Building an 80 Ft Long Shipping Container with an Insulated Garage Door & More! | The Container Guy
Follow along in this video as we connect two 40-foot shipping containers together end to end!
We already showed you how we connected two 20-foot containers to make a 40’, and how to connect two 40-ft containers side-by-side to make a double wide shipping container, but now we want to show you what an 80’ double long container will look like!
For this modification, we will be removing the container doors, installing strut channels, a man door on either side of the double long container, an overhead garage door on the side, and then connecting the two sea cans using our end-to-end kit. And we did this whole modification without having to weld anything!
VIDEO
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YouTube Video Transcript
If you’re ever looking to connect two 40 foot shipping containers end to end
to make an 80 foot long shipping container, you’ll want to watch this video. Stay tuned.
Hi, I'm Channing McCorriston, The Container Guy.
We've got a pretty weird customer request where they needed an 80 foot long container.
One would think these things are already pretty narrow at 40 feet and 80 would just get crazy,
but actually once you jump in here, it's pretty cool. And and it's--
I can visualize myself utilizing this space, and it being useful, so.
It does definitely increase the square footage, even though it is long and narrow.
So, in this video, we're going to let you follow along as we build this thing,
and give you some insight and show you some detail on this end-to-end
connection kit that we developed specific for this customer's project.
For this project, we'll be removing the shipping container doors. We have
a full video on how to do that, and you can check our video log at our website,
tcg.ca, go to the video section, you'll find that.
But, just to go over this really quick: we took our angle grinder
with a cut off wheel and cut through the hinge pins on all the corners. These doors are actually
completely free from the container right now, but we leave the lock rods connected. And now,
with one or two helping hands, you can remove the doors by just simply unlatching the doors.
So, the container doors are removed from this container,
and the electricians have started installing all the CSM Brackets and strut channels.
So, in this container, we're using the strut channel placement of every fourth corrugation.
So we got a strut channel, then one two three four,
which is a strut channel, one two three four, strut channel.
Then in the middle here, with this layout,
you'll get to the center. This is the center corrugation panel, it's just
two corrugations and you'll see the welds are nice, and they're closer together on this, so.
And here, where the corrugations line up, you'll end up with two strut channels right
tight together. This works well [to get] nice even spacing [between] your four foot light fixtures.
And then these strut channels across here
will allow you to strap pipe over the extended distance.
For installing these CSM Brackets themselves, I'm not going to get into too much detail,
just because we're getting repetitive with them, but.
Check our other videos if you purchase them and need to know
exactly how to install them either in the insulated or non-insulated positions.
And, because we're insulating this container,
we have all the strut channels installed [in] the insulated position.
So there's about two inches, or just under, behind here,
which allows our spray foam to get all behind the strut,
make a nice vapor barrier. And same thing on the end wall, there's room behind the strut.
And then here's this panel here. And you can see how
any electrical panel or mechanical components, they pair so well with [the] strut channel.
Every electrician or plumber or mechanical contractor, they're right at home with struts.
So, they've already started installing the panel. I don't really know exactly how the spray foamer's
gonna get in behind this panel, so I better have a little chat with the electrician. I think
this thing's gonna have to get pulled off and it should wait until the entire can's spray foamed,
and then they can come in later, install this panel and start piping to all the fixtures.
So, here we have the door installed. We missed the holding up of it and the riveting,
because we were out on a field trip today with the film crew.
But the guys got it installed, and it's all nice and square. You [have] to make sure that you
[have a] similar gap [at the] top and bottom. We're just finishing up the hardware here.
The only thing that's special to note about this man door is that it's installed on the
end wall of a container, so you need to make sure that you're grabbing the end wall header and not
the side wall header. It's a little bit deeper, because the corrugations are deeper, and it's
cut [at a] 90 [degree angle] up at the top rather than on an angle for the angled corrugations.
So, we'll be installing a commercial insulated overhead door in this container. Because we're
insulating [the containers], we want an insulated door rather than the non-insulated roll-ups.
And so, the frame that's going in here is quite similar to a roll-up door frame,
but we've modified it so that it's a little bit deeper and allows us
to spray foam all in behind there and get a nice good vapor barrier.
Also, it has a center mounting flange that's going to allow the
overhead door installers a place to mount the spring hardware.
