Today, more people have become interested in having a shipping container home. Why? These steel containers offer affordable, convenient, and sustainable raw materials for building homes. Put simply; they have become increasingly popular because they are reliable, quick to build, and extremely cost-effective.
Homes built from shipping steel containers do not all consist of just one unit. Homeowners can order more units and have them delivered. Purchasers save much more money with flat pack house prices than they would if they built a traditional home.
How Much Does a Flat Pack Container Home Cost?
The cost of shipping containers varies, depending on their:
- Age
- Availability
- Condition
- Delivery Fee
- Features
- Size
- Supplier
New ones are not always the best. There are containers with more damage than the old ones. Before committing yourself to a container, check it out carefully.
The conventional building of flat pack container homes saves time, materials, and money. Costs range from $1,400 to $4,000. They are cheap because they are pre-fitted for installation. However, building a home requires add-on features to make it properly habitable. It must have plumbing (running hot and cold water), windows, electricity connection, proper floors, and more. The cost of installing these features varies from one contractor to another.
A traditional sized house built from shipping containers may cost between $150,000 and $170,000. These prices may seem high, but they are approximately 50% cheaper than conventional homes of a similar size.
Shipping Container Features
Most standard shipping containers are 8ft 6ins high and 40ft wide. Some suppliers or container home companies have larger or smaller dimensions on sale. The most common features that customers ask for are:
- Aircon and Heating System.
- Floor Installation.
- Shelves.
- Locking mechanism.
- Window, Door, and Roof installation.
- Insulation and Ventilation.
These features may vary from one container to another. Thus, it is best to inspect your choice carefully before you go forward with the purchase. It is also possible to request other add-on features.
How to Have a Personalize Style for Home Containers?
Styling the exterior and interior of container homes says a lot about each homeowner’s personality. Building a flat pack container home is much easier, more convenient, and faster than constructing a conventional bricks-and-mortar structure. Contractors can easily transport everything to the site. Thanks to the modular structure of a shipping container, interior design and planning are straightforward processes.
The first step in personalizing your home is to gather all the relevant information. Unless you have first-hand knowledge, it is impossible to tell contractors what kind of style you want. First-hand knowledge, in this context, means actually seeing and going into the container itself rather than reading or hearing about it.
Gather Information
Some container home companies will provide a pre-test that asks questions mainly about purchasers’ or prospects’ reasons for wanting to acquire a container home. A prospect is a consumer who the seller believes could turn into a paying customer. The questionnaire also asks them what features they want, as well as questions regarding the structure’s limitations.
Many homeowners have commented that the pre-test worksheet helped them determine how much they knew about their new home and why they were interested in buying one.
Homeowners need to create a list of the features they want their container house to have. They also need to know how many people will be living in it, and take that into account when considering add-ons. It is impossible to create a full-scale floor plan if you don’t know how many household members there will be.
Brainstorm Ideas
Now that they have gathered the right information for their full-scale floor plan, it is time to brainstorm ideas on how to process a personalized style. When designing the exterior, it is important to consider the home’s setting and location, i.e., its surroundings. Where the sun shines in the morning and afternoon must be factored into the design. Which room(s) should have the most natural lighting, and when?
Sketch the Design
When they have an idea of where to position the rooms, homeowners can then create a personalized style using developer software.Contractors need to see the designs. Thus, homeowners have to create a digital model of what they want. They can illustrate their ideas through AutoCAD. The letters CAD stand for computer-aided design.
It is best to have instructions or descriptions of each design. With this, contractors can ideally incorporate them into the floor plan. If homeowners do not know how to illustrate their design, they can get help from professional interior designers.
Conclusion
Many people, especially as they become older and their children become adults, want to downsize, i.e., move into a smaller property. A growing number of consumers appreciate the benefits and affordability of flat pack container homes. They are more affordable than their traditional counterparts, and allow purchasers to carefully personalize them without having to worry about costs.
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You may find this article interesting: “What is Computer-Aided Design?“