Shipping Containers Blog

Posts Tagged ‘steel containers’

With the weekend a few hours away, we wanted to think of something fun to do with Shipping Containers and leisure.  Our eyes nearly popped out of our head when we saw this shipping container transformed into transportable surfers/swimmers dream.

The mechanism that produces the endless waves  are housed in the specially converted steel containers  and are able to produce waves for all abilities - smooth or steep or even breaking wave faces.  The depth of the container allows or there to be a natural cushion of water underneath in case of a fall which makes the whole thing as safe as possible.  The fact that the whole thing is housed in shipping containers means that it is easily transportable!

Unfortunately, Susan and I are unable to rush off and test our surfing abilities at the moment as these converted shipping containers seem to only be available in the USA - particularly in the  California  area -  but we are ever hopeful that we will be given the chance one day!

You may remember last Friday we featured shipping container cartoons set in Wales, Scotland and Ireland and completely left out England altogether.  Well, in order to redress the balance we are going to fly the flag for England in this post and apologise to all of you who thought we were showing an unreasonable Celtic bias! But first the Union Jack.

Before we go onto Susan’s brillant cartoons, here is a 20ft container with a  fantastic paint job!  I just couldn’t resist it.   Imagine having this at the Olympic games 2012 in a big wall featuring shipping containers with all the competing nations flags around one of the venues.  It would certainly be pretty amazing and very colourful!

Not to be outdone, Susan just dashed off a couple of very quick sketches of how she would see steel containers being used in London.  What this girl can turn out in a few minutes using a couple of felt tips and a piece of paper puts Blue Peter to shame!!

Anyway, I do hope that this redresses the national balance for all of you who felt that we had neglected England in our shipping container gallery of cartoons.  Next week we are going back to - by popular demand - featuring some interesting conversions that we have seen.  Mind you next week is going to be pretty busy as we hopefully launch our new website so we may just get a bit distracted by that and do something else altogether.   Hope you all have a good weekend!

Yesterday we were talking about container dimensions for the most commonly used shipping containers.  This prompted several of you to ask me about what other containers were used for transportation.  Today’s post therefore, features three of the specialist containers I mentioned yesterday.

Flat racks or platforms are ISO containers that do not have side walls and are used to transport heavy machinery. They often have collapsible ends for ease of transportation when not in use.  They are often very popular for over sized pallets as well.

• Open top containers are shaped like a box and can be loaded from the top or end. Their main purpose is to carry heavy, tall or hard-to-load materials such as coal or grain.  They  are basically steel containers that have a tilt at the bottom and a tarpaulin cover and can be seen quite commonly on trains.

• Finally tank containers  or bulktainers which are used to transport liquid or bulk materials. They are built to the same standard dimensions as other ISO containers but are cylindrical vessels mounted in a rectangular steel framework.

These then are some more of what seems to be an infinite variety of shipping containers that you might comonly see when travelling by road, sea or train.

If you are planning on emigrating, there are two ways to move your home contents – by air or by sea.   If you choose to ship your items it will obviously take longer for them to arrive at their final destination although usually it will save you money.   When you are trying to decide which option to choose, look at both air and sea options in terms of cost and time and don’t forget to factor in any furnished rentals you may need to pay for in the interim.  You can undertake the whole move yourself, or pay an international mover to take care of it for you.   Much will depend on your budget but, even if this is comparatively small, it could be worth talking to a professional as there are various options available that mean you can take on some of the process yourself and keep the price down!
If you do decide to move by sea, you will probably use a shipping container.   These are available to buy or hire and are made of corten steel.  These steel containers are extremely rust resistant and strong and are able to be delivered to your home so that your belongings can be packed inside.  Remember that you can either load straight away if you do not have too much stuff, or you can have the container left for a few weeks whilst you pack at your leisure.
 If you do decide to buy your own shipping container – and many people do, finding it extremely useful to have as additional storage space or as the basis of a conversion once they have arrived in their new country – then you must make sure that your container is sea worthy.   The phrase CSC plated is often used to determine whether the shipping container is suitable for shipping.   CSC stands for “Container Safety Convention” and the plate is usually attached to the shipping container doors and acts as the equivalent of a passport for the container.  Second hand shipping containers over 5 years old, can be tested and awarded a certificate that needs to be presented to the shipping line that is moving your container.  Basically this ensures that your shipping container is strong enough to be lifted safely on and off the ship with your home contents inside.
But how do you decide which size of shipping container will take all the contents of your home?  The standard sizes are either 20ft or 40ft and the easiest way to judge the size is to imagine that a 20ft shipping container as the size of a single garage and a 40ft shipping container the size of a double garage.   Whilst there are other sizes of shipping containers available generally these would need to go as special cargo and therefore be more expensive to ship.     Shipping containers are normally loaded onto the boat as cargo and must fit into the boat’s schematic.   Therefore all the 20ft containers are usually stacked together and similarly all the 40fts.  
Once you have loaded your container, it should be collected and moved to the port by rail or road where it can be loaded onto the ship.   Once your goods have arrived in your new country, the container is then unloaded and must pass through customs.   International movers should be able to help you with all the necessary forms and are often responsible for clearing your goods.  Don’t forget that depending on which country you have moved to it may be possible to claim back the vat you will have paid on your container.
From there on in you are on the home straight (as it were)!  It is simply a matter of getting your shipping container to your new house and unpacking.  
Best of luck!

Shipping Containers are often chosen as home storage containers over the more traditional wooden sheds. There are a variety of reasons for this other than the fact that shipping containers are generally cheaper and more easily transportable. Perhaps the most important is the fact that the steel containers offer an extremely secure method of storage for personal belongings.

