ISBU’s- Rebuilding housing after Katrina, recycling an abundant resource
Sunday, April 1st, 2007I saw this series on Bob Vila’s TV show about using steel shipping containers (which are made into ISBU’s Intermodal Steel Builing Units) to build hurricane safe homes. In Tampa, a company has decided to make lemonade out of lemons. The whole series showing how this is done is available as streaming video on www.BobVila.com
As a result of our loss of manufacturing and middle class jobs to China, there is not only a negative balance of trade between our two countries, but also a large and growing surplus of shipping containers that are taking up increasing amounts of valuable space at our ports. This accumulation is due to the costs not being worth shipping the containers back to China empty…. so they are being sold for scrap or storage containers for $4,500. They are currently estimated to number over 700,000.
This would appear to be an entrepreneur’s potential bonanza if uses for them can be found and the folks at Tampa Armature Works have done so with a methodology for creating storm ready affordable housing. I see this being a boon to the Katrina devastated economy and built environment.
http://www.bobvila.com/HowTo_Library/Building_a_Container_House–A2413.html