I wish I was an aborigenal, or my wife was. Land on the mountains has basically no cost 
Canât you buy from them?
No, but you may be able to rent.
Yeah, unless we rent it(donât want) that kind of land is out of reach
Talking with some people, it looks like the easiest idea would be to make a âmixed houseâ, as in:
a) Build a traditional house in order to have easy access to all utilities connections (keeping the floor plan small)
b) Add one or two containers in order to create extra living space and storage areas.
So for example, the ideal plan would be something like 2 bedrooms + 1 studio/living room/spare room that can become an extra bedroom in case we procreate more than expected + kitchen + toilet. That floor plan would require a very small house, which means we can build it fairly cheaply. Then, using a couple of containers we can create my bicycle storage and maintenance area, a room to exercise, an extra toilet + washing machine, a guest area with patio for barbeques etc etc.
It looks like we have a lot of right connections (due to my work I can get the container part done fairly cheaply, and my wife knows many people who work in constructions and decorations), so the main issue will be the landâŚadd oil!
Just a suggestion, based on my hypotetical plans for a container house:
First of all, the base: You should lay reinforced concrete âfeetâ in the land to put the containers on top. If you lift them for 1 meter, it also allows you to pass all the installations between the floor and the ground, allowing you to have a nice, clean space inside the house. Lifting it from the ground protects your house from humidity (really important in Taiwan).
You will only need the container beams to do the structure. If you pick 40 ft High Cube containers and put them side by side, but without the side metal sheet or doors, you end up with a huge square space.
40â High Cube dimensions:
L:12.056m
W:2.347m
H:2.684m
For the façade, you can make double walls around it with bricks or put a thick double glass wall on one side to make a great living room overlooking your garden. Iâd recommend to waterproof the roof, solder rails around it, plant grass, and have a nice green roof you can access from the outside, that also provides you an awesome insulation against cold and heat. All the windows should be insulated as well.
If you use five 40â containers, you end up with an almost square space with no walls or columns, so you can arrange the interior space as you wish. Having a totally open space inside allows you to use plasterboard to divide it into as many rooms as you desire, and you can arrange it differently according to your needs. Itâs also fast to arrange and finish, but since you have a great double brick insulation around all the house, you wonât have loss of heat/cold. If the installations go under the house, the plasterboard walls can be just 10 cm thin (5 cm aluminium structure with sound proofing insulation, plus 2,5cm boards on each side) and make the most of your interior space.
If you want to add more space in the future, you can strip half of the green roof and add a couple of containers on top. If you already have stairs to access the roof and railings around it, itâd make for a nice second floor with a terrace.
About the multi-containers plan with no walls inside, how would that work out in term of stability? Iâve found many people suggesting that if you cut the whole side of a container, you then need to add some support to the roof to avoid the risk of bending.
I like the idea of having plants on the roof, but in order to have a reasonable insulation how thick would it have to be?
Containers are made with Large steel beams on the edges that hold everything together. The sides are metal sheet, with no structural purpose at all. They donât support any weight. The reason for the containers to be able to be stacked as much as they do is because of those big steel beams (they call it rails, but they would be the beams in your home). Check this website for ideas:
residentialshippingcontainer ⌠ERMINOLOGY
If you want my advice, lift it from the ground, not on a slab, and do not do a basement. Having contact with the ground requires lots of insulation to prevent humidity from going in. This wouldnât be a concern if you were living in, say, the Nevada desert, but here in Taiwan, it becomes a serious problem. Basically, make as many reinforced concrete dice as you need, make sure theyâre at the same height, leave steel rods coming out of it, put the containers on top, solder the rods to the container structure, and you have a really solid structure there in just a couple of days.
That sounds relatively easy, so basically as long as the main structure of the container (the rails) is intact, the rest is just there to âfill the gapsâ.
It would make 2+ containers side by side very easy to setup.
So you suggest to go with the external insulation in order to save space on the inside? I havenât thought of that before. If we end up planning something that looks like a square or rectangle, Iâd probably go with the double glass at the front, and bricks + insulated windows on the rest of the surface.
Price wise, how do they compare? I mean internal and external insulation, is there a huge difference money wise?
