container homes

Some people are putting them in their gardens and renting them on airb&b. Combining them would be a really interesting project. Go and try one out. The ones I've seen are only single ones though. Very cosy.

Not sure about problems with condensation, think they would have to be really well insulated.

Any container used for housing or an office must comply with planning permission, according to the site. Also, with current building regulations regarding the rules for habitable spaces.

Thus containers can be quite costly to use for housing and office accommodation.

Someone round the corner from us has a container on their front lawn - I had assumed it was for storage (albeit a weird idea in an otherwise quiet suburban road) but maybe someone is living in it!

I get very annoyed that every build in this country has to be bricks and mortar. It's a huge waste of recourses, time and money. There are so many wonderful new building products out there now.

You are quite right petra, other countries have long traditions of alternative building materials, usually wood.

As an owner of a H/H that is constructed from a 'non traditional' building material, wood, it is very difficult and costly to get insurance. Also, some mortgage companies won't lend on 'non traditional' properties.

I'm not sure when bricks became traditional!

This takes me back to the early 70s when I worked for a carpet company, the shipping manager having yet another entertaining foul-mouthed meltdown when yet more of our containers mysteriously vanished at destination. It was always Nigeria, and we were told the containers were used for housing - I think we had to stop shipping there in the end. When we got any documents back from Nigeria the pack invariably contained a marriage proposal from a billionaire. These were always passed to me as the lone female in the team. My life could have been so very different....

I don't have any experience with making a home from a shipping container. But I do have experience of building a 'flat pack' home and suggest looking at Potton, who are here in the UK, cheaper than the Scandi / German kind, and can be insulated to just as high a level.
Best place to start is to go to one of the shows NOT Grand designs, but Home Building and Renovating, or Build It magazine.