DIY: Off-Grid 40ft Shipping Container Home Survival/Basic

You can see like where the livestock are on your property. You can you can potentially hunt from up here if you built like a little guardrail, you can come up here and sit on a lounge chair or something like that. Just be careful so yeah, it’s really nice having the roof and the stairs which were really cheap. My partner just put it together with some like spare wood she found laying around so so that’s some, that’s the first part of the container and I’ll show you more as I continue. We’Ve just got just like a couple of lines running across just to hang some clothes, and this is the top of the panel’s where it comes down and I’ve got it coming in through a gasket here, the same type of flue gasket. I’Ve got like a small little solar panel that I’m up set up just for charging another battery. So around this side you can see the height of this thing, I’ll try and get it into perspective with me see how I like tall. That is so I’m like 6 foot, 3 or so so it’s nice and high just got a little path of pavers around the corner and here’s the other side and we were lucky enough with this container to have a side door already in it. So that’s very useful. We have our one window. We only have one window which stapled flyscreen to it. So that’s pretty good I’ll show you on the outside. We have vents these vents. Just like roughly done everything we did was like pretty good for our standards, and these were like regular pieces of metal that we cut with an angle, grinder bent it out with pliers and then riveted on with some flyscreen behind it, and then silicone and everything and They’Ve held up really well over a year. I’Ve got like another vent, so I’ve got some like different vents in the container about four different vents. I wanted to make sure that those good air circulation, because you don’t want to be running a wood stove when you don’t have adequate circulation now, here’s our door, so we’ve got double dead bolts that came with it, which is pretty awesome so coming inside I’ll show You how it is in here now this is like the tool room on the spare room. It’S like sectioned off when we got this container. It was like that. So when I shut the door, it’s going to be a bit dark, but I’ll put a light on. This is the door. We’Ve got double dead, bolts, so I’ll open it up. Okay, so in this room, I’ll try to do well with the camera. I’Ve just got like an old desk and some like camping stuff. Some shelves that we made just would like some regular wood. We found on the property and so there’s tools shelving. You can use this space better. You can build more shelves and stuff, but it’s good for what we need right now, just doing some work, we’ve got the different power tools. Battery-Powered angle, grinders really useful. So is the impact driver drill, as well as a regular drill? That’S useful to get in to work on containers is like the regular drill and you can get like lights and stuff like that. So anyway, what we’ve got in here is I’ve got my battery bank, so the solar panels come down from that gasket. You saw earlier and they come through here. I’Ve got one connected to these batteries right now, just for charging them up, and in here I’ve got two 200 amp. Our 12-volt batteries connected together in parallel, so it’ll be a 400 amp hour battery bank. I’Ve got right here, 1000 to 2000 watt inverter, which means you can only really use appliances up to 1,000 watts, which is fine for our needs, so we’re just whenever we want to have any power charge. The laptops anything like that. Put that on so we’ve got a little battery indicator here. Giving me voltage and I’ve got different connections off here to 12 volt. So I’ve got two 12-volt appliances here. I’Ve got a fridge which is which is good. The fridge inside fridge works well and underneath this got a nice freezer, it’s like an older one, but it works really well good, like dog food stuck in there, the corner got a safe, so yeah. This is mostly just like a tool tool room and when we got the container, it was already segmented by what you can see in front, which is like this. So I shouldn’t pan the camera around so fast with what you can see is this wall and it’s just like a frame, a frame board with plaster it does a good job of keeping the heat in okay, so coming through coming through into the main room I’ll. Just show you what the entrance looks like again, that’s what the entrance looks like and we have like the cords running from the inverter coming through. I also have 12-volt lights that are on that were connected to that battery and they’re just running along the floor here. So we don’t really have a door here, but we just have like a piece of it’s like insulation paper and a blanket and that works pretty well to keep the heat in, but yeah there’s no door right now. So looking down, this is the container the rest of the living space and it’s quite comfortable for us. We have two people in here, so I’ll show you gradually everything. So