Connecting Two Shipping Containers Together! Double Wide Home, Garage, Warehouse - DIY - NO WELDING!
Follow along in this video as we connect two 40-foot shipping containers together!
It is not as easy as cutting out the center walls and pushing them together. It’s a lot more difficult than that, but we have a kit that makes this process easier!
And it doesn’t REQUIRE WELDING! This double wide container will be used as a storage warehouse, but you can use a double wide sea container for many purposes.
You can convert this sea can building into a container house, garage, workshop or whatever you would like to modify it into. It is a 40' x 16' structure, so you have a lot more room to create what you want!
We will also be performing other modifications to this building, such as strut channel framing, spray foam insulation, and electrical, but we will mainly show you the requirements you need to follow to make this container conversion as smooth as possible.
VIDEO
Purchase Container Modification World Products Featured in The Video
YouTube Video Transcript
Have you ever had the idea of buying two 40-foot shipping containers,
cutting out the center walls, and slapping them together? It's a little more difficult than that,
but in this video we're going to walk you through the steps and show you an
engineered solution to give you a double-wide 40-foot shipping container. Stay tuned.
Hi, I'm Channing McCorriston, The Container Guy. We've received a customer order for a
structurally engineered, stamped, and permitted 40-foot double-wide shipping container.
We'll be using two 40-foot, high-cubed, one-time-use containers, cutting out the
center walls, installing structural headers, performing a few other modifications,
shipping them off to the customer in Northern Alberta, and then reassembling on-site.
What happens often here at The Container Guy is customers come to us
with their problem, we work closely with the customer in developing a solution,
and that is exactly what's happened here.
This customer, we've actually already built them the first
prototype, double wide shipping container.
They liked it so much they came back for a second, so we've made revision to the design.
Once this kit is finalized, all revisions made, this will be available to the public for purchase.
Check us out tcg.ca, we'll keep you updated on when this is available.
We're very fortunate that the customer already has a concrete slab on site for their foundation.
Uh, if you're gonna cut out the full 40 feet of a container, the floor is going to sag. So,
in order to mitigate this floor sag even when on a concrete pad, it's still going to sag
a half inch or 12 mil because the bottom channel is higher up than the corner castings.
And so, yeah, if you just sat a can on concrete, it would only touch in the four corners,
so to mitigate the floor sag, even a half inch, it's still kind of annoying when you're
operating in there, we've got a half-inch thick flat bar that's four inches wide.
We'll be installing it underneath the channel,
stitch welding it all the way across and flush with the corner castings.
So, here we have the first 20 foot length of flat bar clamped on and tacked in place.
Just want to show you the difference between
installed and not, so that gives us that extra half inch of clearance.
On the underside of the channel, we went over it with the grinder to get all the
undercoating off and nice and level, so it's not pushing down on the flat bar in weird places.
So now that we have the flat bar all welded up on the bottom side of the channel there,
we're going to get into installing the temporary posts.
So what we'll do is, we'll cut out -- there's
just a small panel section on these 40s from weld to weld.
We'll cut that chunk out. We're going to weld in our temporary structural post prior to us
installing the header and dropping the full 40 feet, so that's just going to make sure
the header's strong enough to support the weight of the floor and the roof.
So that temporary post is going to keep the floor from sagging as we handle this thing,
and as we deliver to the customer until it is set up in place on site.
So just pop in the shop here and check in on the progress.
Our ticketed Red Seal Journeyman welders have the trusses all tacked together.
Once they're all tacked together, they'll be clamping them down,
making sure there's no warpage and then finish welding up all of the seams and edges.
These trusses are sectioned into 10 to 12 foot lengths. This makes them much more manageable
once they're all finished up to install on the container.
So these will all be fully welded, white metal sandblasted, and then powder coated.
And then when we go to install these into the container, just one at a time,
they'll be lifted up and bolted into place, there'll be no welding.
After that process is performed, that's when we start cutting the wall out.
We finished welding up the header sections and have laid them out all on the floor just to test
fit everything. We bolted everything together just to make sure proper fitment and no funny gaps, so.
These are now ready to dismantle. They'll all fit
nicely on one pallet, and then they'll ship off to powder coating. So they're going to get
a white metal sandblast, and then we're going to do our nice textured black finish.
So we're back in the can. The temporary post is now put in.
Uh, the next step we're gonna do is uh, we're gonna start strut lining the wall.
We'll do this as we wait for the headers to come back from powder coating.
So, we've uh marked out all of the corrugations,
every second corrugation, we're gonna be installing our CSM Brackets,
and then strut lining the wall and eventually be going across the ceiling as well.
We're doing this in the non-insulated position, and what might be kind of
funky with this one is that we're actually going to be spray foaming the ceiling, so.
Even though they're going to be installed in the non-insulated position and then
we're spray foaming, we're doing that to handle the snow loads in the Arctic.
