Climate Controlled Shipping Container
Hello All. We are building a new 1616 sq ft home in Revelstoke BC – Climate Zone 6. Our new Revy home will take another year to be ready. We currently live in Calgary and the real estate market has been positive so we are planning to sell … we will need to store our furniture, sports gear, files & photos, etc. So we are exploring options for doing that.
One idea would be to buy a shipping container. We could use it for both the move and the year of storage. But an unheated steel box isn’t recommended for many of our items such as wooden furniture.
We can insulate it for $2,000. And then add a wall mounted heater for $3,400. It makes we wonder if we’d be better to use a heat pump to get both heating and cooling. That certainly would expand the range of uses for it. We won’t have a basement or garage so storage will be tight.
Our HVAC rep said that we’d likely need 12,000 BTU and for a cold climate heat pump that would push the price up to $7-8,000 CAD which makes other options a better way to go.
Is there a way to make this work? Pitfalls? There are heat pumps out there for far less, but we don’t want to scrimp on quality and have it go kaput in February.
Any experiences or expertise appreciated!
Thx, Rog
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Replies
I’d think renting a climate controlled storage unit would be far cheaper and less headache?
By me, 300sqft climate controlled is about $1000-$1500 usd a year.
Thx Paul. The prices for off-site climate controlled storage look quite alot expensive here - $4700 for 150 sq ft. That would be the price of a shipping container ... hence our thought that buying one could work.
We need storage once we move there too.
The cost of insulation and some type of heat source (+/- cooling) is leading to an unbalanced equation though.
If it's anywhere close, I'd go with the pros, not a DIY solution. But I'd also wonder if storing at all makes sense. Selling and rebuying furniture in a year might be an even better option.
My wife smiled when she read this Paul. ;)
It's funny, but with all of our "creative problem solving" we hadn't thought of this. We have a few special treasures we want to keep. There are other items, though, that are functional, but easily replaceable.
Ha only because I've been there before. Used furniture, unless sentimental, is easily replaced!
There are lots of downsides here and not much upside. People periodically ask about heating/cooling/insulating shipping containers on this site. The summary of all of that is "don't bother". Since the steel container is an excellent conductor of heat, it's essentially one big thermal bridge. Your only practical options are spray foam and rigid foam, and to cover the *entire* surface of the container with insulation. You need to air seal the doors too. If you do this on the interior, you cut into the already limited ceiling clearance. If you do it on the exterior, your need to deal with supporting the weight of the container during and after insulating it.
You'd be better off building a simple wood shed on a slab. The slab isn't an "extra cost" here either, because you'd need a slab for the container to sit on anyway.
The best way I can think of to do this would be to build a basic storage building on the same land as your new home, then store your stuff in that building during construction. Once the home is built, you can move your stuff into your house, and you can keep the storage building for storage, use as a workshop, garage space, whatever you want.
Bill
Thx Bill. We are leaning this way. We'll still need some climate controlled space for some items, but if I follow Paul's advice and cull to what's most essential to keep we could get away with a small rented space with the bulk of stuff in a shed.
Some of our wooden furniture is valuable (at least for sentimental reasons), but some could go in the shed to brave out the winter without too much risk. Mattresses could be sold and replaced easily enough.
You could build that storage building on a slab, then condition that. All you need is a basic wood-frame building on a slab, some insulation in the walls and roof, and a heatpump or other device to handle the temperature control. It doesn't have to be very fancy -- even a simple garage heater hanging from the ceiling would do the job.
Bill