Kelly Tiny Container Home

Elements

1 Container(s)

Size

108 Foot²

Age

Built In 2014

Levels

1 Floor(s)
Location: Oceania > New Zealand
Address: Parau, Auckland, New Zealand
Bedrooms: 1
Bathrooms: 1

Note: Map location may not be exact. Click to open in Google Maps.

Kelly Tiny Container Home

Description

We occasionally see tiny container homes, and occasionally see off-grid container homes, but it’s not that often that we find tiny off-grid container homes! Brenda Kelly combined a passionate interest in shipping container construction with a need for a quick housing solution that didn’t require a lot of red tape. The result is a cozy container house that provided everything she needed in the tiniest of spaces.

Let’s hear from Brenda on why she finds shipping container houses so compelling:

I like to be different. I’m not sure where the idea came from. I’ve always liked the idea of small, cozy homes and I started to design them as a teenager. I think I may have passed a container yard one day and thought how cool it would be to live in one of them!

The structural integrity of shipping containers is second to none. Not only are they fire, earthquake and hurricane resistant but they are affordable, easily transported, require minimal foundations, and are environmentally friendly because they are made from recycled steel. They can be painted or printed with imagery and are a modern funky concept.

It’s a combination of all these points which made shipping containers appeal to me.

Brenda was interested in trying out shipping container living, but she didn’t want to have to spend a lot of time and money seeking council approvals from her local government in New Zealand. Where she lived, a dwelling under 10 square meters could conveniently skip out on all of those requirements, so that’s the size she targeted.

As it turns out, even 20-foot shipping containers, the smallest commonly available variety, are actually still too big. These containers have a floor area of 160 square feet or (14.9 square meters), over the council approval limit.

Her solution wasn’t to shrink the container, but rather to only use part of the container, with the remainder forming sort of a covered porch. And instead of accessing the container through the existing container doors, she chose to cut a new entrance to the porch through the side of the container.

The dwelling part of her container is about 4 meters long (~13.5 feet), leaving over 2 meters (~6 feet) of length for the porch. The porch is where she has some storage, some utility equipment, and also access to her bathroom. Yes, in a strange twist, her bathroom is actually not part of the container envelope.

If you look at some of the exterior photos of Brenda’s container, you can see a small outgrowth on the far side of the container with a shed roof. This is where she chose to place her bathroom, which likely had something to do with the subtleties of New Zealand building regulations. The details aren’t particularly important, and someone else could just as easily build a similarly sized bathroom in the space in the container that she dedicated to her porch.

As we’re discussing the bathroom, you’re probably curious about how that bathroom, you know, works. Which brings us to highlighting some of the off-grid features of this tiny container house.

First, there’s the rainwater collection. The runoff from the container roof is collected in a gutter system and held in two 220 liter plastic tanks. A pump is used to provide water pressure for washing in the bathroom and kitchen. Her drinking water is either filtered or purchased.

The water distribution begs the question of how that pump gets power to run. For that, we turn again to the roof of the container. There, you’ll find two 135W photovoltaic solar panels laying flat.

These panels are wired to a solar controller in the porch area, which in turn is hooked to two six-volt deep cycle batteries (wired in series to provide 12 volts) in Brenda’s storage cabinet. These batteries and the solar panels provide all the electricity for this container house, including what is needed to run the water pump, lights, and appliances.

All the wiring in the home is 12 volt and most of the appliances are 12 volts as well. Her computer and printer are run off a power inverter, when necessary.

As impressive as the utility provisioning of the house is, it’s the design and space utilization inside that we especially love. It starts with the glass entrance to the interior from the covered porch.

Once inside, you have the kitchen on your left and the office on your right. Both are certainly small, but satisfactory for a single person. The kitchen is full of cabinets and storage, while the office area has a narrow, vertical window that lets in abundant light without taking much wall space.

On the opposite side of the door are the living and sleeping spaces. Thanks to using a high-cube container, Brenda had room to include a small mezzanine area that is a functional, space-saving addition.

Up top is the living room, with an L-shape couch that is full of storage that conveniently folds out into a bed. There’s a wall-mounted TV here, plus a large horizontal window.

Underneath the mezzanine is the bedroom. It’s just tall enough for Brenda to sit up in bed, but you definitely have to get down on your knees to access it. The foot of the bed has storage and a hanging rod for clothes, though it’s far from a walk-in closet.

Clearly, it was a novel approach to making a truly tiny area as livable as possible, and we think she succeeded. But how did she actually design and build the thing? It was largely a DIY project with the help of some contractors for the heavy lifting, and her resourceful father. In her words:

The research, design and planning took a while and is not to be underestimated. However, investing the time here meant a smooth build without any unwanted surprises! The finished product is perfect and I’m delighted with the results.

Once I knew exactly what I wanted, I sourced the necessary materials. Then I got professional container modifiers to do the required cutting, welding and reinforcing.

From here the build took around 3 months of evenings and weekends for me and my Dad. For the insulation, we used Kingspan’s Kooltherm K10 in the walls and ceiling and polystyrene in the floor.

In all seriousness, this was a great father-daughter project. We had our moments, but as a whole, it was a blast. (And yes, we’re still talking!)

I loved all the learning, problem-solving, and innovative thinking involved. There’s no substitute for hands-on experience. Seeing your dream turn into a reality is incredibly rewarding.

Due to the fact that Brenda and her father did quite a bit of the work themselves, costs were kept relatively low. She shares the breakdown below:

In total, my tiny container palace cost around $24,000 NZD (~$20,000 USD). This figure includes

  • Purchasing the container
  • Laying the foundations
  • Finishing out the container with appliances and fixtures, etc.
  • Setting up the utilities and bathroom

While it’s a fairly high cost per square foot, remember that the cost includes the mezzanine which greatly increased the useable floor area and that the cost of the off-grid water and electrical systems are included as well. All in all, given the high level of the finish out and the fact that she paid to have all of the metalwork done by contractors, the price seems pretty good. We’ll conclude with Brenda’s overall thoughts on her project and the prospect of building with shipping containers, in general.

In addition to the benefits already mentioned, you’re starting off with a strong, weatherproof structure. They are easy to transport which means you can build your container home offsite.

This is very handy if your final destination is in the middle of nowhere or if you wish to live off grid with limited capacity to run power tools.

Building a shipping container home is not for the fainthearted. Do your research, especially if you want to get your home approved with your local authority.

That being said, when done right they are fantastic and have many benefits over traditional housing. Yes, I’d definitely recommend it.

If Brenda’s thoughts about containers weren’t clear, her actions should be. After building this container home and living in it, she left her job and started her own shipping container home company to build container homes for other people. If that doesn’t embody someone who really caught the vision and fell in love with containers, we don’t know what does!

Contact Info

See the Company Information

Professionals

If available, designer and/or builder information will be provided below and can be clicked for more detailed information.
iq container homes logo

IQ Container Homes

Designer
worksheet-full

Image Gallery

(Click for Full Size)

Sources

Comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *