DIY Off Grid Shack Modified From a Shipping Container - Solar Powered Office, Tiny Home or Cabin
In this video, we will take you along as we convert this shipping container into a solar powered Off Grid Building!
This container will be used as an office-storage combo on an industrial asphalt site. We have modified this container using our bolt-on solutions without having to weld anything to the can.
If you are interested in building an off grid cabin, tiny home, garage, or hunting shack, you can easily do it yourself using our techniques and Container Modifications World’s products! All of the products we use on this container are DIY, and you can easily install them on your container.
The only products that we use that are best to keep to the experts are spray foam insulation and electrical. Watch this video as we install a door, skylight vents, windows and their protective covers, a propane heater, solar panels and steel stud framing!
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Purchase Container Modification World Products Feat ured in The Video
YouTube Video Transcript
Are you thinking about building an off-grid
shack as a weekend getaway to enjoy some seclusion outdoors?
Looking for a nifty way to mount solar panels to the roof of a shipping container,
or an easy way to install a propane heater?
Then you're going to want to watch this video,
and follow along as we build this off-grid scale shack.
I'll try my best to provide insight to those interested in container homes,
tiny homes, and off-grid living as I go along in this video.
This video will let you follow along as we modify this 20-foot one-time-use
shipping container into an off-grid site shack.
The customer is using this as a scale shack at a remote gravel
operation and asphalt plant, and so there's going to be an office storage combo in the front half.
There's going to be an operator in here, and in the back half there's
going to be the electrical panel, the batteries, and extra storage.
With these mods, we always start off by cutting out all of our rough openings and performing the
exterior modifications, such as the skylight roof vents, which Josh and William are working on here.
A quick tip, once you've cut the rough openings,
immediately sweep off all the metal shards on the roof of the container.
The bare steel will rust when exposed to water and can stain or intrude
through the coating and cause premature rusting on the roof of this container.
With these skylight vents, sealing them up is the most important thing.
I'm not a huge fan of cutting holes in the roof, but customers always seem to require it anyway,
so all we can do is our best to ensure these vents don't leak over time.
They are getting spray foamed anyway,
so the spray foam on the inside will give some additional assurance that these vents won't leak.
Next, we will install the windows and door.
Again, make sure the shards that land on
the bottom channel are swept off to prevent premature rust.
We will be installing our fixed security screens over the sidewall windows,
and the end wall window will be getting a custom drop down security screen,
so the customer can open it up during the day and lock it at night.
These security screens match perfectly with our Container
Modification World weldless window framing kits.
We have full assembly and installation videos if you'd like to see more
on the process of installing these windows and door kits.
Now, we're going to give you a tour of the uh the egress window
This isn't exactly an egress window because, typically,
when you have a window like this that you want to open up, you open it from the inside.
But in this instance, they want to use padlocks, and so we've tweaked our design a little bit.
We'll just show you how we've done that.
This is our security screen, and we've used a piano hinge along the bottom.
And then we have these gate style latches up top, so those just swing [open], and then
the user will be able to lower the [screen] down and it rests on these bumpers down here.
So, throughout the day as semis are driving by and they're operating
out of here, using this as their scale shack, the window's open, and then at night
when nobody's around the gravel pit, they'll be able to close this thing up.
They weren't looking for too high of security,
they just wanted to keep the honest people out, and that's what this will do.
Here, Josh and William are steel studding the interior.
They're using two and a half inch steel studs.
Next, we're gonna try playing with inch and five-eighth steel
studs and actually pulling them an inch away from the corrugations.
Another thing, we've plywood lined the partition wall prior to spray foam,
so we're able to insulate that as well
to separate the heated portion of this container and the non-heated portion.
You'll see here how the foam looks with the steel stud[s] once it's all complete.
Notice, we are using metal furring strips to keep all the studs nice and straight
while the foam happens, so as it cures and expands it doesn't twist or bow the studs.
And to finish the interior of the office portion,
we are using the PVC reline wall panels that we love.
On the partition wall, we've added a small chunk of plywood where the charge controller is mounting, and on
the end wall we have installed OSB [plywood] first, which will allow us freedom to mount the
angle brackets for the desk that's [being] install[ed] where the operator will be working.
Working with this stuff is very similar to siding the exterior of a home, so if you're used to
working with J-channel and exterior siding, it is [a] very similar process and you should be
able to tackle these PVC reline wall panels if this is something you wanted to do on your own.
We're just inside the unit here. This is the very first time that we're going to
be installing these Direct Vent Propane Heaters in a sea can.
We came up with a custom frame. We've built it all out of galvanized [steel], and then
stuffed it full of flame resistant mineral wool insulation, and then just spray foamed up to it.
