Active build · Bradenton, FL

Step inside an active build.

A 3D walkthrough of a seven-container residence we engineered, captured mid-construction, before drywall and insulation hide the engineering. HSS frames at every opening, exposed corten sheathing and cast-in-place piers, all visible.

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High-cube containers

1 story

I-shaped layout

3 ft

Above grade, for flood resistance

FBC 2023

Engineered to the current Florida Building Code

The layout

An I-shape, on purpose.

Two 40-foot containers on each side, joined across the middle by three more. The I-shape opens up the floor plan and shortens the spans. A wraparound deck ties the whole assembly together, and the house stands about three feet above grade on cast-in-place concrete piers for flood resistance.

What to look for

Three details worth pausing on.

A container home isn’t stacked boxes. It’s the welds, the openings, the foundation and the hidden details that make it stand. Watch for these as you walk through.

1Structural · load path

HSS framing at every opening.

Cut a window or a door into a shipping container and you sever the corrugated steel that carried the wall loads down to the corner posts. That continuity has to be replaced, cleanly, or the box starts to deflect and rack.

Every opening in this build is framed in welded HSS (hollow structural section) tube steel, sized to carry what the original sheathing carried and welded to the container frame at the top rail, bottom rail and corner posts. The load goes around the opening, not through compromised metal.

In the tour, look for

Window perimeters: rectangular HSS tube welded to the container’s original frame
Door openings: heavier sections, carrying both wall and roof loads
Continuous fillet welds all the way around, sized per AWS D1.1 for this wind zone (not stitch welds)

2Material · corten steel

The corrugated steel is the sheathing.

In a stick-frame house the sheathing is plywood or OSB, hidden behind siding. In a container home the corrugated steel is the sheathing: it is structural, it is the weather barrier, and until you cover it, it is the finish.

That changes everything built against it. Fasteners are welded or through-bolted, not screwed into studs. Finishes need a vapor break or condensation forms behind the drywall. And insulation has to deal with a wall that is a thermal bridge end to end. This is exactly what plan reviewers and inspectors want to see before the drywall goes up.

In the tour, look for

Interior walls: the corrugated profile of the original container, still exposed
Where containers join: the welded seams between units
Furring: the standoffs that create the cavity for insulation and finishes

3Foundation · flood resilience

Cast-in-place piers with embedded plates.

On the Florida coast, container homes sit on piers, not slabs. The piers lift the structure above flood elevation and keep the steel away from ground moisture that speeds up corrosion. This residence sits about three feet above grade.

Each pier was poured with a steel base plate tied into its reinforcement, so the plate is monolithic with the concrete. The containers were set on those plates and welded to them: that weld is the load path for everything above, from the boxes and the wraparound deck to the hurricane uplift trying to pry the house off its foundation.

In the tour, look for

Below the floor: the three-foot gap between grade and the containers
At each corner: a steel base plate welded to the container’s corner casting
Pier tops: the embedded plate, the connection point for the whole house

Why we document this

Engineering you can see is engineering you can verify.

Most container homes are photographed when they’re finished: drywall up, kitchen in, ready for Instagram. By then every detail a structural engineer cares about is hidden.

We document our builds before the cover-up, so plan reviewers see what was actually built, future buyers know what’s behind the walls, and other engineers learn from real construction instead of renderings.

Going deeper