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It took steely determination and pushing through multiple challenges that included the pandemic, but Geoffrey Young and his partner Wendy Cordova and their young daughter are home at last in their steel shipping container house in downtown Hamilton.

Planning for the home at 5 Arkledun Ave. began in 2012 when Young sought to create “something better” for a smart urban design. Young, 44, a writer-broadcaster, who has worked internationally on development projects, including in New Orleans and Haiti, wanted to use shipping containers for their adaptable, resilient and robust qualities.

“It’s absolutely built to standard and exceeds the Ontario Building Code. It’s not a hippie house, it’s a top-level large house and one of the warmest houses in the city,” says Young.

“It actually turned out great. We were so lucky to get in during the pandemic. We went from a small two-bedroom apartment to this place with room to roam. It was a life-saver.”

The house, designed by Jason Halter of Wonder Inc. and fabricated by Storstac Inc., in Etobicoke, sits on a 40-foot lot and cost between $700,000-$750,000 to build. The 2,460-square-foot, six-bedroom house is made of eight shipping containers configured four-on-four as two staggered rectangles. The structure sits on a 1,280-square-foot concrete walkout basement. Its exposed exterior of the corrugated steel containers is painted with high-performance, brick-red polyurethane paint on zinc, and the structural flat roof is a green roof where plants can grow.

Hamilton has a rich arts scene and Young plans to use the walkout basement as a gallery to display and sell work by artist friends. Until that happens, he is happy to interact with people passing by each day who check out his steel home in Steeltown.

“The house attracts a lot of attention and if I’m out on our balcony, people stop and talk,” he says. “Most are positive, some are insightful. I’m always happy to answer questions.”

The project faced lengthy delays caused by old sewer and water connections on the lot he had purchased from the city. Young initally had trouble finding reliable contractors to finish the home — one he hired passed away. Then the pandemic hit.

“It reduced everything to just me and, for my sanity, I had to keep moving forward and finished most of the house myself,” he says. He relied on YouTube videos and the advice of experienced friends to learn how to frame, drywall and install flooring. Professional trades handled the wiring, plumbing, and heating and ventilation.

The home is heated by a high-efficiency gas boiler that supplies in-floor basement heating and main-floor radiators. To avoid cutting holes through the steel boxes to install ducts, the containers were designed with a gap between to handle the ductwork. The design proved to be a bonus during COVID-19 since with two corten steel walls between them, home occupants can isolate if they need to, have no shared air with others and can access fresh air through sliding doors.

Young used a spray foam product from Arizona to insulate the home. The building code dictates there must be 4-1/2 inches of insulation in the shallowest spots of exterior walls. Because the corrugated walls have alternating ridges and grooves, the insulation is six inches in some spots, thus provides an insulation value beyond the requirement of R-40. The ceilings are also insulated beyond what’s required.

The home is bright, warm and inviting. It has been “terrifically efficient” not only in terms of utilities but in layout and maintenance, Young says.

It was difficult to obtain a mortgage because the house was not the norm in the banks’ view. “It took a lot of work to get a mortgage. The banks didn’t talk to anyone about the house or didn’t come see it, even though it’s more structurally sound and better insulated than a typical house and exceeds the building code.”

However, Young says the building process isn’t unique and is not an alternative approach: “It’s much more the same than different from typical homes and certainly not revolutionary.” The interior is mainly standard framing and drywall and it feels like a regular house.

Young hopes his infill experiment will encourage municipalities and builders to consider creative, sustainable solutions to urban development. He says shipping container homes could potentially help ease the province’s housing crisis and provide a community-based solution. Container homes can be easily adapted for many uses with far less effort and cost than reconfiguring traditionally constructed buildings.

One advantage is they can be built fast and efficiently. “If you’re going slab on grade (no basement), it can go up in a matter of hours.” Young says such housing could be a solution in a small town, for example, that needs to build a minimum of five low-income housing units to get funding. “A small town may not need six units. It may only need four.”

Young and Cordova originally envisioned taking in a refugee family as boarders, but Covid restrictions thwarted that. A friend from Winnipeg moved in and as did another couple, who have since moved out of the area.

Young is interested in building more shipping container homes, though in a different municipality. He’d like to partner with a builder that has contractors and a municipality interested in being collaborative.

Currently, he says shipping container housing isn’t feasible, given the shortage of containers due to pandemic-caused global lockdowns and containers stranded in countries that were unable to transport goods to other locations. But once shipping gets back to normal, he estimates a single-storey home could be built on a rural lot for about 30 per cent cheaper than conventional construction. Shipping container homes do require specialized welding, are subject to the same development fees and utility hook-ups that typical new houses are, and must meet building code standards.

Despite the challenges, Young has no regrets about building his container home.

“It’s a terrific downtown core setup. It has a big, open basement and a couple of extra rooms, and it would be easy to expand it. When my daughter grows up, we could add an addition on top for her.”

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