It calls for a nine inch diameter of non-flammable surface,
so we've given it 10 inches just to be safe.
And so, yeah, this thing here, we've just pulled the cover off.
These are pretty cool. The customer actually supplied this,
but I've been eyeballing these on Amazon.
They're relatively inexpensive, and they don't require any power to operate, so they just have a
pilot light and a barbecue style igniter.
They're almost identical to what
an RV has inside of it, so it just burns propane and radiates heat outwards.
It's perfect for this specific container because it's running on solar and doesn't have,
you know, constant 120-volt electricity.
And so, this will just ensure, in the winter time,
it'll keep the edge off inside this office portion of this can.
So yeah, we've created this frame, and we've inserted some nutserts here.
We've upsized the bolts quite a bit to a three-eighth just to be safe, and then it
comes with an exhaust pipe that goes through the wall thimble and it's, it's quite long.
It's like, I think, over 12 inches of wall thickness, but we're only five, so we're cutting
that down right now, and then we'll get to hanging this thing and showing you what it looks like.
We're going to get it wall mounted for the customer, but then their plumber on site is going
to hook up the propane and go through the wall to their maybe 300 or 400 pound propane pig outside.
So, here Josh just cut this down. We've taken quite a bit off.
And so, yeah, it can go through a lot thicker of a wall, but because our
wall cavity is nice and thin, as thin as we can get it, this is about as much as we need.
And now, yeah, we'll go stuff this through the wall, hook it up into the heater, and
move on to the next thing.
After struggling with this for a while—
Why didn't we get an impact bit?
We realized this is a threaded rod and this nut on the back end comes off, so
I think the steps for putting all the exhaust piping in would be [to] get your threaded rod
in there first, your small pipe in your large one, and put this nut back on afterwards.
That was definitely a lot harder than it could
have been just because we didn't read the instructions like normal.
So once we figured it out, it went together pretty well.
Seems like a decent option to heat a container if you don't have power.
Maybe a drawback would be [that] this does stick out of your can,
so if you're transporting it and you're worried in your local area about being
over width, [it] adds five and a half inches to the width of your container, so.
Containers are eight feet wide, you're allowed to be 8'6",
[so] you will get away with it if you had nothing on the other side.
But yeah, other than that, no, this thing looks good. Too bad we can't fire it up here and see
how warm it makes the can, but I'm sure the customer will give us some feedback.
Another thing to note, actually.
We built a few more of these frames because we thought this is cool.
I've been eyeballing this specific heater, and so yeah, we actually have a few of these
frames in stock and could be available for for sale if someone did email us.
Just email parts@thecontainerguy.ca if you're looking for something like this.
Now that we've finished up the heater, we're gonna move on to wiring the solar panels and all the DC.
So this here, Travis already has the charge controller [set up]. It's an
MPPT controller. It'll grab all the power from the panel and feed the batteries.
We've mounted this in the office side, so that the user can see the battery levels,
they can see how much power the panel is producing, and also how much they're using.
So, pretty cool controller. They call it The KID, so they must have a larger version of this.
But yeah, we are only running the one panel and two six-volt batteries
in series to give 12-volt DC to this thing.
And that's kind of cool because most LED light fixtures are actually 12-volts,
not 120, and they're just [dumbed] down to 12, so.
These here, yeah, we're actually just going to run 12 [volts] through the lights,
so this whole thing will run all the time.
And then we did run 120-volt power to this office in case
it did get moved to a site where they did have power, but yeah, the lights will always be on 12.
And yeah, I guess we'll jump up on top and see how the wires come into the storage side of this can.
They'll come in through the wall and then back down to the batteries from that.
It's going to distribute power all throughout this,
back into this office and to other areas to allow the customer to run their weigh scale.
A slick way to mount solar panels to the roof of a
shipping container is to use Container Modification World's CSM Roof Brackets.
These brackets allow you to build a strut frame on the roof of a container, so.
In this instance, we are going to have the panel, what we call,
perpendicular to the container, but if you are to mount panels parallel to it,
you can run them the whole 20 foot length and face [them] south towards the sun.
These will work great and allow you to build this super modular structure where, now,
any electrician or panel installer is right at home using bolts
and strut hardware rather than having to fabricate and weld some sort of
steel mounting structure and burn all the beautiful paint off this container.
We'll just interrupt Travis here and check out the
conduit that he's piped in for our 12-volt, or, I guess, 48, so.
We have our 48-volt solar panels on the roof and that's going to come in,
we're going through the side of the container and coming in.
We don't really like drilling holes through the roof, so we're going to wrap the wires
around [and] come in through this conduit into the breaker, and then it comes to a junction box.
And we also have a couple buses in here for the line DC and the load DC.
That'll head down to the battery bank.
