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Years ago, when Catalina Klein was a real estate agent specializing in schools and churches, a client used shipping containers to quickly build classrooms to accommodate a growing number of students.
“At the time, I thought that if you can use shipping containers in a classroom with kids, you can use them to build a house. That’s when this idea started to emerge,” Klein said.
But Klein sees the container as a blank canvas for a new home. The concept took off after she built a one-bedroom showroom to show what it was.
Klein is the founder and CEO of Kubed Living. The Sierra Madre, California-based company is working with partners and manufacturers to turn shipping containers into homes, offices and gyms.
Klein, who has a Bachelor of Arts degree, an MBA in corporate strategy and years of real estate experience, believes her company has a sizeable housing market.
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She told FreightWaves that she has noticed that many middle-class workers cannot afford housing near work and are forced to leave the city center, extending their daily commute. She founded the company in 2018 with the goal of providing affordable housing and upgrading shipping containers.
Kubed Living sometimes uses new containers when old containers are not available. A 40-foot cube, a new or old container suitable for upgrading, can cost you between $6,000 and $8,000 in December, depending on location, Klein says. High Cubes are 9’6″ tall, 1′ taller than standard shipping containers.
The pandemic has increased the overall demand for shipping container structures, especially gyms and container homes in remote areas such as rural areas and deserts.
The size of a typical 40-foot shipping container leaves little wiggle room, but their durability and industrial look appeal to some potential homebuyers.
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Turning a shipping container into a home, gym or office is like converting any enclosure. Kubed Living designs homes and works with factory partners to build them, and Klein said there are a few key rules around structure and insulation.
“The trick when upgrading a shipping container is to not touch the top rail, the bottom rail, don’t touch the corner posts, because you can really damage the structure,” Klein said. Instead, she points out, “what you can change is the side.”
The average 40-foot container home has at least two eight-foot sliding doors and two to three windows, according to Klein.
Whenever you create a window or doorway, it must be reinforced with wood or steel nails. Due to the increasing frequency of wildfires, customers in California have opted for steel nails to reduce the amount of wood used in their homes. About 80 percent of Kubed Living customers live in California.
Next is isolation. According to Klein, Kubed Living uses sprayable foam because, although it is “environmentally friendly,” it expands and fills cavities in the container walls. If the insulation leaves gaps in these cavities, condensation can cause serious problems. She says wool insulation is more durable than spray foam, but it costs a lot more.
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Klein noted that California has some of the most stringent energy codes in the country, with ever-increasing standards. Meeting these standards sets Kubed Living apart from competitors in other states, as its homes are extremely energy efficient.
According to a 2016 Shipping Container House Life Cycle Assessment by RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia, a building’s thermal performance may be affected by the local climate.
Container homes in Southern California require a different level of insulation than homes built to withstand the winter in states like Minnesota or Montana. Kubed Living has adapted its building technology to serve customers across states.
According to Klein, Kubed Living is repurposing old containers that meet the requirements set by the international coding committee to make them safe for habitation.
Kubed Living is designing seven luxury single-family vacation homes in shipping containers for shipping to California’s Yucca Valley. They will live in a desert area called the Little Pipes Ranch, which is located roughly in the Shuah Tree National Park area.
Kylie McCarthy, founder and CEO of Marina Jean Capital, explains the company’s planning and building process. Marina Jean Capital hired Kubed Living to design luxury shipping container homes for Little Pipes Ranch.
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“You have to get creative with your stacking plan due to size, shape and modification limitations when using shipping containers,” McCarthy said. But it turns out a unique design solution.
Each rental will use several containers – from 2 to 3 for small ones and from 5 to 10 for large ones.
In the 1990s, interest in repurposing shipping containers became apparent as steel container designs proved useful in a variety of applications. US ports have a surplus of containers due to an imbalance of imports and exports between some countries, allowing used containers to be repurposed.
Freight Farms began by repurposing used shipping containers to create a controlled environment for hydroponic vertical farming. However, the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021, increased demand for shipping and container shortages have made new and used containers more expensive and hard to come by.
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Asked how difficult it has been to find containers for the home since the container shortage began, Klein replied, “Very bad. Prices have increased”.
If manufacturer Kubed Living has trouble finding containers, she shares the company’s container inventory list. Even McCarthy, who is not involved in the process of purchasing shipping containers, added: “It’s harder to get them now than before the pandemic.”
Klein said Kubed Living is considering other solutions, such as modular design, because “nearly doubling” the price of sea containers affects the bottom line and what the company can offer customers at a lower cost.
She began using shipping containers to accommodate middle-class workers such as teachers, police officers and firefighters who couldn’t afford downtown housing so they didn’t have to travel long distances. Rising costs are testing this mission.
However, Klein said the company’s shipping container homes cost between 50% and 70% of the price of a typical home in the Los Angeles area.
She estimates that, not counting on-site work, the average home starts at $220 per square foot, or about $220,000 for a 1,000-square-foot home.
Kubed Living houses tend to be more compact. A traditional two-bedroom, two-bath home can be 1,600 square feet. “We said, ‘We can build this tiny house with less than 1,000 square feet,’ so we had a smaller footprint,” Klein said.
Some modular buildings and tiny houses are more like RVs, especially if they are built on wheels. These structures have several different building codes that must be followed. Kubed Living designs container homes that comply with local building codes, including all required standards. This simplifies the approval process “and speeds up construction,” Klein said.
Construction is more efficient and faster than conventional houses, as most of the construction is carried out at the factory, which avoids delays due to weather conditions. In addition, there is no need to transport tools and materials to different manufacturing locations.
Factory work takes an average of four to eight weeks after design and planning is complete, and another two to four weeks after the house is delivered and installed on site with bathrooms, kitchens and fittings.
“It’s not as cheap as you think,” McCarthy said, because her company’s mansion will have high-quality finishes. She is awaiting final evaluation of the company’s seven residences.
Financing a new type of home can be difficult, and some lenders and building inspectors don’t understand the concept of converting a shipping container into a home.
“The biggest hurdle is funding,” Klein said. Lenders have nothing to fall back on because the houses are factory built and there are few materials left on site before construction is completed. Klein predicted that bridging loans and other financing schemes could become more widespread, but noted that this is a “little issue” for now.
Three years ago, the company failed to pass a building inspector, and Klein said he “didn’t understand why anyone would live in a shipping container” even though the house was built to local standards. But, she says, “it’s getting easier and more and more acceptable way to build.”
McCarthy said Little Pipes Ranch had no funding problems because its rental homes would be classified as any modular home.
“We’re trying to make these [houses] as sustainable as possible, so I like the idea of using what’s already there,” McCarthy said. But Little Pipes Ranch homes can be built from new or used containers, depending on what’s available.
McCarthy said the Little Pipes Ranch container home will be equipped with a Tesla solar roof. They will be entirely solar-powered and are expected to be zero-emission homes. She added that wells would be built on site.
Because most of the construction is off-site, container houses have a lower environmental impact and are less destructive, McCarthy said. After the completion of the factory work, the house will be lifted into place with a crane.
A 2016 Australian study states: “With standardized and reliable factory production, container homes offer a fast, green and sustainable method of construction.” in-depth sustainability studies to assess the life cycle environmental impact and costs required to make container homes livable.”
Post time: Dec-05-2022