Shipping container grow rooms

dodacky said:

Theyre expensive here, I paid the equivalent to that for a 20ft. a 40ft here would cost almost 8k usd +5-600 for delivery. you guys in the usa dont know how lucky you are to have access to cheap materials

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I only live a few hrs drive from the port of San Francisco. There are a lot of empty shipping containers around the bay. a 20ft would cost $2800 delivered. The shipping containers that I have are for above ground storage. I probably would bury 2x20ft containers side buy side and not try to bury a 40ft container because the sides are weak. 2x 20fters would have much more strength. I would put a big sliding door between them to go back and forth...

I've been looking into a material called air creete. You may have seen their building modules by inflating rubber blatters and then blowing it on a parabolic dome. Looks slick. The dome has the strength.
Need to look deeper into system cost as I think it would spiral into owning a full blown construction company by accident..

pinner420 said:

I've been looking into a material called air creete. You may have seen their building modules by inflating rubber blatters and then blowing it on a parabolic dome. Looks slick. The dome has the strength.
Need to look deeper into system cost as I think it would spiral into owning a full blown construction company by accident..

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you just bury a piece of culvert and build doors on the ends....

I was reading n article about the new Ferrari 6 years ago. The pic was of the car sitting in the entry way of a modular tunnel of sorts. Basically a v and the bottom of the v was 20 ft wide and walls appeared 10ft. Then they inversed that same piece and set it on top of some set pin and grooves.

doublejj said:

you just bury a piece of culvert and build doors on the ends....

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True north culvert factory is just down the road from me!

pinner420 said:

True north culvert factory is just down the road from me!

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they make square culverts too...

doublejj said:

they make square culverts too...

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we have lots of those over here, theyre used for Cow underpasses instead of walking them across roads.
hellish expensive, the last farm I worked just put 1 in and to go accross an unsealed single lane road was just shy of 150k to install. each section is 20k as its high stregth concrete and you need a hefty crane to lift as an excavator wont do it.

I looked into concrete tanks and they would work but makes for an awkward shape room tho

doublejj said:

the trick to burying a shipping container is to flip it over first. The floors in shipping containers are hella strong to hold tons of weight and forklifts but the roof is weak. the doors work either way. Put down a nice floor and run a few lengths of square tubing lengthwise down the outside to keep the walls from buckling in....I've seen several done this way.

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Dam good idea

Talked with the rep. 12ft diameter 10 gauge can be buried 39ft below ground level. 20ft long is 5827.00. Plus 3.25 per mile delivery.

update.
well after 14months of tinkering ive just about got it all sorted, have had a few average and a few heartbreaking grows but things are looking up now and starting to dial in

the main issues I encountered were humidity and... light leaks who woulda thought that with being burried but I overlooked it because I had it buried it couldnt leak light my mistake and cost me multiple hermie grows grrr.

if anyone is thinking of undertaking the task of an underground room then my advice is to think of EVERY scenario you may encounter and address it prior to burial. it sux to get the exavator back every few months for add ons

another thing to consider is location, it needs to be near enough to something to conceal the air intakes and outlets this has been the hardest thing to overcome but just takes a few joints and some Inginuity... the whole project does really and my biggest regret not doing so from the start.

containers make wicked grow rooms once setup well and mine is now fully self contained and totally undetectable there have literaly been hundreds of unsuspecting people walking over and near and none the wiser !! no more worries with visitors and contractors turning up with no notice

Flipping it upside down makes it stronger? Really........if you dont add footings that can support the container and all the dirt on top your just adding the extra weight of the floor to the roof. Now those corners need to hold more weight. I dont really need or want to get into this but this is fuckin brosience at its best! if it was me or if someone hired me to do this I would dig, por a footing and then por a foundation on it. Smarter and safer and do it to the dimensions that would better suit a growroom.

DarkWeb said:

Flipping it upside down makes it stronger? Really........if you dont add footings that can support the container and all the dirt on top your just adding the extra weight of the floor to the roof. Now those corners need to hold more weight. I dont really need or want to get into this but this is fuckin brosience at its best! if it was me or if someone hired me to do this I would dig, por a footing and then por a foundation on it. Smarter and safer and do it to the dimensions that would better suit a growroom.

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yes flipping it makes the roof stronger....I can drive a forklift on the floor of my shipping container.....not the roof. When i flip it over I can drive on the roof....get it? The floors in a shipping container are a 100 times stronger than the roof. when you flip it over you put the weak roof to the bottom, just cover it with conventional wood flooring and you are done. its the corner pillars in a shipping container that hold all the weight and they work the same upside down.....

doublejj said:

yes flipping it makes the roof stronger....I can drive a forklift on the floor of my shipping container.....not the roof. When i flip it over I can drive on the roof....get it? The floors in a shipping container are a 100 times stronger than the roof. when you flip it over you put the weak roof to the bottom, just cover it with conventional wood flooring and you are done. its the corner pillars in a shipping container that hold all the weight and they work the same upside down.....

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I was not really asking a question...........I definitely understand the mechanics of it. It is wrong.

Yeah when you set a shipping container you want footings that support all the weight at the corners.

DarkWeb said:

I was not really asking a question...........I definitely understand the mechanics of it. It is wrong.

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So your saying the corners don't take all the weight?
Sides and roof are flimsy as, the strength is in the floor and corners, corners support the floor weather upside down or right side up.

Lucky Luke said:

So your saying the corners don't take all the weight?

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No I am not. I mean unless you do it right its not worth it...and at that point I would just build a foundation and something that isnt so narrow. I have a 20 footer and have thought about burying it, not necessarily for a grow room but still the same. You really need footings, and when you por them correctly you would support those corners of the container. And if I was to drop one in the ground I'd be more concerned with the walls than the roof, they are that much deeper. Unless your putting it really deep......a foot or so of soil would be easier to deal with. I would lay some plate on top and sure up the walls with angle on the outside of the container and insulate. But like I said at that point id just start from scratch.

You could just drill or dig holes and pour some cylindrical concrete footers to set the corners on. You don't need a slab.

Renfro said:

You could just drill or dig holes and pour some cylindrical concrete footers to set the corners on. You don't need a slab.

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A slab is not a footing. A slab still needs footings.

Renfro said:

You could just drill or dig holes and pour some cylindrical concrete footers to set the corners on. You don't need a slab.

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set the whole thing (upside down) on a level bed of gravel. Then the roof would hold 3ft of dirt. The thin tin roof of a shipping container is so flimsy I can't hardly walk on mine without it buckling it, you couldn't put even 2" of dirt up there, and when the dirt gets wet?....forget about it