this is the back wall where we just came through, and this is the only window my partner made it’s like a wooden frame. You cut the hole out of the container slide in the wooden frame with like a catch that was built, so this is pretty good. Some fly wire on it and it shuts I’ll try to turn extra light on the lighting is good in here. It’S just that. It’S not so good on this little GoPro that I have so we’ve got a little latch and keep this shut this window. When you have a small window like this in a container, it actually gives you the ability to have like wireless Internet and phone reception come through. So we have a little like wireless internet with a power bank and we put it out here in a little waterproof box and then we can have internet in the container and our phone works. So that’s pretty good all right. So just a couple of like panels on the wall, just some decoration, we have like a bed in the corner where we sleep bedside table like lamps, just like running off of a battery-powered torch, then we have going through everything. The walls you can see have nothing, but this stuff, like called insulation paper, you can buy it in 60 or, like I think, 120 meter rolls, or so it’s like it’s not that expensive, 460 meters. I think it was like a hundred dollars, or so maybe like two hundred dollars and you do the whole container. We haven’t even done the back room with this stuff. All I used was silicone to secure it on and it’s been through like a full summer. It’S been over a year and none of its coming off or anything like that, so it’s holding up well and it actually provided a lot of insulation for the container at night. It keeps out the heat and it keeps in the warmth so going around. We have a just old couch from the op shop, so everything is like cheap but like, but not, and we’ve got like another couch from op-shop like $ 20.00 couches, which is nice. We have like a table here with the laptop and power and battery recharger stuff. Like that, so it’s nice and comfortable, then we have one of the important features which, before we get to the wood stove I’ll, just go over the lights. So we’ve got four one: two three four, and these are maybe like 10 watt, 10 watt, 12 volt LED lights and they’re just connected to a little alligator clip that I clip on the battery. Whenever I want the lights on in here, really simple, I haven’t put it in any switches or anything like that. This is like really a simple livable container, and I just wanted to show you so that you had an idea of what it takes to have like a simple livable house and that it doesn’t take a lot of money. This is like under four and a half thousand four thousand dollars in total for a livable house for two people and two big dogs. You know you could have more people in here, but just wanted to go over these things so lighting up there. Then we have down here we have our wood stoves. This is like a cheaper wood stove, it only cost me like $ 100, or so I had ordered it from the US, though. So we got some some flue pipe going straight up through the chimney and we got a high heat rated gasket, so that runs up into the chimney, the chimney you got to clean it every now and then we like Shover a long piece of PVC pipe down Here to clean the chimney, so you need to make sure you do that every now and then see what starts working well, not putting smoke into the container. Just got like an old bed as a nice cage to keep the dogs or anyone from falling on the wood stove now on the wood stove, it’s actually on a bit, but you can see that it has a nice flat top. So we do all of our cooking on this and we boil water fry fry eggs make whatever. So that’s pretty good, underneath we have fire bricks that I got for free from gum tree, so we’ve layered them up against the wall, to give the walsim just some protection and also to keep the heat in and underneath the fireplace. So it’s pretty good. It’S nice and safe: no one’s going to fall in going around the front of it. We’Ve got a nice like little cage which comes open, and this is a pot for the ashes you’re going to need that we’ll see what it looks like inside. It’S not so hot, so you open it with my hand, but just a nice, like 40 centimeter in length about 25 centimeter in diameter, wood stove, the cheapest one. But with this container it can be three four degrees outside and we can get it to like. 20. 