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Step inside an
active build.
A 3D Matterport walkthrough of a 7-container Bradenton 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.
Click and drag to look around. Click on circles to walk through the space.
(flood resistance)
FL Building Code
The layout: two 40-foot containers on each side of the structure, connected across the middle by three more — a deliberate I-shape that opens up the floor plan and shortens spans. A wraparound deck ties the whole assembly together, and the entire residence sits roughly three feet above grade on cast-in-place concrete piers for flood resistance.
Three details worth pausing on.
A container house isn’t just stacked boxes — it’s the welds, the openings, the foundation, and the hidden details that make it stand. Here’s what to watch for as you walk through the tour.
HSS framing at every opening.
When you cut a window or doorway into a shipping container, you sever the corrugated steel sheathing that originally carried wall loads down to the corner posts. That structural continuity has to be replaced — and replaced cleanly — or the container starts deflecting, racking, and ultimately failing.
Throughout this build we used welded HSS (Hollow Structural Section) tube steel frames around every opening. Each frame is sized to carry the loads the original sheathing carried, then welded directly to the existing container frame at the top rail, bottom rail, and corner posts. The result is a load path that goes around the opening — not through compromised metal.
You can see the HSS frames clearly in the tour. They’re the rectangular tube-steel borders around every window and door. Look at the welds at each corner — those are continuous fillet welds, not stitched, sized per AWS D1.1 for the loads in this wind zone.
What to look for in the tour:
- Window perimeters: rectangular HSS tube welded to the container’s original frame
- Door openings: larger HSS sections — they take both wall and roof loads
- Continuous welds: not stitch welds; the entire perimeter is sealed
The corrugated steel is the sheathing.
In a stick-frame house, the sheathing is plywood or OSB — it carries lateral loads and is then hidden behind siding. In a container home, the corrugated steel of the container is the sheathing. It’s structural, it’s the weather barrier, and it’s the finish surface (until you cover it).
That changes how you build everything else. Anchor fasteners can’t just be screwed into a stud — they have to be welded or through-bolted to the steel. Wall finishes can’t sit directly against the steel without a vapor break, or you’ll get condensation behind your drywall. And the insulation strategy has to account for the fact that the exterior wall is a thermal bridge from one end of the container to the other.
In the tour you can see large sections where the corten sheathing is still exposed — not just from the outside, but from the inside too. This is what plan reviewers and inspectors actually want to verify before drywall goes up: that the modifications were done cleanly, the welds are continuous, and the original container shell is structurally intact.
What to look for in the tour:
- Interior walls: the corrugated profile of the original container, exposed
- Where containers join: welded seams where one unit meets the next
- Furring strategy: framing standoffs that will create the cavity for insulation and finishes
Cast-in-place piers with embedded plates.
In coastal Florida, container homes don’t sit on slabs. They sit on piers — and the piers do double duty: they elevate the structure above flood elevation, and they isolate the steel sheathing from ground moisture that would otherwise accelerate corrosion.
This residence is elevated approximately three feet above grade on cast-in-place concrete piers. Each pier was poured with a steel base plate cast directly into the top — not bolted on after, not added later. The base plate is positioned and tied into the pier’s reinforcement before the pour, so it becomes monolithic with the concrete.
When the containers arrived on site, they were lowered onto these embedded plates and welded directly to them. That weld becomes the load path for everything above: the dead load of the containers themselves, the live loads inside, the wraparound deck, and the wind uplift loads that try to pry the structure off the foundation in a hurricane.
What to look for in the tour:
- Below the floor: the gap between grade and the underside of the containers — that’s the 3-foot elevation
- At each container corner: a steel base plate, welded to the container’s bottom corner casting
- Pier tops: the embedded plate visible at the top of each concrete pier — the connection point
Engineering visible is engineering verifiable.
Most container homes are photographed when they’re finished — drywall up, kitchen installed, glamour shots for Instagram. By the time the camera shows up, every detail that matters to a structural engineer is hidden.
We document our builds before the cover-up. So plan reviewers see what was actually done. So future buyers know what’s behind the walls. So other engineers can learn from real construction, not catalog renderings.
Related technical resources.
For the engineering details behind what you’re seeing in the tour, see our technical bulletins. Each one is a short, code-cited reference document — written for builders, plan reviewers, and homeowners who want to understand what’s actually holding the structure up.
HSS Framing at Container Openings
The structural restoration of container walls when windows and doors are cut — sizing, welding, and code references.
Read bulletinContainer Sheathing as Structural Element
Why the corrugated corten steel is your sheathing — and how that changes wall assemblies, fasteners, and finishes.
Read bulletinCast-in-Place Pier Foundations
Concrete piers with embedded base plates — sizing, depth, embedment, and connection to the container shell.
Read bulletinWe’d be glad to engineer it.
Whether you’re buying a DIY plan set or commissioning a fully custom, PE-stamped package for your specific site, we’d love to talk through your project.
