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Greenhouse atop shipping container

 
pollinator
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Location: Mason Cty, WA
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As it hots up in the region, I am brainstorming ways to keep a CONEX/shipping container from becoming a blast furnace. These wonderful boxes invented by the U.S. military can get up to 100 degrees F in the western Washington summer sun.

The corners have reinforced brackets for lifting and moving the boxes. How can something be anchored to those points for use as a building foundation?

Materials for a greenhouse could be scissor-lifted or placed with an excavator atop the conex. Other ideas to use all that extra space while keeping it cool include:

1) living roof: 6-12" of dirt and some drought resistant shallow-rooted grass. A pond liner should probably be placed over the metal first.
2) kiddie pools: these could be regularly filled with cold well water and drained; I believe six would cover a 40' conex. Plumbing watering systems off that for a continual temperature exchange would be amazing
3) cardboard storage: all that sheet mulching material can be a pain to keep around. throw it on a conex, and hold it down against winds with the chicken wire scraps that are also a pain to keep around! don't use deer fencing, it will scratch the conex. For extra points, put a sprinkler atop your cardboard insulation garden, and time it to run for 3 minutes every two hours. Bonus!: make bricks out of the cardboard boxes by filling them with weeds, overlap-fold the box shut and let it bake. Bonus!: add your junk mail to the mix. Maybe the heat is getting to my brain.

Obviously the greenhouse is the most useful and all-season application. Any other ideas?
 
pollinator
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Location: Bendigo , Australia
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Cover the roof with solar PV panels and fit a reverse cycle air conditioner inside the container.
Result- Bliss
 
pollinator
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What is a reverse cycle AC?     Can you give me a link to one?      I love my 3 mini splits I installed, but want to know what other options there are out there.
 
John C Daley
pollinator
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Reverse cycle air con explained

and more
Advantage of reverse cycle units

Basically Reverse cycle units heat in winter with a heat pump and cool in summer.
They are very efficient with the use of electricity.
 
Mart Hale
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Ok, that is what my mini split is and can do,  The Serville / Mr Cool can both heat and cool.  i searched for that ac and the picture looks just like my mini splits.

I adore my Midea "U" AC unit as it is 30%  more efficient than a standard AC, and it  is portable far easier to install than the other two mini splits I had before.     So nice to have it run on solar,   Max watts is 450 watts   for 10,000 BTU.





 
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