Premade tower from used shipping containers

[rollingthunder]

I've recently been thinking of building a tower out of used shipping containers.  I'd bolt them end to end and anchor them to the ground on the 4 corners to 2 foot concrete caisons that would be at least 8 feet into the ground.  This should give me a rigid box tube structure, which would eliminate the need for guy wires.

Used shipping containers are piling up on docks around North America and I was wondering if they were a suitable source of premade towers.

A recent search on ebay and elsewhere on the net has 40 foot containers selling for around $2000.00.  These containers are water tight and designed for a salt water environment.  

An 80 foot tower could be built with 2 - 40 foot containers.  I'd use a short pipe mast to get the blades up above the end of the container.  With an access door cut in the lower unit, it could double as a battery/electronics room.

Any thoughts or comments would be appreciated.

Rollingthunder

[A6D9]

I"m no pro, but I would be worried they would be too much like a sail and blow over?

I duno,  i think if you could fill the bottom one with a few feet of cement mgith be better.

maybe I"m wrong...like i said I"m no pro  just my 2 cents

[Capt Slog]

I'd have thought they would be too wide, and so present too big a target for the wind.

But, if you're going to go ahead, how about putting some stairs up the inside and an access hatch in the 'roof'?  

[dinges]

Why not simply use a pipe of the correct length? Welded or mounted together with flanges, if necessary?

You could do as the Dans have done with one particular tower (pipe of 1 ft or so diameter?) and make it a tilt-up tower; or you could use a bit larger pipe (2 ft or so diameter) and install the ladder inside.

Seems like much less windload to me, less material and cheaper. Safer. And less of an eyesore in the landscape as well.

For the 4000$ it takes to buy two containers, I think one should be able to purchase the steel pipe and be left with change.

If you should go with two stacked containers, I doubt whether 'normal' guy wire (steel wire of 3mm or so) would be enough to take the windload of an 80 ft high stack of containers...

You could calculate yourself easily the load the wind would put on that 'tower':

Fd = Cd * A * 1/2 * rho * v^2

where Fd = drag force of the wind (in Newton)

Cd= drag coefficient of the containers; I'd assume Cd=1

A= frontal area of the tower (projected area; the area that is exposed to the windforce)

rho = density of the air (1.2 kg/m^3)

v = windspeed, in meter per second

That force (Fd) exerts a moment on the 'tower' at 40 ft (midway).

It should be easy enough to fill in some figures here to get an idea of the real-life forces. I think you will need some strong guy cables and similar anchoring.

[rollingthunder]

Thankyou Peter, for tower wind loading formula.  I've been looking for formulas to calculate the loads experienced by wind turbine towers.  Most discussion I've seen so far have been "this worked for them, so it should work for us" in nature.

If my calculations are correct based on your formula, in a 100 km/hr (28 m/s) wind, there will be an overturning force of 361 kNm (1x63m^2x1.2x28^2) on a 80ft (12m) tower.  The self weight of the containers provides a counter force of 48 kNm. (1/2 base * mass * gravity, average weight of containers 2000 kg).

To counter this force the footings on the windward side of the "tower" need to be increased to roughly 5 m^3.  (base * mass concrete * gravity, concrete weighing 2600kg/m^3).

I therefore need to increase my caissons to 1 m dia and 3.2m deep.

The whole purpose of the mental exercise was to find a use for used containers and build a tower without guy wires.  If you build in an open field, you still want to be able to farm around your turbine without worrying about guywires.

Setup on the top of a hill in an open field a 40' tower from one container would be sufficient based on my research.  This would reduce the footing depths to 1.6m deep as the overturning loads would be halved.

[cr8zy1van]

If you really must use a shipping container try something a little more conservative: Several design houses around the US has come up with innovative ways to re-use shipping containers as homes/buildings.


link 1

link 2

YouTube Video

[chadking]

I've been looking at something similar myself. I don't know if 2 high is wise or practical, but one turned on end is doable.  I've found several people that have done it in conjunction with other architecture.  If mounted into the earth well, it provides a very strong base to host your wind turbine, or anything else you might need a tower for.

