Selfsufficientish.com

hey folks

while i plan and source materials to build a straw bale home i plan to convert a shipping container.
the question is insulating it... has anyone on the forum done this and how did they insulate their container?

http://planetgreen.discovery.com/videos ... mechanics/ have a look at the "heavy metal house" short video, you are in luck, it is the 2mins of the program where they talk about insulation (I will have a look to see if I can find the whole program somewhere)

A project I am working on is also planning to clad the outside of theirs with wood.

ok a little more info

me container will be wired for 12v.
i plan ta build a wind turbine and solor panels... which will
charge a bank of batteries to power 12v lighting, 12v/gas/rocket stove to heat water for shower.
a rocket stove will heat the container.
double chamber compost toilet out side, gravity feed water supply... ploy tunnel with
approx 4' vertical walls and water harvesting from the roof... yet to figure how i will pump the water from
storage tanks to feeder tank on top of container.

anyone got ideas/advise in the above?

giggles wrote: a rocket stove will heat the container.

umm, not sure about that.
rocket stoves are really for cooking, for heating a large box you should think about having a wood burning stove of some description, a gas bottle one is probably the cheapest or DIY able, which you can treat/design like a range and cook on it.



if you keep your 12v requirements low then a small windmill http://www.navitron.org.uk/product_deta ... 3&catID=69 (this one needs no controller) and a solar panel should keep you in power, you would need a few deep cycle batteries, http://www.navitron.org.uk/product_deta ... &catID=119 2 or 3 of them.

a 12v pump or a 12v drill with a pump attachment should be able to fill you water tank, something like http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0001K9QCW/r ... B0001K9QCW

We went down to Dick Strawbridges place recently and he had lots of ideas like this.
One I liked was digging a hole and filling it with glass bottles filled with water and sealed, do it near your polly tunnel, have a solar panel running a pump which takes the warm air out of the tunnel during the day and then pumps it back in at night. Not sure of the technical aspects, but this "heat sump" idea I think is a good one. He also has a tiny stream which at the top is channelled up and over a water wheel which lights the house, and then a contrived "drop" of about 1.5 meters which when it falls pumps 15% of the water all round the site with just this gizmo thing that they used to use in the mines???

wow boboff would like to know how dick gets the water "up" to fall over the water wheel...
yup headstrong them be the windturbines i be tinkin of... hope to build it myself though...
the rocket stove will heat a bench through by the flu going through the cobb bench and also have a hot plate to make that all important mug a scoldie :)

yea headstrong that insulation vid is good but like alot of vids on the web... the details of it are not
shown or explained... like the results of the procedure.
i was watchin a vid on rocket stoves but alot of important detail is brushed over.. with this it makes it a bit of an unknown adventure when making your first one... which is exciting of course... but a tad fustratiing at the same time when if the vids wer more detailed it would educate the viewer alot more.

speaking of vids i watched this yesterday and its very interesting

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid ... 7695921912#

giggles wrote:wow boboff would like to know how dick gets the water "up" to fall over the water wheel...

At the top there was a "silt Sump" then a near horizontal "aquaduct" made from 4x2 frame with "roof felt" trough, wheel dug down a bit and attached to a "bike Dynamo" the angle of the Wheel buckets is 114 degrees ( yeah I know I have a sad memory for numbers) dynamo attached to "liesure batteries"

If you ever see his programe on repeat "its hard being green" some of the early stuff may cover this.

use of "" mean I have no real concrete knowledge.

Gidday

Have you already bought your container cos you can get some ready insulated like the refridgerated ones.

Giggles, do you have planning permission for this? Are you also complying with building regs?

goodearth no but me brother got plannin so im putin da container on his site... it is a temporary dwelling so i would get away wit it... aint bought container yet as im sure i could find one cheaper then 700euro! da container cant go "on site" til 19th oct so can gather materials n da like until i find a cheaper container... fridgerated container... interesting
boboff cant really make head nor tail a ur description of ries to fall of water but il read it again n mull it over :)

Wouldn't it just be cheaper to buy a static caravan? Donedeal.ie have them on for free at times, just costs you the transportation cost (about €200-300 depending on whereabouts you are & where it is).

MW

yea could get a static... but they are what u get... a couple of friends have statics and the ceiling is 6'6" on a 10' wide one and im 6'6" so thats not a goer... the insulation is minimal and the windows are single glaze on the cheap ones :)
also the council frown on statics in back gardens were as the container just looks like... well a container :)

so muddywhich where in ireland are you headin ta?

I'll answer you in a pm so-as not to bore everybody-else.

MW