21 22 degrees in here I have a thermometer over here that I keep on the table like with the temperature. So it’s twenty point six degrees in here and I’m not sure what the temperature is outside, but it’s probably around 15 or so, and we can keep it nice and warm in here. But the wood stove is essential and with that you can go through winter. Pretty. Well, we’ve been through a winter here where it’s gone down to zero degrees Celsius and even we’re in winter now, and it’s around one degree, two degrees zero degrees Celsius at night. So it’s pretty good comfortable. When you go to bed, you want to have plenty of blankets and with the hot water that you heat up, I actually have some like hot water bottles in the corner, so they’re really good in the bed, so just want to show you everything just so you Can see what we have and kind of the things that make a place like this comfortable to live in now you want like a couple of basic sets of fire tools just to clean out the ash. I found like I lost my bellows, but I found a pipe with a small hole on the end of it and when you blow in it, it’s really good for stoking the fire, because it compresses your air and it shoots it out in a nice jet. So we have like vamps down another vent down here. This is one I showed you from outside, but the vents are really useful because you need ventilation when you’re operating a wood stove. Absolutely so you must have vents and we have just I’ll show you the other vents. We have another vent there. That’S! What is the underneath of the whirlybird that I showed you from the beginning, and here is what one of those like 1.5 liter bottles as the solar light? That’S what they look like they’re, quite bright with the lights off in here. There’S plenty enough light to move around and everything inside the container. You don’t need to put the lights on. So that’s that’s really good. You can save electricity, so I only have minimal electricity needs. I run a freezer in a fridge which gives us food and frozen ability to freeze things, ability to charge laptop phone, any batteries and things like that and that’s all lost three panels, which is pretty good. So I don’t want to miss anything, but I’m skipping all over the place a little bit, but we have. These are some like barrels of wood from outside, obviously be cutting war in stacking wood. Barrels are good to use it’s good to collect in buckets like these strong white PVC buckets they’re 20 litres. You want the small stuff to get the fire started medium stuff, and then the big fuel got like dishes in here got a nice light cabinet. I got from in market with just some cardboard boxes on top to keep some groceries and things there’s the hot water bottles. So you can see. These are the end. This is the end of the container they’re, like the big double doors, so this can be open from outside when it’s summer or it’s hot, and then you get like a nice breeze coming through the whole way of the container when you have both doors open. So that’s really nice, so just got like dishes and things in there I’ll step back. So you get a view again, all right so panning over slowly. So we got the wood stove and we’ve got a table here with the laptop when we sit here on the couch nice next to the wood stove, we have like one dog on the couch or two dogs on the couch or one on the mat on the Floor and we just have like a clothes rack which is pretty cool, and we just have like all of our regular use clothes that we use, often like when we’re working and stuff on on the property. I just have tied it off to the roof. There see all these containers they have like these awesome attachment points on a roof which are really useful so that whole sectioning off of this room and the other room was actually done by. I saw how it was done. It was like he’d, measured out wood and friction fit it between these two prongs and it and when he liked he built this whole frame across. But it looks fairly simple, so those hooks can be useful and I haven’t done it yet. But I thinking about like hanging rope off here and then having shelves just like really simple to some simple use of the vertical space and we are in like a 40-foot high cube. So it’s really nice to live in to have that extra roof space see. I can’t touch the roof, which is really nice and the other containers are just a bit small. You gain an extra like foot in a bit, so in here I’ll just show you generally just like you know, save some stuff and then table old table. My parents are thrown out and another table that my partner made and just keeps like something from the op shop. We got store all the food, all the different Nicks and acts of cooking, and things like that. You want good set applies to like open and close your fire without burning yourself. Some fire gloves, obviously start the fire. You want to have some like fire, lighters and stuff everything out, while you’re burning fire lighters now I’ll mention with the fire. While I’m talking about that, you really want one of these living in one of these a small place like this operating wood stove. This is a carbon monoxide alarm. This thing will go off if your wood smoke starts like spewing out smoke into the room like if you’re, not if you’re, not paying attention or if you fell asleep or something this will alert you and it’s important, there’s already decent ventilation here through the two whirlybirds Through the vents in the side walls, but sometimes you can close up the vents a little bit on the side so that when things get really cold, but this carbon monoxide alarm and I’ve used it and tested it, it works really well and you’ll get a