 8' high, but was a lot of labor. The block and rebar is strong, moisture proof, as far as rotting, and will last for generations.
- Joined
- Mar 29, 2013
- Messages
- 18,346
I just gave away a 40' shipping container. If I was going to build anything underground I'd make it out of concrete blocks. In my case I have an old abandoned mine nearby if I need to go underground for any reason.
