This underlayment was laid straight over the original wooden flooring. We spoke with Larry from Sea Container Cabin who converted his used shipping containers back in 2010. To protect himself from the chemicals sprayed on the wooden floor he used a non-breathable flooring underlayment (see below).

If your flooring has been treated with toxic chemicals, what can you do? For more information about that, read this article here. To do this, use your shipping container’s unique identification number to track who manufactured the container. What, if anything, can be done about that?įirst, you can contact the original manufacturer of the container and inquire whether the floors have been treated with hazardous chemicals. They will very likely have been treated with these harmful chemicals. If you purchase your containers second-hand, then there is a good chance that Brian’s concerns hold true for your containers. Now we need to address second-hand shipping containers. It also depletes the environmental kudos you would gain through constructing with used shipping containers. However, using new shipping containers to build your home does increase the cost. You can just specify to the manufacturer that they don’t treat the floors and don’t coat the shipping containers with hazardous paint. If you are purchasing and building your home with new shipping containers, and you’re ‘ordering them direct’ from Asia, then you don’t need to worry about these concerns. But, like most things, there is more to this than first meets the eye.

Some shipping containers are coated in paint which contains harmful chemicals such as phosphorous and chromateīrian rightly raises these concerns.

Wooden floors used in the majority of shipping containers are treated with hazardous chemicals such as pesticides.

The most common safety question people ask is whether shipping containers have toxic chemicals? Many of these concerns come from a well-written article by Brian Pagnotta at Arch Daily on the advantages and disadvantages of living in a shipping container home. Do Shipping Containers Contain Harmful Chemicals?

So today we’re going to look at exactly how safe shipping container homes are and whether you should be thinking about living in one. We also get emails from people who want to build a shipping container cabin to use in the wilderness and want to know if it’s safe from people breaking into it. We get emails from mothers asking if a shipping container home is safe for her family to live in. But they always want to know if living in a shipping container home is safe.

Lots of people come to our site and see shipping container homes and fall in love with how incredible they look and also how affordable they are.

Construction of shipping containers