So, the strut will be very tight to the ceiling, and then the spray foam is
just going to bridge that final gap. And what that's going to do is, because snow typically
falls off both sides of a container, and now we have that long header on the one side where
the two containers join, the snow can't uh the water can't melt and drip off that side,
so there's potentially going to be an additional accumulation of snow in here,
and that could eventually concave the ceiling and, who knows, collapse it or something, so.
We want to be, uh we want to ensure that that whole ceiling is a nice
two inch thick slab of foam with some steel structure in there.
That's going to handle all the weight in the Arctic, and allow the snow to melt
and go off this side for this can and then the other side on the other.
So on this side of the can, this is the wall section that's going to get removed.
We're still waiting for the headers to show up from powder coating,
and we'd like to get at strut lining this and potentially even spray foaming
the ceiling prior to installing the uh the header and dropping all the wall panels.
So this bracket allows us to install strut on the
square tube of the container, and then it is actually completely out of the way.
So when the welders are cutting the panel, they're not gonna
drop my strut on the inside of the can while they're doing it.
This is getting spray foam, so. You see it's nice and tight to the ceiling,
we're gonna be doing two inches of spray foam insulation in this one.
That's gonna lock that right in, and then this roof corrugation here that's really echo-y,
you know it dimples when you step on it, that keeps that nice and stiff now.
Once you got this thing spray foam, you jump back on the roof,
you cannot move that corrugation it's rock solid.
It's super important to walkthrough the container with your spray foam contractor,
the actual sprayer, and go through with them what
you actually want sprayed and let them know what you don't want overspray on.
The better the prep work they do ahead of time, the better the finish is at the end.
The spray foam, the the particles that kind of settle in the air and land on things,
it's--it's pretty icky stuff, and if it lands on the floor of
the container can often uh discolor it even after you scrape it off, so.
Yeah, make sure that you poly down on the floor if you're not finishing afterwards,
and cover off any walls that you're not foaming that you don't want foam stuck to.
What we're going to have to do is just make sure that we tape off
very nicely over top of all of the the CSM Brackets that we're not over spraying on them,
and then on the other side where we're going to be cutting the wall out, we want to make sure that we
don't foam the underside of the tubing, we just go up to this uh this plane of the the tubing there.
These guys here at Komfort, they do a great job taping everything off,
making sure that we don't overspray anything that shouldn't be sprayed.
I want to point out the type of tape that they use because it's pretty, it's pretty good stuff.
They, I think it's probably,
it's pretty low cost. It's a 3M scotch tape, a packing tape -- uh brown tape here.
And so, this going over all of the the front face of the Unistrut stops foam from getting in there,
and then it's super simple to rip this stuff off afterwards
and doesn't leave any funky residue on the steel surface.
So for this double wide kit, the spray foamers are just doing two
inches of insulation on the ceiling, but if this was for a container home project,
our spray foam contractor recommends three inches of spray foam on the walls and the ceiling,
and typically either the underside or you're going to have to do some sort of rigid foam underneath
a sub floor to make sure that you have a nice foam envelope inside of your shipping container.
So the headers have arrived from powder. It's time to jump up there and install them in the can.
What makes this kit so great is that they're in 10 to 12 foot lengths,
and so they're relatively easy to handle and get up onto this can.
All we have to do is just pre-drill and self-threading bolt each header section in.
If you've watched any of our other videos, you might start recognizing Travis by now.
He's uh, he's our electrician, which is kind of interesting to note here because,
typically when you're doing a header that's going to span an entire 40-foot
cut out of a container, you need a welder there not an electrician.
are modular, and drill and bolt together, you know, he's a better man for the job than them.
And furthermore, we're just so busy with mods right now that I need his help, and he's a good
guy to be here and help me, and willing to, so I appreciate that, but yeah, Travis A&R Electric.
You want to size your drill bit for the smaller portion of this thread cutting bolt.
And then that little notch in the threads, that's actually a drill bit so to speak.
So that will make the hole a bit larger to the size that it needs,
and it will also start cutting the threads so that you don't need to actually drill
right through the 60 millimeter tubing, you can just use this bolt.
They're a case hardened bolt, they'll go into the outside of the top tubing,
but not right through your container, and and uh be a thermal bridge.
So far this just been going together like butter, we've been loving it compared to the last time.
Just so refined the--the design of it in the 3D model, everything's lining
up perfectly. We haven't had any problems yet, and hopefully it continues that way.
So we've got the first two uh header sections in, and we're working our way back. We're so
confident that we're kind of bolting it up a bit more, thinking that we're not going to have
to take it down and make any adjustments, and we'll see if that decision pans out.
If you notice a tiny ridge from one truss to the other, it's not a problem because
the ridge cap that goes after this once the two containers are brought together,
it's just a ridge, basically a peak ridge.
So there'll actually be a bit of a gap here anyway, the ridge cap secures to this outer
flange. So don't worry if there's a bit of a heap on one side or the other here.