Before cutting the roll-up door, we're actually going to
lift this container up and set it on our modification beam,
so that the container is nice and level and we know that it's not flexing one way or another.
When marking out your overhead door or roll-up door frames,
it's really important to make sure that you catch an outside corrugation.
So here, where the welds are, that's an inside corrugation. We need the outside.
So, once you get the frame here, it's going to--
It's like a j-channel, and it's going to wrap around this corrugation. It'll be pre-laser cut
with holes, allowing you to self tapping screw or rivet this frame in place.
So, make sure you catch the outside corrugations, [and] double check
your measurements so that you cut the right rough opening dimension.
So, you'll see here, Jeremy's left a few tacks in a couple places,
and that is going to allow this panel to hinge and drop outwards,
so when he's inside the can, the panel doesn't slide in and wipe out his ladder or his legs.
So, in this video, we're gonna concentrate a lot on this roll
up door frame, show you quite a bit about it.
Because the man doors, I've done that quite a bit, [as well as] strut lining and even spray foaming.
This door kit is new to us, we just developed it for this overhead door application.
If this kit works here, I think it would work very well for a
lot of people that are wanting to get garage doors in the side of sea cans.
So, here we have the side frames, and they're
way deeper than the roll-up door frame, so that's going to allow that spray foam in there.
The large side of this frame is on the inside, giving lots of room for the track for the overhead
door, and then we just need a small flange here to catch the outside corrugation that we left.
So we'll hold this up here, and see if she fits...
So, we still have this frame tying into the top 60 millimeter square tube here,
but you can see here, this is the offset that we've allowed to make sure that the
spray foam contractor [has] lots of room in here to get the full two inches of spray foam.
So, we pulled the frame out two inches from
the 60 millimeter tubing, which is where it would normally rest in a non-insulated position.
The footer is laser cut to catch the side frames, [and] that's going to auto control
the rough opening dimensions, so you're not having to worry that the bottom's flanged out wider than
the top or anything. [You] just got to make sure that your opening is framed nice and square.
And so, at the bottom of the [side] frame[s], it's secured up at the top into the 60
millimeter tubing, and down at the bottom here, we have a return flange with a couple holes,
and we'll be able to screw the side frame into the floor as well to make it nice and rigid.
And then also, these [side frames] are five and a half inches wide;
corrugations are 11 inches on center.
[The side frame's] return flange has a bunch of holes in it as well and that allows,
if we were to do another door, one corrugation over,
we can actually connect the two frames together and that would make one solid,
hollow section like a structural post from floor to ceiling, which will,
you know, basically [reinforce the container] to allow you to install multiple doors in the side
of one 40-foot container, and make sure that the roof or the floor doesn't sag.
Okay, so we've got the header in place here, on the outside.
We'll show you-- There's some flanges that are wrapped around the side frame,
and they [have] some laser-cut holes, so you'll
run some rivets through there, [and] that'll allow you to secure the header to the side frame.
And so, here, the footer, it's laser cut [and] fits perfectly with the side frames here.
This gets screwed down with our number eight wood screws. The inside lip is a bit further down
than the outside lip, so that allows this to slope gradually outwards.
We can also leave the bottom weld. We don't have to grind everything flush underneath,
because that's the worst part of installing these frames is grinding all that flush.
It's very time consuming, it's loud, it's just not fun.
So, we've designed our frames around it to save that labor portion of it. Once it's all
screwed into the floor and riveted to the container,
it's buttoned up nice and tight, super structural, and will allow all the spray foam,
and [will be] nice and easy [for the contractor] to install that overhead door.
Sometimes on new containers, it seems when we cut the opening, the corrugations will bow in a
little bit, [and] that could be from the heat when they welded the corrugations on in [the] factory.
And so, if you're noticing that you got a little gap between your frame and your wall,
have someone on the inside pushing outwards as you're riveting
[to] make sure it really sucks the two pieces of metal together tightly.
And so, here's our center framing piece here. They usually want
two by six framed in here if you're framing with lumber,
so we went to seven inches wide for good measure to make sure they had lots of room.
So this, we've got three holes laser cut. We [are] gonna drill through them and rivet,
so that they're not really in the way of the door when it's coming up.
