Shipping Container Homes That Will Make You Rethink Living in a Box

For most of their lives, steel shipping containers are used to move goods around the world. But when the containers are no longer needed, what do you do with them? The answer is simple: use them to create affordable, comfortable and unique homes.

Edmonton-based Honomobo has found a beautiful and efficient way to build homes using shipping containers.

Home build time takes 10-12 weeks in a climate controlled facility. Installation on the buyer’s site takes less than a week.

Honomobo simplifies the building process and eliminates the guess work in refurbishing an old container.

Modern building techniques, highly efficient heating/cooling systems and high-grade insulation are used to create efficient and environmentally friendly homes.

Container homes can be used as a primary residence, laneway home, cabin or a guest house. The applications are endless.

A Honomobo home is fixed to a foundation and can be moved to a different location.

Honomobo homes come fully solar ready, giving owners the option to go net positive.

Honomobo facilitates the shipping, onsite crane work and installs to 100 per cent completion. The only work the customer needs to do is to contact a local contractor to fulfill the foundation and civil works.

Chasing contractors around to finish jobs are now in the past. Building a new home can now be a fun, simple and predictable.

These homes range from 200 sq.ft. to over 1400 sq.ft. You can build a single level home, stack them, or put them on top of a garage.

Honomobo homes are CSA approved, which assures that the home has been engineered and built to meet the local building code of where it will be placed.

Shipping containers were designed with modularity in mind. They are required to withstand all kinds of abuse as they journey through some of the world’s harshest climates.

Constructed of corten steel, shipping containers are extremely resistant to corrosion. Fun fact: When they fall off of a ship they can take up to a week to sink.

With more shipping containers being imported than exported, Honomobo reuses containers that are desperately looking for a new home.

Modular construction isn’t a new idea, but when most people think modular they think temporary and temporary often means junk. But with shipping containers, modular just means flexibility without jeopardizing quality.

Pre-manufactured modular construction is a more versatile way to build.

Honomobo has set out to leverage the modularity and durability of the shipping container while not apologizing for what they are. They don’t hide the boxes, they embrace the essence of the shipping container.

All of the services connect directly underneath the structure, essentially like any other home.

You can connect these homes to existing city services, a septic field or well water. If you want to go off-grid, that’s easy, too.

Rooftop patios and solar panels can easily be installed on shipping container homes.