Info About Using Containers As Homes

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Houseboat on Dry Land as a Tiny Home

How's this for a weird sounding tiny house idea?  Build a houseboat on pontoons, then park it on dry land and live in it.  That's what someone in Connecticut did.  

My former next door neighbor built this houseboat in the backyard of his business location.  When he finished it he actually used it on the water for many years.  Eventually, he had it moved back to where he built it, landscaped around it a bit, and moved in.  I understand from communicating with him via email recently that he lives in it on a full-time basis for about half the year.  That's because he's retired now and he spends the other half of the year in Florida.  Someday I hope to get back to the area, catch him at home in the houseboat, and get some photos of the inside.  I'd love to see how he laid-out the interior, wouldn't you?

The crazy thing is, for all the talk you hear about how difficult it is to find a place to legally live in a tiny home, and with all the sneaking around and flying below the radar that tiny homeowners do, this place is out in the open on a busy street.  Anyone driving by could spot it easily, and literally thousands of people drive by it every day.  The icing on this particular cake is that it's not in a sleepy backwater, it's in an expensive Connecticut shoreline town where the current average listing price is $839,000.  This is not a place where they ignore zoning laws.  

Next time I talk with the owner I'll have to ask him how he did it.

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Categories: a, as, dry, Home, Houseboat, Land, on, Tiny

$1800 used shipping container as architects' backyard office

Shipping containers are built to carry huge loads and the refrigerated units are very efficient at climate control. So it’s unsurprising that when they’re retired from the sea, they’re being used as the building blocks for homes and offices.

“You can put 60,000 pounds in them and then stack them 8 high and then put them on a ship,” explains architect Karl Wanaselja. “They're incredibly strong so they're way stronger than a house ever needs to be so in earthquake country they're a good building block”.

Given their strength they work well in earthquake country. In Berkeley, California Wanaselja and his business partner and wife Cate Leger created their home-office using a shipping container. It cost just $1800.

"The Port of Oakland has hundreds of these things left over. What happens is after they've been around the world I don't know how many times they get dinged up and get holes in them and sometimes they get dropped and there's a certain number of patches they're allowed to have before they no longer meet the international shipping standard and so when they're at that point they get retired and then sold off.”

Wanaselja and Leger cut their 40 foot long refrigerated unit in half and placed it in a T shape in their backyard (with the help of a crane). They didn’t need to add any insulation: they’re designed to not have any thermal bridging between the interior and exterior and the polyisocyanurate insulation (a plastic, but it came with the container) has the highest R-value of any foam insulation.

Using a sawzall (reciprocating saw), the couple cut huge windows into the aluminum/stainless steel structure. Wanaselja says he was initially intimidated by the idea of crafting out of aluminum (the exterior material) and stainless steel (interior), but “once I got over my learning curve I actually like working with metal”.

In this video, the couple talk about working in a cargo container, using materials like the soy-based plywood floor (Purebond) and the music made by rain and branches on a metal roof.

Categories: 1800, architects, as, backyard, Container, office, shipping, Used

A Houseboat as a Small Home

Houseboats are pretty much by definition smaller than houses that are not boats.  I'm not sure what the square footage of this nice houseboat is, but I'm inclined to say it's considerably less than 500 square feet.

Houseboat exterior

Of course a houseboat doesn't have a yard in the common sense of the word.  They tend to take full advantage of any outdoor space, decks, roofs, what have you, to gain a little outdoor living space.  In this particular case, the outdoor spaces span many levels.  Stairs can eat-up a lot of space so ship's ladders are used to move between levels, both indoors and out.

Interior view looking toward dining area with kitchen and bathroom beyond.  Note the "ship's ladder" used instead of stairs.

Houseboat kitchens, or "galleys" tend to be quite small and feature compact appliances.

The galley

Houseboats in many ways are just small floating homes.  Many people make them their year 'round place of residence.  Since they tend to be small, the rooms within them are often small too.  People who design tiny homes often take inspiration from space saving techniques found in boats. 

Top level living area with sliders leading to outdoor deck.  Note that the ceiling is just high enough to accommodate the doors.  This is to keep the boat's center of gravity low, making it more stable.

Another view of the top level living area.  This direction also features sliding doors and yet another deck, this time with a ladder leading to a rooftop deck above.  It looks like there are sleeping bags stowed under the couch, suggesting that it doubles as a bed.

Dining table.  The vase and flowers are a nice touch.

Click here to see a previous post about a 750 square foot house boat.

Click here to see a previous post about ship's ladders and other space saving stair alternatives. 

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Categories: a, as, Home, Houseboat, Small