Double brick wall with a 5 cm air chamber between the walls provides excellent thermal and moisture insulation. You donât need anything else for insulation, since the air chamber is enough. The cost is just like a double wall, and if you go for the square shape, your perimeter will be as small as can be while maximizing the space inside (in a 12x12 meters building, you have 48 meters of perimeter for 144 sqm. of usable space). Go square and youâll save money.
If you lift the house from the ground as for my suggestions and close the space around it (leaving access hatches in order to do maintenance on the utilities), youâll have another air chamber below it, and the green roof always provides excellent insulation (if you have grass, it helps cool your home in summer). That, with an insulating outer wall, your home would basically be a self-contained microclimate, and would help you cut the A/C expenses by a lot. Providing you go with an entire glass wall overlooking the garden or the land behind you, you need to remember a couple of things:
- It would be good having sliding venetian blinds on the outside, the reinforced kind (they have a steel rod inside each one), to be able to close them and protect your home if youâre leaving for some time or thereâs a typhoon.
- You might want to have a retractable canopy on the outside that allows light to enter your home, but keeps the direct sun rays from your glass wall. Most hot countries have the blinds on the outside to do that, but not in Taiwan (because Taiwan!). Having an insulated home and letting the sun rays go in directly will turn your house into an oven. That can be really great in winter and helps you cut your heating bills, but in summer, thatâs hell. If you do the appropiate calculations, the canopy can be just wide enough to stop the sun rays in summer but let them enter in winter, when the sun is lower.
Best shape that will allow you to do an optimal distribution is going as square as you can. Rectangle shape is the second best, but the closer youâre to a square, the better. Avoid hallways, using the living room as a hub and lay down the rooms and kitchen around it usually works and avoids hallways (which are wasted space, anyways). Using thin plasterboard walls with sound insulation in the interior allows you to arrange the available space as you like, and make posterior adjustments at a minimum cost. Since you wonât have to change the structural components, you wonât need special permits, either.
Thatâs a lot of great information, thanks!
Iâll ask my wife to look for an estimate cost for the double brick wall and double glass window, Iâd find that stuff in 5 minutes in my country but have no idea how to look for that in Chinese -__-
One question about the bricks, though. I know there are many kinds of bricks, depending if theyâre used for inside walls or outer walls, the amount of weight they have to sustain etc etc. Considering that the double brick wall on the outside doesnât not need to sustain any weight, apart from itâs own and a small cover, am I correct assuming that I can use the cheaper bricks commonly used for internal walls?
For those that donât watch much TV, there is a series on now about building container houses on Discovery (I think). They had the same structural support problems with cutting a whole side out. They had to put tubular square steel beams in exactly side by side, to support the upper structure. I saw that it was extremely flimsy once the side is removed.
You should, as suggested, consider a concrete slab. Donât forget some heavy duty tie-downs for typhoon protection. The episode that is on now included compost toilets, wood stove generated hot water/cooking and solar panels. (off the grid) I was impressed but not so much as to start looking for land. But, Iâm old and my housing is free.
Do you know the name of that show?
No. About a week ago, I was surfing and ran across an episode in the late evening. Last night, a new episode was aired. (about 9-12 pm) It was about a uni project to build a container house off the grid in the uni parking lot. Good stuff.
The one I saw about a week ago was a 3 story house in the mountains. Awesome looking home. Both were built, furnished and partied in within a week. I am pretty sure it was Discovery but it might have been Nat. Geo. Canât recall.
EDIT: BTW, they will repeat (pretty sure) tonight at same time frame.
I donât have a TV at home, so youâd be awesome if you could give it a look tonight and try to find the channel and name of the show! After that it should be easy for me to find it on youtube or on some shady streaming website.
No Problem. Others might take note in case I miss it.
I am probably stating the obvious but . . . take a look at youtube âcontainer house constructionâ. I donât think the current show covered anything more than is already posted but I will follow through as requested.
Yep, on youtube thereâs a lot, but some videos were a bit on the boring side xD Hopefully a tv show will be more entertaining and I may enjoy it with my wife, definitely more than a slide show with text-on-pictures.
[quote]Ibis2k12 wrote:
I wish I was an aborigenal, or my wife was. Land on the mountains has basically no cost 
Canât you buy from them?[/quote]
Any idea how much the lease/rent would be for 3-5 ha farmland on the mountain?
