I'm Channing McCorriston, The Container Guy. Here to showcase our new Steel Stud Brackets and Corner Casting Covers which make your life very easy when you go to frame shipping containers.
We have our quarter inch hex head self-tapping screw when we use a number eight wood screw that connects the bottom track to the wood floor of the container. We also have our number eight self-tapping sheet metal screw and so this connects the studs to both the bottom track and the top track and then also right here into this Steel Stud Bracket of ours.
So in the past, we would typically start by framing the end wall of containers and then work our way towards the container doors, but now we have this new system with the steel stud brackets and Corner Casting Covers. We'll actually start at the container doors. We install our container door flashing kit on the two sides and top and bottom of the door. This is pretty cool, you can spray foam the doors and actually remove one of the panels and then finish this with a sheet of plywood drywall and then reinstall this after foam. It's a nice finished look and allows the doors to operate just as smooth as factory, which is a pretty rare for insulated container doors. We have the wall flashing kit, and so this now has pre-laser cut holes that allow your interior finish to come up. We can screw that in so we can use a similar screw to this and connect to our sheet of plywood and we have a nice finished galvanized edge. The two come perfectly together and just seal up, so we get a good vapor barrier, while keeping the shipping container doors operational.
Another thing to note here as we start steel studding, is we are using inch and 5/8 steel studs. This is pretty new to us, and what this bracket does is it defines the height of the ceiling studs and how far out the wall studs protrude. This works with either two and a half inch steel studs or inch and 5/8, but we like to use inch and 5/8. The reason why is we have an inside corrugation and we have 7/8 of an inch of gap behind here, so we can get a nice layer of spray foam on, and then that adds as a nice thermal break and stops the thermal bridging from when these studs are touching the inside corrugations.
Down at the the bottom of the container, we also try to match how far out that the track is up at the top. Down at the bottom we try to keep that same 7/8 of an inch away from the inside corrugations and then secure this bottom track down with your wood screws. That just screws right into the wood floor, it's super simple and so once you install your track on the floor and you got this thing installed up top, so this just hugs the top 60 millimeter tubing and then your self-tapping screws, the same way that all of our CSM brackets and everything installs.
Going into that hollow tubing, that tubing does not penetrate the outside, so you're not poking any holes in your container. You're not ruining your envelope, and it provides the least amount of thermal bridging as possible just through this one bracket. One thing that we'd love to do if we get this thing completely refined, is actually maybe injection mold this out of plastic and then we have absolutely zero thermal bridging in this container along the side walls and end walls. It'll be basically a steel shell on the outside and then steel framing on the inside. Nothing else transferring the cold into your can, so that's super exciting. Once you got your top track and bottom tracking, you can just walk by through one by one and snap in your studs and then use your self tapping sheet metal screws just to connect them. A lot of times we only connect them on the outside, not the inside. That's because it's pretty much impossible to get in there. That's fine as long as you're using the furring strip. This is a stiffener bar. A lot of times this can actually go inside on on thicker studs. This can go through the the holes, that are in the stud. Like two and a half and three and five eighths, steel studs, but given this is the narrower one, we just surface mount it. What this does is when we spray foam, sometimes we've had instances where it'll blow the stud outwards or it'll twist the stud, and so this just locks everything nice on the same plane. When you go to drywall or plywood line the interior of this container, it's going to look nice and straight.
I know one person said on a previous video "oh you should recycle that bar". We do and that's why all this foam is on here right now, so it's a little bit ugly, but hey, we're saving the planet one chunk of stiffener bar at a time. So you just keep going and you can go on 16 inch centers or 24 inch centers, it really depends on how often you want to secure your interior wall covering to the studs. We'll just jump to the back and show you how our corner casting covers work.
I'm not going to go into too much detail on the installation of the window kits or the man door because we have full comprehensive installation videos on that, so make sure you check out our channel. There's tons of other videos to show you all different types of mods and accessories there. I'll just give you the interior view of the fenestrations and then how we've steel studded around them.
These window kits, we love them because it's all just laser cut and folded sheet metal, so there's no hollow section there, and the spray foam can come all the way around and touch the vinyl window. We get a perfect vapor barrier and that's also very important using these steel stud brackets and the inch and 5/8 steel studs. There's also that same gap behind the steel studs. The foam is actually going to come right around and touch this, we won't even need to come back in with a can of spray foam and touch this up because the closed cell spray foam is going to do it. You don't have to worry about the open cell or the closed cells, so super happy about that.
When you get to the end wall, included with the steel stud bracket kits are going to be corner casting covers. That's up high and so these covers here will allow you to have a solid two inches of spray foam all around the corner casting and still allow you to have all of your interior trim come up to those flanges and connect in a secure manner. Then on the inside corner in order to finish this after it's spray foamed, we can come down from the corner casting cover with an angle iron and then that gives us a drywall return on the inside. We're going to do that after the spray foam, so that it's not another annoying thing in the spray foamer's way to get around. It's super easy to install afterwards, so that we'll do after.
As far as working with steel studs a lot of people are scared to do them because they've never done them before, but I challenge you to give them a try. It's kind of like working with siding or soffit and fascia where it's 10 bashing, so when you come up to an end, you leave yourself a little flange and now you have something to to secure to. You can bend another return flange upwards and have nice neat corners, and no spray foam getting in there. So it's very similar to working with other light gauge steel products, and once you've done it once, then you have experience and then you're good at it. I challenge everyone to try steel studs because it's non-porous, it doesn't wick any moisture, and it's not going to cause health concerns in the future like wood will if you use two by fours in here. Wherever it's touching the inside corrugations, it's going to wick moisture, it's going to eventually rot and mold, and then you do all this work to the steel envelope, and then you ruin it by having the interior mold out prior to the end of the useful life of the shipping container.
I totally hate wood inside of sea cans. Please give it a try, use steel studs, you will not regret it, and your container is going to last 100 years rather than 10. Prior to having your spray foamers actually insulate this thing, one thing that's very important is making sure your container is nice and level. You can see here with this container door flashing kit, notice the screws. These should be perfectly level across these hex head screws that are inside there, and they're not, which means this container is not level and one door is higher than the other. You can also look up here, you can see the top of the door flashing kit is a lot closer to the wall flashing kit on the right door than it is the left door. That's telling me that this container is not level now. What that can do is if you spray foam it somewhere in your yard, where it's not its final resting place, and have it locked in, and then go to lift the thing afterwards, we've had had instances where the foam pops and it splits. Now you have this crack in your foam which is just going to frost and leak, and just totally ruin the sealed envelope that the two pound closed cell spray foam provides you, so make sure you don't do that.
Now let's check out our main door. Finally, with this container modification world man door, it works very well as well. Not having a hollow tube frame, we can spray foam right up to the door frame and get as good of insulation value as we can out of any commercial door out there. It still provides you this finished steel stud to trim back up to the the automotive style door seal that comes with these.
Another thing to note, is we've tuck taped over top of all of the electrical holes around the doors and the windows and that just stops spray foam from flying through. Another thing that I'm going to get my guys to do prior, is maybe take some stucco tape, that red vinyl tape that doesn't leave any residue, and we might tape here just so that foam doesn't come flying through. It's crazy stuff, it'll spin around corners, it'll do whatever, so it'll stain the door and then once it lands on something, it leaves a weird residue and stain. So as much as we can stop the overspray, lay poly down prior to foaming, just to protect anything that isn't going to be finished.