headache. You’Ll start feeling a bit weird when there’s too much smoke fumes in the room and that’s when you know you’re getting used to a wood stove or anything like that they’re about 40 50 dollars, absolutely worth it. It can save your life so have that smoke alarms! Good we’ve got like a small fire extinguisher and a fire blanket that’s good near the fire area just in case anything goes wrong if, like something happens to the flue pipe, but everything’s been really good and yeah. It’S been here for like for a while. So it’s been going well over a year, so this is just a table kitchen area, all the preparation dishes stuff like that quite comfortable, so we don’t have a toilet in here. We don’t have a sink or anything like that. What we use is like two jugs of water here and we go outside and we fill them up from the water tank and we come in. So we go and get water like every day, which is good and fill up some water bottles and just got like a bin trash bag basic. And then we have just a bucket that when we do our dishes, we heat up the water on the stove. As we get like nice, hot water and then do the dishes and put the water into the bucket, take it outside to empty it, so we can do the dishes in here. We can do all the cooking, it’s really comfortable. We can get in a day where it’s not like three or four degrees. We can get this thing up to like 26 27 degrees in here it can get really hot, depending on how hot you get the wood stoves, and this is a small wood stove. So you can get a bigger one more of a medium size, so yeah just show you that so I’ll just scan through make sure I haven’t missed anything okay, so see up there. I’Ve got like what that’s it’s a welding magnet I had about. I had three of those and they’re useful when you put this insulation paper up the first time. You need a ladder in here and I use silicon. So I’m still a cone up the wall put the paper up and then snip it at the bottom and then the magnets help me hold it in place, especially on the roof. That was a bit more difficult, so the magnets really helped in terms of that. So it’s something to consider when you want to put this put this stuff up quickly. I’Ll just show you like the we have they’re open all the time, but if we really want we can like put, we left the flat of insulation paper. So we can like put it down and then put a magnet at the bottom, so they’re closed I’ll, show you another one of them, but that’s a good way to keep it a bit more keeping the heat a bit more when it’s cold I’ll show you here. So here’s another one: we have a vent nice vent in the outside and a big flap with a little magnet on it, which keeps it close. We don’t need that extra ventilation right now, but in summer yeah you open them all up. You open the front door. Yeah, so it’s really good, so we’ve in the container living in here is good in the high cube. So this is like three mattresses that tight a bit of rope to each anchor point and put a bit of PVC on it as a runner, and then we can like roll these mattresses on top and keep them out of the way. But if ever you know someone needed to stay here with us or anything like that, we have a mattress straight away and they’re out of the way I can walk under that and my head doesn’t hit it. So that’s really good! You have a lot of vertical room in this shipping container and we haven’t used hardly any of it, but it’s still really comfortable and it’s really nice to live. I enjoy spending time in this more than a regular house, so I just find it really cozy. It’S nice and warm and it’s efficient with the wood stove. You know like using a lot of wood and you can keep the place really warm and yeah. It’S really nice. So that’s inside, I may be missing a few things, but we’ve just got a carpet. We touch to the wall behind this is plaster. It keeps in the heat really nicely in this room. Ideally, we’d probably like put a door in here to keep in the heat a bit better, so so that that’s the container house 40-footer for around under four and a half thousand, depending upon the price of your wood stove or anything like that. You can go ahead and put walls up and insulation that can be very expensive, so I’ve showed you a simple way with that insulation paper silicone. You can buy a vast improvement heat up and also keep the heat out in a container like this to the point where we’re getting through winter. Fine at zero one two degrees and some art just got to add things out a bit more and it’s pretty good. So I just want to mention a couple of other speeches of a container. One is that we have you get some strong winds and some storms up here. This thing doesn’t move it’s really strong in any type of weather like that. So, as I said, this container is quite good in weather, like difficult, stormy, windy, weather heavy rain, they’re made to be watertight, so they’re quite good in that regard, and just to mention we didn’t put this container on any concrete or anything like that. We we put some earth down some cob and a couple of wood