How much house can you fit in a 40’ shipping container?

Smaller than you think. I’m thinking 300 sq ft.

Probably if I thought about this more I could do the math. I read there is approximately 6300 board feet in a 1,000 sq. ft. house. I don’t know if that is just outer walls and roof?

We need LuckyGuy or who is the other math person? TropicalWillie? We have more than a few.

My gum ball guess is 800 sq. ft. house.

My understanding that the average size of a shipping container is 40’ long & 8’ wide which equals 320 Sq Ft…just a tad smaller than many master bedrooms.

No, no, no.

Think bigger :
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dZ2cPAdreQU

Up to 800 sf. All wiring, plumbing, doors, windows, & hardare pre installed.

@LadyMarissa The materials to build the house. Not fitting the house in the container. Imagine all the walls are flat on top of each other and the roof.

About 2 to 3 bedrooms depending on the size of the furniture and if your have stuffed closets. I want to say when my husband was in the military the moving trucks were about 40 feet and they usually hauled 2 apartments worth of items in them. Like one bedroom and a 3 bedrooms. worth of items.Your regular trucks are no more than 26 feet and thats for a large move. For my two bedroom last move which included 2 bedrooms and garage stuff, it was a regular truck and it was only one move. But we always had professionals move us and they know how to pack a truck to optimize space. up and down.

About 10 years ago there was a well funded research project that requested “near instant” housing that could be shipped in a standard 20’ x 8’ or 40’ x 8’ shipping container. The
The loaded container would be placed on a flat surface. One side would be locked to the ground and a massive front-end loader would pull on the other side.
The sections would pull out like a combination shell within a shell and an origami box. Interior shelves and furniture flopped down from the innermost surfaces just as the pieces locked into place. Amazing!
The outer surfaces had requirements for insulation values, mechanical loading, and even bullet resistance. I believe the winning design produced an enclosed area around 3 times the initial footprint.

TenFold Engineering took it to a different level and made it commercial.

I wonder about a geodesic dome with all of the triangular panels packed flat into the shipping container. I could be wrong, but I believe that would give you the greatest final volume when assembled.

@LuckyGuy How many sq.ft. was the house when built?

It wasn’t a house. It was a fully equipped command center. The larger container would be about 1000 sq feet.
Equipment was shipped inside the container.

17,554.5 gallons of water

@LuckyGuy and @JLeslie – OR you could look at my post & watch the video in the link…

•Because it’s a TenFold house
• 800 sf
• 40 Standard container
•$150,000 USD

But hey, questions are answers too ;p

@JLoon So my gumball guess was pretty good!

67.7 cubic metres

@JLeslie – Definitely.

But at least theoretically @gorillapaws idea of a containerized geodesic dome kit could blow the square footage wide open.