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Converting Steel Shipping Containers to Housing

Bob talks about the vast number of steel shipping containers abandoned in America's ports. Because America is no longer an exporting nation, only an importing nation, it is too expensive to return the 700,000 containers clogging American ports. Tampa Armature Works (TAW) converts these containers to intermodal steel building units (ISBU's) for use by the military and as durable, affordable installations throughout the world. David Cross of TAW explains how they have developed a skeletal frame system that brings the container down to its most elemental structural elements from which anything can be built. Cross shows Bob "the world's largest toolbox," which is an ISBU converted into a series of bins, cargo holds, and roll doors that can organize, store, and protect all kinds of tools, gear, and equipment in a military setting. Once modified, these containers are perfect as storm-ready housing units, with corrugated sides, a bottom steel channel and flat-bar toprail functioning together like a steel I-beam. Inside, 1 1/8-inch marine-grade Apitone flooring is a huge and standard benefit in every ISBU. TAW can cut the openings for doors and windows, finish the exterior with heavy gauge steel, wrap it in a sheet-metal skin, spray it with SuperTherm insulative ceramic coating, and deliver it for $40 to $45 per square foot. The foundation and roof are then supplied on site by the contractor. With 17 million of these containers in circulation world-wide, this is a salvage, recycling, and green business initiative that can create heavy-gauge steel, hurricane-resistant housing fast and for about the same dollars as a light-gauge steel home. Cross and TAW are just looking for consumers willing to jump on board with the technology and opportunities ISBU's present. More information