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?