We've built a little bracket there to retain those batteries during transport, and then,
so yeah, from here, we can feed the scale and the lights, and that'll come up through the conduit
and head back to the other side and also to the light and the switch in this container.
So, the panel's bolted down with just two half inch bolts for transport and
that keeps it horizontal, and then doesn't really attack the wind during transport, so.
Once it gets to site, all the customer has to do is undo these two bolts [and] lift the panel up.
The customer has these two support brackets.
And so they just slide the spring nut over.
And so, I'd like to point out these CSM RBs or the the CSM roof brackets.
These make this whole roof structure framing possible.
They only poke holes in the hollow tubing; they don't poke any holes in the envelope,
so you're not going to be worried about water leaking into your container in the future.
And they're very structural and allow you to to build this frame,
and so you can build decks on the roof of cans.
Or, a lot of it, I think, is going to be for solar in the future.
These specific ones are black powder coated,
3/16 mild steel, but there's also a 10 gauge version, which is less expensive.
So, if someone's looking to DIY and build their own solar setup on a container that they
already own, and they want the cheapest possible option, those galvanized ones will work as well.
And so, yeah, those really make it work and work well and work easy, and-and a lot of times it's
electricians up here and they're used to drilling and bolting but not necessarily
welding and fabricating their own specific brackets, so those are awesome.
You'll notice on that side there, we don't have a strut channel running
in between lengthwise but we do on the other side, and so.
On this side of the can, we ran a slotted strut,
so that's got holes on the back side facing upwards.
And so, that allowed us to tuck all of our wiring nice and neat in there,
just like a cable tray, and any water or snow that gets in there will be able to melt
or just drain out of there and it's a...
It's protection for those wiring until they get over to where the [storage
is in] this container and run into the the charger and then eventually the batteries.
And this is our first off grid office that we've done and so,
given this scale shack requires very little power it didn't require much of a panel, [or] much
for batteries, [or] much for a charge controller.
Because we got to play around with this—
But we are getting requests for like fully functional offices to be off grid, and you know,
it takes a lot of power generation to feed quite a, you know, a couple people working, so
we're playing around with that, especially in the northern climate where you got to generate heat.
It doesn't seem like electricity is going to be, you know, our primary heat source;
you probably always have to run with propane or something to that effect, or maybe a solar
thermal panel to generate heat from the sun, which should heat water and then heat the container, so.
All stuff we'd like to play around with in the future, and hopefully we get some cool interesting
mod projects and be able to showcase them for you guys, but for this one here, yeah, at least we got
some experience now with our 48-volt solar panels and the 12-volt system feeding all the lighting.
So this here is where the scale shack operator will greet the semi drivers that'll be pulling
up on the scale. They'll get their ticket and [then] they'll continue on their way.
It's pretty cool. We got the security screen here
that closes up at night and make sure this place is nice and secure.
This whole mod was done with pre-manufactured, bolt-on components, so everything, the windows,
the doors, all the strut channel, the roof strut, the solar panels,
everything was bolted on, nothing was welded in this modification.
And so, it's, you know, for a handyman this thing is potentially a do-it-yourselfer type project.
We do a lot of hunting shacks, berry picking shacks.
Anybody who likes the outdoors really could utilize this type of structure.
There's the off-grid power that's generating this thing, and you got half of it being a
comfortable potential living quarters and then the back half being storage for all of your gear.
I'd like to just quickly point out that on this container we used our
forklift pocket covers, the skunk plugs here.
They work great for retaining the spray foam, so otherwise spray foam
comes flying out of these those fork holes and it just, you know, it yellows and it looks gross, so.
It's a cosmetic thing but [it] also keeps,
not necessarily rodents, but definitely, you know, skunks and larger things that you don't
want living under your can away if your cans just set right up flat on the ground.
There's also the side fork pocket covers that go with this kit, but
in this instance, ourselves, we're handling it with our forklift and
then same goes [for] the customer on site is going to be utilizing those fork pockets.
So we did not insulate under the fork pockets on this specific can, we've only insulated the floor
everywhere else between the cross members.
We'll jump inside this thing and give you a tour.
So they have a mechanical lock set here.
These things are pretty cool. They don't require any batteries or nothing, and so
we just give them a temporary password that opens this up, it's also keyed.
And so, inside the unit we have a master switch, which kills the
12-volt in the whole system and that runs the lights and it will run the scale.
So, at the end of the day, the operator can just kill everything and not drain
the batteries overnight so they can operate throughout the day.
And then the light switch is actually over by the desk.
And then here we have our charge controller.
We just pulled this out, [so] we haven't stood the panel up yet, nor pointed it at the sun,
but it's already pulling anywhere from 78 to 100 watts, which is good.
I think they're 455 watt panel, so yeah hopefully once we get it tilted and drafted in the right
direction it'll generate more than that, but.