I have actually been looking at it for a structure near my house, where you could make use of the enclosed part of the tower.  It could host large tank of water up high, that your water lines could run through. This would provide for water pressure even if power failure, or if your main water source is disconnected.  You could also run ducting up the tower and make a sort of stack, that could use Venturi effect (or if painted a dark color, solar power) to help ventilate a house or shop.

It could also act as a strong platform for large inefficient VAWTs.  One of the main drawbacks of VAWTs is getting a big, non-furling thing up in the air and keeping it there. Maybe this could help in certain situations.  A container will also have a nice 8'x8' platform on top that you could visit just to get a good view, or could hold a small array of solar panels.  

There are various structural items to take into consideration depending on your application and location. But for certain purposes, it seems like an interesting option.

A little to the side of the topic, here is a page with a lot of different shipping container architecture.  

http://www.fabprefab.com/fabfiles/containerbayhome.htm

Note the following entry, it appears to be a shopping mall consisting entirely of stacked shipping containers:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/fredag/sets/

[luckeydog]

What a great Idea.

this is one of the things I love about this discussion board. so many Ideas.

A tower that doubles as a storage area. And relatively cheep.

.

[rollingthunder]

I've looked at the containers as housing idea and the cost of retro-fitting a container for year round housing makes them an expensive option for housing.  A conventionally framed house can be made hurricane resistant by adding hurricane straps and screwing the roof sheeting to the roof trusses adding less than 2% to the price of the house.

I think one container in a suitable location would be the wise course of action.  This would give you a 7.5' by 7.5' storage area for your battery bank if you were going off grid.  The height of your turbine would be 50' off the ground by the time you added enough pipe for the blades to clear.  

With the internal stairs as suggested maintenaince access would be relatively easy.  Personally, I'd still use a harness and tie off for safety.

If you plan on using a container as water tower, make sure the water can not come into contact with the interior wood of the container.  Containers are generally lined with marine grade plywood and often treated with chemicals to prevent pests etc.

I'd like to keep the container off the ground on conrete piers.  Wet soil and steel don't get along well.

If your are looking for an 8'x40' work shop, 2k is reasonable for something you can just drop on 4 conrete piers.  Your local farmer probably has a post hole augur that could get your footings below the frost line in less than an hour.  If you get the dimensions for the tie down holes, you can pour your footings before receiving the container.  Have it delivered and dropped on the footings.  The doors on containers are lockable, so your tool collection would be safer than in a garden shed.

Check with your local building department as some won't allow containers and others treat them as trailers.  The ones that treat them as trailers class them as non permanent structures and therefore non taxable.

[chadking]

Very good points.  

Here are a couple pictures of vertical mounted containers worked into other structures...food for thought:

http://www.containercity.com/assets/galleries/22/picture_008.jpg

http://www.containercity.com/assets/galleries/22/img_0374.jpg

[ghurd]

History / Discovery channel did a show about those.

Very nice inside.  Never know the difference.

G-

[tecker]

Yes good idea but It still seems like It will be top heavy .

[nothing to lose]

" rollingthunder"

Surely not, but are you the same Bozo I used to know that played a guitar and sang country western like Marty Robins and Johnny Cash etc... and told the stories about the songs?

Or some other Bozo.

Sorry, just a joke there, Your not a Bozo, but I did know a Rolling Thunder once about 8yrs ago.

Back on topic, some of those containers are nice and could be usefull for many things if you get them cheap enough delivered. I wanted some but shipping to me cost too much even though the containers where fairly cheap.

Bury one in ground and you got a mighty nice big storm shelter for the toranados!

 Maybe on blocks a nice workshop, 2 side by side and a roof over them for a doublewide and you got a nice auto shop? 1 could make a nice paint booth sealed off to itself.

As for stacking them end to end? Skyscrapers are mighty tall and don't blow over too easy, so it's a matter of doing things right. Might need to use several stacks braced for supporting each other, but then you got 3 towers or maybe 4 towers? If you put a wind genny on each corner of a container and had 4 stacks you would have 16 gennies all  about 8 feet apart, and I dought that would blow over as easy as one stack.

 Would you maybe like to sell power to the grid?

Hmm, also if you did something like that you could put rooms every 8-10' high for workshops or whatever. No reason to waste the inside space, make it pay for the containers also