Whether the reason for needing home storage containers is as a result of a delayed house move, a major rennovation project or clearing space in the garage or spare room, there has been an increasing need for additional storage. It has been argued that the recent credit crunch has meant that many people are down sizing or continuing to rent whilst waiting for housing prices fall further, and this has meant increased demand for such storage.

There are a number of advantages to using shipping containers as home storage containers. The containers are made of corten steel -which is extremely strong and weather proof, having been developed to withstand marine conditions. The strength of the iso specification is such that shipping containers can be used to support bridges and therefore this makes them extremely durable and long lasting. The doors are fastened with locking rods that, when coupled with a lock box and a heavy duty container padlock makes illegal access difficult.

Lock boxes are sometimes referred to as lock cowls, lock shrouds or padlock boxes. As far as home storage containers are concerned their function is to protect the padlock from angle grinders or bolt croppers adding to the security aspect.

Shipping containers come in a variety of sizes - both standard and adapted - making them idea for home storage containers. The basic width of a container is 8ft with the height being normally 8ft 6″- although 9ft 6″ high cube containers are available. The length can then be adapted and is usually anything from 8ft to 40ft. The industry standard lengths are 20ft and 40ft (making these the cheapest options) but these can be cut down to any other length to fit into the space available.

Finally, shipping containers are easily transportable. They are often delivered and offloaded by a lorry with a hi-ab crane which makes the placement of the container at your home extremely easy.

Home storage containers that are flexible in size, extremely secure and easily delivered to your home - shipping containers have to be an option worth considering.

Regular readers may remember one of our articles last month depicting shipping containers holding up a bridge in Utah. This demonstrated their incredible strength.

We have been told of a worrying trend in metal boxes that are claiming to be shipping containers and are in fact nothing of the sort.   On these boxes only the metal corners are in fact “ISO standard” corners.  The rest of the box is just metal and does not have the strong steel frame and corner posts of a genuine shipping container.  Shipping Companies and Logistical Services have issued a warning that these boxes ”do not have sufficient strength to withstand the same loads as a genuine ISO Container”.

What does this mean to you?  Simply that they cannot be shipped normally, that they do not stack safely and that they are not made of the weather resistant Corten steel of ISO shipping Containers.

That does not mean that they do not have a use in the domestic storage market - they do.   We just wish that the companies selling these boxes would point out that they are not shipping containers and therefore cannot be expected to have the same strength and weather resistance as the genuine article.  That way everyone would know where they stood and be able to make an informed decision on what they bought based on the facts.

Often our customers want to stack shipping containers on top of one another in order to maximise the available space for storage.

Whilst empty steel containers are perfectly safe to have stacked without any additional securement, if they are being used to store items or,say, as an office/showroom combination the containers need to be held together.

Twist locks are inserted into the corner ISO blocks and therefore attach the containers safely together.  Obviously four are required between two containers in order to do this safely.  Indeed these twist locks are often used to secure shipping containers to the lorries that transport them - so that should give you an idea of how effective they are!

What on earth does a shipping container have to do with the Internet?   It does not seem like an obvious combination.  Large , industrial steel containers designed to be able to move cargo easily about the world don’t seem to have anything to offer the highly technological world of the Internet.  Yet, the very versatility and inherent strength of these containers mean that they do have a part to play.

Most of us have heard of the Internet Archive.   It was set up as a giant internet “library” which allows people to view any page on the internet from 1996 to the present day.   It is primarily meant as a resource for researchers, scholars and historians as it allows permanent access to all internet content.  An amazing undertaking.  Yet it doesn’t stop there.   The Internet Archive has now been expanded so that it also records programmes from tv channels worldwide, as well as films, music etc.

All that information - some 3,145,728 GB of web pages at the present time (and growing) - needs to be housed securely and  Sun Microsystems developed a modular infrastructure that is housed in a customised enclosure known as a Petabox.   Still with me?   Because now we get to the relevant bit.   These Petaboxes are packaged into a 20ft shipping container.  Why a shipping container?   The very construction of these units make them ideal for storage containers.   They are made of highly rust resistant and strong corten steel, are designed for easy transportation, and can be easily stacked like lego as the archive grows.   They can be insulated and modified to maintain ideal climatic conditions for storing data.  In short, shipping containers make ideal data centres as they allow them to be both secure and self contained.

Currently, it is an amazing fact that what is one of - if not the largest - digital archive in the world is housed in a 20ft shipping container.  Other companies such as Dell, Microsoft and Google, to name but a few, are also using shipping containers to house their own data centres in various locations around the world - some even off shore.  A whole new use for shipping containers.   Whoever would have thought that combining cutting edge technology with steel shipping containers could be so successful?

I have been asked recently why re-using shipping containers is a “green” thing to do?   Well, if we forget the obvious point about the fact that only one out of every five of the shipping containers landing in the UK goes back into shipping and therefore we have masses of steel containers waiting to be recycled there are many other reasons.

First off if you put your mind to it the materials used to build a container home can be up to 80% recycled!  Time that it takes to assemble the home itself is often at least a third of that of a standard construction project and therefore saves time and energy.  But if all of that isn’t enough the insulation that can be applied to these steel containers reduces the energy bills to keep warm/cool to much less than that of a normal brick built home.

There is also something particularly fitting to a shipping container with solar panels or a green roof - let alone the energy saving wind turbines or heat exchanger

Shipping Container Conversions lend themselves very easily to being green.