Our container house

For a few years now, Sunshine and I have been researching shipping container houses as an alternative means to affordable housing. The key to a container based house is the portability. Our 60m2 free standing design retains that portability, with all external elements such as roofing, doors and walls, fitting inside a container ready for transport, quick setup and quick break down.

The reason we want a portable house is so we can move it temporarily onto rented land, save up for our own land, and relocate it to settle and extend. Our plan is a two stage approach to home and land ownership, attempting to keep our weekly payments as low as possible while we go.

If you have a small section of land you could rent us, we can offer you between $50-100 rent per week. We'd then secure a loan of $40 000 for the prefabrication, additions and delivery of our container house. The weekly repayments on such a loan would be $250 over 5 years. The land rent and house repayments together would total $350 per week. We think we could save between $100-200 per week, or $5-10,000 per year, $15-30,000 over 3. That's a deposit for our own land, and once we had our own land, we'd move off yours, leaving behind a little fruit orchard, a herb garden, and a small rammed earth pad, where we once stayed.

Here's a set of photos of inspirational projects and our design in a cardboard model.

Here's a video playlist explaining the design.

Costing breakdown - new, recycled and 2nd hand materials:

1. 2 modified 20foot high cube containers delivered: $10000
2. Roof and trusses: $7000
3. Insulation and linings: $3000
4. 4x (1.2x3m) sliding, timber framed, double glase walls: $5000
5. 1x (4.8x3m) back wall with window and door: $3000
6. 6x5m rammed earth floor: $3000
7. Kitchen: $2000
8. Waterless toilet: $2000
9. Shower: $1000
10. Plumbing, storage, pump, outlets: $3000
11. Power generator, storage, cable, points, lights: $5000
12. Rocket fire, thermal mass heater: $500
13. 2x doors: $1200

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$45900 for stage one


If you think you can offer us a small section of land, let's talk.