[As] you can see, there's plenty of room behind here for the foam contractor to
make sure they get all the spray foam they need to get their vapor barrier in there.
This header is a hollow section, so they'll be able to get all the foam in there.
And then, now your side frames, the lip of the header, and the center frame here
are all on relatively the same plane, which will
allow them to install all of their slotted brackets and the tracks for this overhead door.
Before spray foam, we installed interior wall flashings and exterior flashings.
Given this is the first time we've installed this kit, some minor adjustments had to be made,
which has been corrected in our 3d model. All in all, the process went quite smoothly.
The spray foamers have arrived. As always, make sure that you go through the container
with your spray foam contractor. Make sure that they're taping off everything that you
do not want spray foamed, only leaving what should be insulated [exposed].
So for this particular container, we've strut lined it. We will be taping off all
[the struts]. They use brown packing tape [that] seems to come off the galvanized steel very well.
And then, just at the doorway here, we have our container [wall] flashing kits
already installed. So that's going to retain the foam--
That's, well the wall flashing kit.
And then, just around the doorway there as well,
you see they've taped it off and poly-ed it off really nicely.
The header, the way that that profile is folded,
allows for a nice flawless vapor barrier even inside the door frame, which is rare for most
North American door frames. It's usually a pretty hollow void, and an area that cold transfers.
So we've just dry fit these containers together. We haven't connected the two yet, but we just
wanted to make sure that our ground was nice and level and all the blocking is in the right place.
So I'm gonna jump in the top lift right now. We're gonna lift this thing up,
show you what the underside of the can looks like--the spray foam job-and
then we're gonna set it back down and connect the high capacity
bridge fittings and show you how this kit works, and how the two cans come together.
So, here we have the underside of the can. You can see here that
the entire thing has been spray foamed underneath, we've done two inches.
All 40s have an 11 foot section [that is] the gooseneck end of the
container. It's a hollow section that aligns the container on the chassis,
plus [it] keeps the containers from being over height.
And so, that's the gooseneck end for the first 11 feet, and then after that,
for the rest of the 40 foot container, there's just regular cross members.
And so you see, we filled all of these sections up with two inches
of foam. This is a great way to insulate the underside of the container and keep the stock,
inch and an eighth teak plywood floor, which is an extremely nice floor, extremely durable.
So on each container, we've made a flashing that comes out an inch and a half,
which makes up the three inch difference for these high capacity bridge fittings.
So these bridge fittings are meant to connect two 20 footers together,
fully loaded and allow a [top lift] like this to handle them as a 40 foot container.
[The Bridge Fittings] handle 65,000 pounds, [and] is a perfect item for this job.
So the magnetic side of this high capacity bridge fitting is [a] left-hand[ed]
thread, which is nice when you're first getting started.
And you got to make sure you have the right twist lock as well, and so that goes in ahead of time.
and then the magnets will hold it there in place as you bring the next container up.
And so, I guess the shorter you can make this, the better.
You set your next can [aligned with] the casting right beside it.
Get your retainer in there, and then you can start sucking the two cans together.
If you didn't have the crane or the equipment or you're worried,
as long as you're sharing the same foundation with both casting,
[the bridge fitting] has the strength to just pull the two containers right together.
So there's two different types of these fittings. There's the narrower one which fits in the bottom
corner castings, and then there's a bit wider one that fits in the shield shape up at the top.
We're now going to lower this container down, try to insert these, and then show you how everything
works, so we're going to do this as a test run here. Hopefully everything goes to plan.
So the boys have the high capacity bridge fittings all sucked
tight together. It was important with this end-to-end connection kit that the
lock mechanism on that bridge fitting is facing upwards on the bottom and downwards at the top,
because we have a flashing that goes over it on the outside to shed the water.
So once we got them together, we noticed there's a little gap here, and this is just an R&D.
And so, what we had to do is, down at the bottom, we had to just notch this side flashing,
which just allowed it to come in just that much more, and then that closed up this gap here, so.
Once this gets to site, and the customer puts it together themselves,
we have slotted holes vertically and horizontally.
They're going to be able to slide either a quarter inch bolt through there or run
a 5/16" thread cutting bolt, which would just thread itself and hold these two cans together.
Okay, so up here on the side, we have the high capacity bridge fitting all tightened up.
