Thinking outside the box

A lot of container homes are tiny, which means homeowners need to get creative.

It’s now in a new location with a new owner, but this container home was originally built by Ilse and Matt Heeringa to sit on her parents’ cherry orchard near Hastings. The fully insulated, two-bedroom, 60m² home was created from two containers sitting side by side, slightly offset.

The Heeringa’s also pitched the roof, so it was a good angle for solar power generation (completely covering it with 18 panels, producing 6kW), and heated it using a mini low-emissions wood burner.

There are two types of 40ft container; the standard (height 2.6m), and the ‘high cube’ (2.86m) like these ones. The extra height was handy; a flight of stairs off the living space leads to a double bed sitting on pallets.

They also tried to recycle as much as possible, including features such as wooden doors from an old local hotel, and a reupholstered $80 Trade Me lounge suite.