planks to level it out, and then we just got it loaded down on here. So it’s just on just on the ground and these containers don’t actually have flat bottoms. They have like a number of metal rafters running through, so it’s actually pretty good like that. It’S in contact with the ground – it’s probably going to like rusts more, but it’s been going well, we don’t have it on the on any concrete stumps or anything like that. So just want to mention that overall, some attributes about this container – it’s got some thick metal, so it can stop, like you know, small ammunition, fire stuff like that they’re relatively secure. So you know it takes like more effort to break in to one of these. This one is double dead bolted and we’ve got the lock on the front of the container. So you know you have to go to more effort to break into this than you do. A regular house with a lot of windows and stuff like that, which is which is good also this containers are going to stand up really well in like an earthquake or something like that. There’S no roof! That’S going to fall on top of you, there’d be pretty good in a fire. The stuff inside would get hot, but the structure itself would be pretty good in a fire. You wouldn’t want to be trapped inside one, obviously, but it’s quite good in terms of its attribute – and I find it to be – my partner – finds it to be a very comfortable place to stay. You don’t have to live in it, but it is a good thing. A good place to stay and spend time in I find it more comfortable than houses, because they’re often like large and difficult to heat, they might take a lot of wood to heat up a big room in a house, but the room I showed you earlier doesn’t Take up much wood to heat, it’s economical, it’s nice and cozy, and it’s everything you know I need. If we want to customize it a bit better, we would get some. You know add that door I mentioned and just make it maybe add an extra layer of insulation, but it’s really quite good and we’re in winter now, and it’s going really well so just wanted to mention that the main purpose of why I made this video was, I want you to know what alternative forms of housing. There are many things you can build on your own, with wood and through natural materials carb, and things like that. But this is a really quick way to have some really nice comfortable housing, and you can have more than two people in here. You can build some bunks or anything like that in here. Whatever you want to do, and the total price of this being around 4,500 dollars, it costs about 20. We bought the container for 2,200, got it delivered for a couple of hundred. We were all very lucky with the price and also that it was local and we had a door in it. So that was very helpful. For us. Containers have gone up a bit in price they’re more around the 2700, for a high cube and can be up to you know $ 800 in shipping depending. But you can pick one one of these up and get it delivered, for you know pretty good price and we all of the stuff inside my battery bank, two batteries to 200 amp hour batteries. You know $ 250 each for the batteries 150 for the inverter 600. For the panel 120 for the wood stoves, some of the other things in there, the Lighting’s, the insulation – is about two hundred dollars, silicone, really, I added it all up, and it was about forty two hundred dollars under forty five hundred dollars for a comfortable, really nice Place – and I just wanted to let you know that you know when people build houses, some of the cheapest houses cost them like over a hundred thousand dollars, and I prefer to live. I prefer to spend time in this than I would a house. So that’s just me and I know there’s a lot of containers that there’s a lot of container videos that are a lot nicer in terms of their comfort levels and they got walls and different insulation. But I don’t really need. I don’t find the need for that. Really we’re doing really well with the minimal amount of so we have in there, and I just wanted to let you know what you could get by with for a comfortable shelter for a small amount of money. You know if you bought a more expensive wood stove. You would add a bit more money, you could you still you’ll still you’re lookin under five thousand dollars for this whole thing and that’s it’s really quite exceptional for the attributes data container can provide. So I just wanted to let you know that, especially with what I believe is coming in the future, chaos and uncertainty and don’t really know exactly when things are going to happen. But this is something where this is movable. You can pick this up on a truck and move it if you need to have accommodation somewhere and the housing is full. You can ship in a couple of containers, customize them out in a week or so, and have a really nice living space for a number of people. So I just want people to be aware of that option and that’s why I wanted to make this video. So I really thank you and I appreciate you listening and watching peeps my brethren [ Music ]. You