Our electrician has finished bolting up the headers onto the two containers,
so the next step here now is to have the welders come in and drop the corrugation panels.
What's super important to note is that we left
the panel attached to the container in four different places. The one tore over there.
We got two other places in the middle, and then one over there at the end.
So, that just makes sure that when this panel drops, it doesn't come back in and
take out your ladder, just the safety for the uh for the welder that's dropping the panel.
And then a second thing to note, we uh drug a pallet underneath this panel.
So now once we just finish these few little tacks and drop it down,
we can come at this with our forklift and lift up this 18-foot sheet not have it all bendy on us.
We'll probably use the same pallet and drop all four panels on the same ones, so we can get this
up and out of here, and either reuse these panels for other projects or send them off for recycling.
Now that the container is strut lined, Travis is right at home
as he installs the LED light fixtures and runs his EMT conduit between them.
Notice he uses a laser level, which ensures the lights are
nice and straight as you look down them from one end of the container.
The customer wants one switch to turn on the lights in both containers,
so Travis will leave a wire loop out of the last light fixture that will have to be connected
into the junction box by the electricians at site after this is delivered to the customer.
This double wide kit will come with these high capacity bridge fittings.
The one side of them is magnetic, and so it'll actually kind of stick and hold into that can.
The twist lock needs to slide into the casting first, so.
We'll get these in the four corner castings
of the one container and then slide the other one up to it.
When using these, it's great when both containers can be sharing the same foundation,
whether it be a concrete pad or here we got the steel I-beam here,
so that they stay on the same plane and line up nicely.
And then there's two different sizes of these, this is the bottom corner casting, the oval shape.
There's also one that fits in the shield shape of corner castings, and that's for the top 'cause--
These are typically used when you're putting two 10 foots together to make a
20 foot, which can fit now in a vessel slot, or you can actually put two 20s together,
which would make a 40 and it handles just like a 40 with our top lift so.
They're super strong, I think they handle--they're rated for like 65,000 pounds, so they're awesome.
And yeah, totally helps us make this double wide kit and make it possible,
so it leaves us three inches between the cans, which is very nice and useful
when it comes to making framing kits and flashing kits and folding special profiles.
It's a little easier from the top because you can actually get your
hand up and inside the corner casting through the top hole.
And just remember, the magnetic side with these is the uh the regular thread,
and then the non-magnetic side is a reverse thread, so that
once the two cans come together when you use your pry bar or whatever to spin this and
suck it all tight, the bolt is gonna suck both nut in this casting and that casting.
A big thing with this header kit is you want to
make sure that the lower one is here in place first, and then you got the--the
higher one with the higher interior flange that comes in afterwards, so that you're
not fighting the design of the header and the way that the the two flashings come together.
So we have the two halves lined up together, and now we're just going to grab our top lift
and just nudge it forward. We only got to move it about an inch or two forward on these I-beams, so.
Slide them together, see how these bridge fittings come together and then do the final hook up.
This is just being test fitted here so we can try out all the flashings,
maybe pre-drill as many holes as we can for the customer
and have it as simple as possible for them to put together when it gets to site.
So we've slid the two halves together, they're not completely together yet,
but we have the heavy duty bridge fittings in between them.
Now we just need to tighten them up and that's going to suck the
two halves together. It's a left-hand thread here, right-hand thread on the other side.
Once we start sucking these together that's going to align the two containers perfectly,
so you don't have to worry about you know a millimeter here a millimeter
there prior to welding. These bolts are going to do the work for you.
Once you're all said and done, there's this that's just a safety lock,
so if you put that down then it doesn't allow this bolt to loosen itself off.
So that was pretty simple, inside of a few minutes
we have these two 40s put together; they're ready to go.
I really stand by these high-capacity bridge fittings,
I think they're the game changer for us trying to build double wide kits.
So now to finish off this enclosure, we've got four ridge caps that go on the roof and those
get either self-tapping screwed or bolted through the angled profile of this header.
And then there's two end plates, so we've already laser cut and powder coated
uh caps that just cover the end here, and then this is fully sealed off.
On this side, and then inside,
the can there's just two channels that close off that three-inch gap.
So here's the finished product. This is what it feels like to be inside
two 40-foot shipping containers, so.
Way bigger, way larger much more usable space. Once it gets to site, the customer
is going to be able to remove these temporary transport posts so they'll have that full
open clear span. They'll weld in their eight-inch, six-inch wide flat bar along
the floor, that'll be the threshold plate between the two cans and take up that gap.
And then we've already test fit the end caps for the end walls here,
and so that closes everything up there. Up top, they'll bolt the two headers together and then
reconnect the wiring on site and this thing's in operation.
This is such a cool product, such a cool mod. Both times that I built these for this customer,
I've wanted to keep them. Can't wait to get
this kit refined even further and get available to you the public.
And as always, if you enjoyed this video please give it a like. Subscribe to our channel
and ring that notification bell. Check us out at tcg.ca.
Hope you learned something.
