Buried Shipping Container as a Root Cellar

[rhinoaa]

My wife and I have recently become serious preppers and since we have no basement or other place for constant temperature storage, we were thinking about burying an alumnium shipping container in one of the ditches on our farm and I was wondering if anyone has any imput on whether this would work or not. I think it will work because of the following reasons:

1. Alumnium won't rust..... I'm still going to coat it with alumnium sealing paint (the type used to seal tin roofs).

2. The units are watertight..... Still going to run drainage pipes under the gravel base that it's going to rest on and with the slope of the ditch running away from and down from the unit, that should insure proper drainage. I'm also going to cover the top to keep standing water off of it.

3. The units are never moist inside..... I have another shipping container that's above ground and it's never moist inside, probably because of the oak floor.

4. Cost.... At $1500 for the 8 foot 6 inch by 45 foot unit, no more than $2000 for the dozer work, and $500 for gravel, pipes, and paint, I don't think I could pay skilled laborers to pour a slab, build cinder block walls, and put a roof and doors on an underground storage area 382.5 sq feet for anywhere close to what I would pay to bury the unit.

My concern is I have overlooked something that would make it difficult, impractical, or impossible to do this. I'm asking for imput both positive and negative because the last thing I want is to do this and find out that it won't work or I forgot something. I look forward to your comments.

Thanks and God bless.

[610Alpha]

There is a guy that has something similar on my way home from work. I will try to remember and take pictures of it tonight and post them. Just a root cellar, probably not much that you missed. If for a safe room type of place, ventilation would be needed.

[monkeybird]

That is an interesting idea. How will something like that work in Florida?

[Gordon]

This comes up from time to time. Shipping containers seem like an ideal subject for a pre-fab underground shelter or what have you. Only problem is their strength is in the corners and is only good for stacking another container on top. The walls will not support the fill in dirt and will soon collapse. The roof is just as likely to cave in as the walls but quicker due to more weight on top. For an above ground purpose they are great. A large culvert sealed on the ends would stand up to burial as they are made for that. The containers will not be safe for burial.

[eeyore]

Gordon has valid points and so does Elittle. But it can and does work with proper precautions.

You could reinforce the top and sides either on the out side or inside or combination of each both. Say you here going to make shelving or bunks on the inside, you could incorporate that framing with roof supports to strengthen the roof. the outside could be reinforced with 3/4 Pressure treated plywood, to strengthen the walls. I would go one step further and cover it with 6 mil (or thicker) ploy sheeting, that would cover the top and go into the gravel and drain tile system.

But i would think you would need ventilation, you will want something to move the air and help keep humidity out when you occupy. This could be easily done with a few 12 volt fans that could run of your batteries you are using for your couple of lights.

I would incorporate a 55 gallon drum full of holes and gravel down hill from the container floor and a water container (of several hundred gallons) above the top of the container, but not directly above. Neither would add significant cost, but would add great convince and make the stay alot more comfortable.

[eeyore]

Monkey Bird,

That is an interesting idea. How will something like that work in Florida?

I would advise you to check your water table and the flood water table. I would think it would be to high for you to bury a container. But you might be able to bury part of a container, and then mound over above it for the remainder.

[610Alpha]

Well here are the pics I promised. 2 Containers side by side with dirt on top and sides. I may have to retake the pic of the front.



I'll have to get my camera and retake this view. Cell phone camera doesn't zoom in enough.



As you can see they put some structure to frame in the doors. You can see 1 of the 2 skylights they installed.



Here you can see both skylights. Rumor has it the guy building this wanted to actually make it his basement for a house but the county came in and said no. Something about not being rated for rust protection or something along those lines.

I'll try and get a better pic of the front.

[Klayton]

Well, building a berm and burying are two way different things. Berms have minimal pressure on the walls compared the the entire ground trying to push its way to fill a void you created when digging a hole. :)

But I have seen this done before, they used a work around.

Imagine you dig your hole in your yard, then make the walls of the hole into retaining walls (the dirt and walls NEVER touch the shipping containers).

Then you use the shipping containers strong point, its corner braces, and mount a lightweight metal frame on top and across to the top of the retaining wall. Cover this, waterproof it, then place dirt a foot deep or so on it. This gives you the thermal mass for an underground root cellar, without the worry of water directly contacting your shipping containers.

The problem is, retaining walls can be damn expensive. The one I saw the guy said the walls, cement stairs, and the fabricated roof all cost him under 5K. Thus cheaper than building a conventional slab floor and block wall constructed root cellar. But when I priced retaining wall bricks at Lowe's (refuse to shop at Home Depot because of their support of gay literature in elementary schools), the price to me seems the retaining walls themselves would be cost prohibitive. Has anybody here ever built a solid retaining wall and good give us an honest price?

[rhinoaa]

My wife is definitely the smarter of the two of us.

She just found an exellent post on www.survivalblog.com entitled BURYING A SHIPPING CONTAINER by Danny Papa written on March 9, 2009. It is very entailed and the end results are apparently very successful, but the process seems very labor intensive. Still, using the barrel technique is probably going to be cheaper than building an undergroung structure out of cinder blocks.

Take a look at this article and if anyone has any other ideas of how to support the sides and roof, let me know.

Thanks for all the comments.

[eeyore]

Another way to help elevate the pressure on the sides is use tires (used ones thrown away or dumped in the woods off the road i, if you filled them with some of the dirt and packed it tight, stacking them like bricks. Using 16" at the bottom and 14's at the top would build a decent stand alone support wall, and would not impact the container at all.

[eeyore]

This is kind of what i'm talking about

http://www.finehomebuilding.com/how-to/qa/building-retaining-wall-tires.aspx

[1Admin]

Definitely reinforce the inside. As Gordon said the strength is in their corners.

Go and WALK on top of one, you'll see what I mean.

They WILL rust. What you want is a CORTEN one. A "friend" has a few, the Corten one has held up over 12 years in a hot, humid climate the best. The others have rusted. I can't even imagine underground....

Phillip Hoag put out a book called "No Such thing as doomsday" and while the book is almost a total flop for all other aspects of prepping- the main emphasis is on shelter construction and I've found 95% of that information accurate. His food storage information is a completely different matter (he claims MRE's were used in Vietnam...)

Buy and read that book before you get serious about any underground shelter. Seriously.

Investigate culvert...

[610Alpha]

Here are the better pics. As you can see the lumber that is used is at least 4 x 4 if not 6 x 6, and I count at least 7 on top of the containers so that means there is at least 20" of soil on top if not more. Don't know how buried you want but these containers are holding up fairly well, don't know if he has done any reinforcement on the inside. Corrugated steel has more strength that what you think.



Towards the left side of the pic you can see tire tracks where they went part way up on the side.

From the back at an angle towards the front of the bunker.

As you can see the dirt is just shy of being flush with the top most post. That's a lot of dirt, granted it may not be 5' but its probably 2' if not more of dirt.

Don't know how buried you want or can do but this guy used a hill and dug into the side of it. If it caves in I'll let ya'll know.

[Lowdown3]

Cool pics Elittle. Are you sure it's a container and not a culvert shelter?

I've walked on the tops of many a sealand container and I cannot imagine having more than half a foot of dirt on the top of them.

[Klayton]

so culvert shelter and sealand containers are two different things?

I am sure the ones I have seen were the sealand containers, very weak top sections... but strong corner posts to support the container placed onto it.