Building a new home  

Have you considered looking into a shipping container home?

Matt T,

Presuming for the moment that GigaCrete Caribbean may read this board, did the company contact you and address your issue?

Yes, they did. Sounds like at the time of my contacting Gigacrete they were very busy which is understandable.

Very interesting! I just looked this up to see if shipping container homes will stand up to hurricanes.

Check out the second section " Question: Are Shipping Container Homes Hurricane Proof?"

shipping container homes

Have you considered looking into a shipping container home?

The shipping containers are strong. As long as they are sufficiently anchored to earth and all opening's are hurricane rated then the container should survive.

What Scubadoo said. I've seen plenty of homes that have their roofs, and the structure is fine, but their doors and windows got sucked out. The containers tend to get pretty hot inside as well.

Does insulation help keep the containers cool?

Matt,

Sounds like they do read this forum. 🙂

Does anyone know how USVI building codes look at shipping container homes? Have been developing plans for years for a little off grid tiny container house. Don't want to build anything that is an eye sore or dangerous.. plan to anchor to slab and cistern. But I'm not really sure where to find building regulations on what is allowed here. Anyone have any suggestions?

Contact DPNR.

There was a company at the Ag Fair on Stx that had set up a demo 40ft container house. Contact: www.expeditionbuilding.com 1-866-552-1771 They said they were working with the gov on the permitting process.

Rolando Asencios of Asencios Construction was building a container house last year. As for hurricane proofness I have a 20 footer anchored to a concrete slab on our property. No damage at all from both hurricanes. They do get hot, there is a special paint with glass beads you can put on the outside that will help. We looked into building one but decided to go with the Deltec prefab house instead. They're prettier and of the 20 or so in the USVI only one had damage last year mainly due to not being anchored down properly.

Two choices here.

1. Pay the exorbitant prices for windstorm insurance (around 3% of replacement value per year). And then wait months or years to get a claim paid after a storm.
Or
2. Overbuild your home and make it capable of handling a cat 4/5, and wave the windstorm insurance all together.

I went with option #2 and rode out both storms inside my home on the east end of St. Croix. The morning after Maria, I walked around it and was blessed to find that not even a gutter had been torn off. Two houses over, the poor guy lost half his roof. Build with cement, full bond-beam to tie in the roof, and avoid overhangs. Only buy windows and doors that are hurricane rated, and permanently affix storm shutters around everything. Spend the extra money during construction, build it right, and you'll thank yourself later.

Yea but with all due respect east end STX saw a FRACTION of what West STX, North STT and entire STJ. I see very few homes in STJ that were completely without damage. I do believe they got the worst of last years storms.

I don't know anyone on STJ that didn't have some damage. The least I've heard of is water and missing gutters. The term we used while doing assessments was "salad" inside the home. Water, dirt, even leaves found there way inside the house through the smallest of places. The pressure was incredible. My ears are still messed up from all of it and pop at the slightest change of pressure.

AandA2VI,
With all due respect, my home is on the top of a hill on STX, and we got a little more than a FRACTION of what the west end got, or St. Thomas or St. John.
And,
Weren’t you living in Florida when both Irma and Maria hit the VI?

Weren’t you living in Florida when both Irma and Maria hit the VI?

That was Alana.

Yep. That was me in FL.
AandA2 were living on STX on West End during both hurricanes and moved back to STT a few months later.

Love to help if any questions.