I think their other scale shack that they have operates on 100 watt solar panels,
so we've given them way more than they need, and they're just running this thing
on the the two golf cart batteries that they got at back end there.
The workbench here, the user, if they if they don't need lighting
they can turn it off and turn it on. They can do that by their workbench.
And you'll notice everything's really high in here and it's because semis will be driving by,
and they just want to roll down their window, they'll hand them their ticket
through this window, and continue off the scale.
Try to make everything as efficient as possible, but it comes at a bit of a sacrifice to the
person sitting here. They'll need a tall bar stool.
And here's the Martin, The MDV 12 V heater.
It's an 11,000 BTU Direct Vent Propane Heater.
This thing's pretty cool.
Again, [it] doesn't use any power. It's a mechanically operated barbecue style
igniter for the pilot light, and then just kicks on and off whenever it calls for heat.
And then also, we've used this white PVC reline wall panel, it's a really nice finish.
Very easy to clean, it's durable and reflects the light so well in here,
so that if they're using just a 12 volt LED strip, [it's] still bright enough,
especially when it's dark outside or just reflects the sun throughout the day.
Other than that, we have our 120-volt power, which we've run in here.
The customer's actually not even going to be using this at its first location, anyway,
but in case they move their scale shack operation, or their asphalt plant somewhere where there is
power to hook up, then they will have 120-volt, and so.
Travis has piped all this in with the galvanized pipe, and then
what's nice about that is this is fully editable.
They can move anything anywhere, they can pull new wire, they can change things up.
So if this was all buried in the wall, in the spray foam,
it's really difficult to change things and you end up just piping stuff in afterwards, so.
It's a bit more expensive to go this route, but it's so nice for the user in the long run.
Now let's just jump over to the
other side of this unit and check out the mechanical-slash-storage zone.
So here's the back end of the can.
Shipping containers, they're great for storage, and so a lot of times when we modify units as
offices, oftentimes a customer wants to keep a small portion or even half of it as storage,
and we call those office-storage combos as a kind of the trade name for those.
So, we'll jump in here. This is the storage side, but we've also housed
the electrical panel and the batteries.
Yeah, so, they've also insulated this and vented it,
which, I guess, is kind of a bit counter-intuitive, but.
Whenever you're storing batteries,
you typically need them vented and so these vents they satisfy that requirement there.
And yeah, so here's our 120-volt panel.
This the homeline unit, but it's all piped in,
so it's just provisionary. It's not actually being even hooked up.
So your lights back here are still the DC power.
You see here, Travis [did] pretty cool electrical work to get that to work,
so we've got an industrial fixture with 12-volt power in there.
He just got it all siliconed up and taped up right now.
The customer can take that off when it gets to site.
And then finally, I've went over this earlier, but here's all of the
electrical unit all finished up now that Travis has everything buttoned up.
The batteries are tied down properly, and uh yeah.
And on this can we installed our container door flashing kit.
This works very well at retaining all the spray foam
and gives us the best insulation value we possibly can on these container doors.
And then the customer also can actually remove one of these side panels,
slide in a sheet of plywood and secure that in there, and then if they have any
safety boards or anything they want to install on the wall inside [of] this can, they'd have
two plywood heated doors, which give them something to screw to.
And then here is the wall flashing kit.
So this— The door flash kit comes up to it nicely and would
allow for a door seal if that was required, but it's super tight where they come together.
And, again, retains all the foam, so it allows us to build the full
mode at least two inches and get our full vapor barrier.
Now let's close these doors up. I want to show you how well these skylight vents work.
So, when we first bought these and played around with them and and started developing them,
I thought they were kind of hokey and didn't quite know whether they'd be that great, but
once we installed them on a can, it just blew me away how much light they actually let in.
So I'm excited to show you this.
We are inside the back end of this container, in the storage end.
The container doors are shut. This would be pitch black in here.
Like, if you've ever been underground at a mine site before and turned off
all the lights and realized how black it is, that's how black containers can get.
And it is so bright in here, I'm actually even surprised.
I told you guys I'd be surprised, and I'm even more surprised than I thought I'd be.
It's just insane, like when you look up at these vents and the sun's shining on them, you can't
even tell that there's a vent there. It just more looks like an LED light fixture with a diffuser.
There's absolutely zero assisted light in here.
The LED strip is not on, and I think it's brighter in this end of the container
without white walls than it is over there with those three windows and the white wall panels.
So, I'm really happy how this solar powered office turned out.
I think a lot of what we learned here might transfer over nicely to, you know,
the tiny home following or someone looking to build them their own track out of a sea can.
So if you did get value from this, please do us a favor give the video
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And as always, check us out at tcg.ca.