We've installed the top ridge cap. So we've actually pre-insulated that ridge cap,
plus we'll be insulating on the inside. But uh--
So that's installed, and then there's this cover plate here. So this covers
that high-capacity bridge fitting.
And so that's going to allow us,
just with four bolts, we'll be able to undo that and have access to this.
And then we can loosen the two containers and separate these things.
So this is a fully removable setup and relatively quick to
commission this thing, so it can be moved as individual 40 foot pieces,
and actually, the way that these bridge fittings are, it could be moved as one.
So here, we'll jump inside the can. This is prior to installing the interior flashing kit.
So we have a footer section, and then
both sides and the ceiling piece. So what we're going to do here is, we're going to
install two inches of rigid foam, and then we have a galv. flashing kit that connects
to the container wall kit, and that will rivet or self-tapping screw into this, which seals that up.
It's a nice steel finish, and hides all the business details of the exterior flashing kit.
If any water--it won't get through,
but if it did--it would actually hit that kit and then go down the sides as well.
So it's a secondary insurance plan on any water getting in between here.
So we tried to be nice to this customer. We included our new
pest plugs, but they're also a spray foam retention plug. So I'll show you them.
And so right here, we've installed that plug. That stops the spray foam from flying out of
that fork pocket, but unfortunately we didn't have that in our model, and so where we left this
we actually now need to cut this out in order to get this threshold plate to drop in.
So it's bright and early in the morning, still dark outside. We actually had to stay a little bit
late yesterday to get this kit all fitted, because this thing's going out first thing in the morning.
I just wanted to sneak in here with the film crew and show you how this all finally fitted up.
So down here, we have our bottom threshold plate that spans the gap between the footers
of each door. This is the door ends of the cans [where they] are connected.
And then we were able to get the interior flashing kit
to fit nicely, both on the sides and the ceiling here.
So it's all tacked up in place, we can give you an idea how this is going to kind of
finally look without the final step of silicone that they'll do at site.
But, we're happy with-- especially how the prototype came together. We've got
a few revisions to make, but aside from that, I think this kit's pretty much ready to sell.
So just keep track of our website, tcg.ca. You can see in our modification components, we'll have
specific flashing kits and framing kits available, and this should be available
there to purchase if anyone's looking to build an extremely long container such as this.
And so here's the final fitment of the electric heaters.
We have the shut off switch for each of them because they're hardwired.
And then, what's cool is the junction boxes here and the way that that connects. So
there's a bunch of wires inside that cable that allows all the circuits in both cans to
be interconnected and all flow into the one load center at the back of the can.
And the customer wanted plugs all throughout this container everywhere, and that's what they got.
So we ran a bit thicker of conduit,
and we have plugs all the way down on both sides of this thing.
I think they got a lot of fridges and freezers and things like that getting plugged in here,
so they're gonna have more than enough space to get all those electrified.
We have our overhead door here installed, all finished up.
That looks great. That kit worked excellent[ly].
So these, we use a commercial insulated door panel, but then a residential track.
So we go with the two inch track. That allows us to use the 12 inch radius,
and so we can get additional height out of these doors for the customers, so yeah.
Commercial slab with residential hardware seems to be the best fit for these containers.
And this, you know, is, I guess, your cheapest option for getting an insulated door
in an insulated container. You don't want to use a non-insulated tin
roll-up door in an insulated structure. The other option would be an insulated folding door,
so those are pretty sweet doors. They're very well insulated but they come with the price tag.
So here, they got the interior locking mechanism. So that allows the customer to lock it up at
night. And then they can lock up their doors, enter their doors, open this, use it for the day.
And so that's it right there.
What we often do with these panels is install an exterior junction box.
So that junction box on the outside of the container, the customer can just now bury a cable,
run a tech cable into it, [and] they don't have to worry about feeding wires into the panel. We can
have the panel all closed up with a wire going to that and then they just connect to the terminals.
So I hope you enjoyed following us along as we did this mod.
That right there is our end-to-end connection kit. This allows you to take two 20s and make a 40,
or two 40s and make an 80 foot shipping container.
If you enjoyed this video, please give it a like. If you'd like to see more, please subscribe to our
channel and ring that notification bell. And as always, check us out at tcg.ca.