I spend 3 hours on google but canât find any information about it, or any people offering it.
Last week I rode my scooter through some mango, pineapple and watermelon farms in
the mountains north-east of Pingdong and it would be my dream to spend quiet life farming there.
The fruit prices at markets / shops are so high here (compared with TH/CAMBODIA/VN, PH)
that it looks like there is good money to be made farming.
BTW: Any idea about regulations for importing fruits from Southeast Asia (for example: Phillipines or Thailand) to Taiwan?
I can get mangos for less than 10 TWD/piece there, here in Taiwan they are more than double for lower quality. 
The customs page just says thatâs not allowed to bring fruits in handbaggage.
What about importing in containers by ship for reselling? Are there any restrictions in Taiwan?
Sorry for the newbie questions and dropping into this thread, I am just 3 months here so far,
married to Taiwanese and living in Taipei w/o job now
(we just came here after living in Japan for many years, ), looking for a better way to live in Taiwan.
P.S. I also thought about container houses before. What about cob houses? Easy to make and really cheap.
Or is it a problem in the rainy season?
I like that one: youtube.com/watch?v=02NtjypMHwk
[quote=âIbis2k12â]Thatâs a lot of great information, thanks!
Iâll ask my wife to look for an estimate cost for the double brick wall and double glass window, Iâd find that stuff in 5 minutes in my country but have no idea how to look for that in Chinese -__-
One question about the bricks, though. I know there are many kinds of bricks, depending if theyâre used for inside walls or outer walls, the amount of weight they have to sustain etc etc. Considering that the double brick wall on the outside doesnât not need to sustain any weight, apart from itâs own and a small cover, am I correct assuming that I can use the cheaper bricks commonly used for internal walls?[/quote]
For outer walls, you want 15 cm wide perforated brick. Itâs lighter and resists a lot of compression. If the guys that construct the wall use non-retraction mortar to raise the wall, the bricks will help support the container structure, and you wonât need extra beams. This kind of brick wall can be reinforced by inserting vertical steel rods in the vertical holes of the brick, holding the brick rows together. If done by a skilled construction worker, this can resist A LOT.
Another option for the outer walls: without removing the metal sheet of the container sides, get hold of a frame made of iron/steel bars in a crosshatch pattern. Make someone solder that into the beams of the container and onto the metal sheet on the side. Get a hold of a shotcreting company and make them spurt shotcrete all over the side of the container, covering the sheet and the rods. Instant reinforced concrete outer wall! You only need to cut the windows out of it. The problem with this is that the walls donât have insulation, so youâre basically left with two options:
- Ventilated façade: they look awesome and they provide the best insulation by far, but on the other hand, strong winds can affect it if theyâre not designed to withstand them.
- Double the perimeter wall on the interior, with plasterboard, rockwool and soundproofing. Leave a little bit of an air chamber to capture the moisture.
That way, youâre left with an exterior concrete wall. If itâs too spartan for your taste, you can try and cover it partially or completely with upcycled wooden rail sleepers. Since the wood is treated to withstand the elements, itâll be a good choice. Another option is to set a crisscross of steel cables and plant ivy around the house. That would greatly increase the insulation, and in a highly humid climate like Taiwanâs, it wouldnât be much of a problem.
Talking with my dad (who has a construction company, but unfortunately heâs on the other side of the world and cannot help me in person) if I want to spend a bit more money I can get some great external insulation in the form of some closed cell spray foam, covered by an external wall/layer of wood/whatever to protect it from the sun. The closed cell foam doesnât let anything through, moisture, mold, vapor etc, and will last forever.
I also got an estimate on how much it would cost me in Europe, but the problem is that people working in constructions over there get roughly 1000ntd per hour, and over the course of 3/4 days with 3 people it influences the final price by a good 70%. Here in Taiwan I found bricks to be a bit more expensive (but it was just a quick search to have a price range), on the other hand workers get much less than 1000ntd/hr. So the brick thing would be cheapest way, while closed cell foam would be the best and fastest (half a day), though more expensive.
Anyway, this saturday I have a meeting with a company that sells containers and I should manage to get an estimate of the price for the main structure, after that Iâll add foundations/permits/electricity and phone connections, and Iâll also look for a closed cell kit in Taiwan, to see how much the whole thing would cost.