The Shipping Containers Have Landed
I wake from a restless slumber for the umpteenth time to the sound heavy tropical rain. It hasn’t stopped persisting it down for over 24 hours and at first light our shipping containers are due to arrive on site, at this rate on a high tide.
We leave Hii Hotel and drive the short distance to our property closely followed by a convoy from Bangkok. Four articulated trucks rumble down the road at 8AM carrying our three 40 foot and two 20 foot containers. I bought a second 20-foot shipping container earlier in the week to use as on-site storage. This will be re-positioned later as my man cave or shed.
The Cargo Containers Have Landed | Thinglish Lifestyle
Next up, the crane arrived from Trat. This will be used to lift the shipping containers off the trucks and position them on the foundations.
So far, so good. Despite the rain everything was coming together and happening with military precision.
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Mission Impossible
As the first truck starts to reverse up our road, it quickly becomes apparent that the weight of the trucks, plant and the sheer amount of rain that had fallen was going to make this operation almost impossible.
We called in some heavy plant in the form of the largest ‘macro’ we could find at short notice to pull the crane and trucks into place.
I also ordered two large trucks full of gravel to build up the road, which by now had turned into liquid sea of mud.
Usually the drivers would be in and out within an hour, but not today. We did a food run and fed the team lunch.
The hours passed and the costs were mounting but by 2pm we were ready as we were ever going to be to get started on the final attempt to get the shipping containers unloaded and positioned.
Thankfully, by 5PM we had safely got every container in position and the trucks off site. All credit to the whole team of engineers, drivers and laborers who made it happen. We really can’t thank you enough.
If it never happened we were looking at a long wait until the end of the rainy season to get everything on site. The costs of transport, storage, cranes, crew and the like would have doubled or even tripled.
With much relief we headed back to Hii Hotel to get some much needed sleep and food but not necessarily in that order.
With all the heavy lifting completed, we can now look forward to starting the onsite construction and interior.
Using Shipping Containers to Build a Home Off-site or On-Site
Incidentally, if you are reading this and thinking of using shipping containers for constructing your home you can have the whole thing built offsite. You would only need to have your container transported to your site and plugged in to the mains and plumbed in. (unless you used solar and alternative means for waste and water).
As we have a multi-container build, an atrium and three decks this could only be constructed in situ. This makes for a longer and more expensive build. You can read more about that in another installment of our shipping container saga in the next blog post.
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The Shipping Containers Have Landed
