The next priority is to create an appropriate place for (dry) media blasting and other shop activities that produce a lot of dust...and fallout. Our dry media blaster is located in the compressor room however the cabinet doesn't seal well enough so even a short session leaves the room covered in glass bead fallout. It requires a lot of cleanup which is time consuming and its no bueno for the longevity of our spendy compressor. The compressor room also houses the ceramic media tumbler and some minor storage so there's not a lot of elbow room for working around the blaster. We already have a 20' storage container and don't want to devote that much space for media blasting so instead we wanted to source a 10' container - that would be the ideal size. Turns out they are not very common (here anyway) and the price point is only slightly less than a 20 footer. Rather than buck-up we instead bought a 20' container -
cut in half! We found a company that, among other things, buys 20' & 40' containers then re-engineers them into mobile offices and a variety of different uses for the movie industry, which is very active in our city. We wanted to find a cheapie container and that's what we got. Its well traveled with plenty of dents and scars but it's perfect for our project. We negotiated a good price and managed to find a new steel door amidst the mess of the sellers shop and we got a good deal on that too.
Here's our half container...with a half a truck sitting on top of it...
Our cut container and our NOS(?) door
The seller's shop...chaos
We arranged for the seller to deliver the cut container to our shop the next day which worked out well as he has a 5 ton flat deck with a boom crane
A short time after the crane set down the container one of the 3 truck
batteries exploded!. It threw plastic shards from the battery case well into the air and dumped acid everywhere. Had the battery "let go" just a couple of minutes earlier the operator would have been injured as the boom controls are located directly above the offending battery!
Once the container was relocated to the back lot...shuffled through the shop via forklift, a new tongue & groove floor was installed and the open end of the container was framed, sheathed, wrapped, the base of the door frame was blue-skinned, then the wall was insulated, vapor barrier was installed and plywood added to the inside of the door-wall. The NOS (lol) door was then installed and plumbed true.
As we plan to clad the front of the container with the same galvalume corrugated steel we've used extensively on the building we installed J-trim around the door and edges along with drip flashing above the door and at the bottom of the front elevation.
Still a long way to go; cladding, electrical, air line, flooring and, when the weather improves, painting to follow.