Military mobile cranes

[OPCOM]

To the Naysayers: It ain't right to object to the lady's adventure or her right to work as she sees fit. Not that she needs me to say it.

 

[Wrench Wench]

Meh. The decision's pretty much been made for me at this point. I figured those HSHMC-25s in such rough shape would go for a few thousand, maybe $5k, $6k. That would give me enough breathing room to make the necessary repairs and upgrades to be able to both use it to build my house and add it to my eventual collection. Nuh-uh. Try $31k, $23k. Homey don't play that game. Those prices are a way large fraction of my intended over-all cost. I'll get a crew to stack my legoes.

As for the admonition not to stand one up on end, I can well understand the need to work with the corrugations and not against them, but rest assured that whatever I do will have my final numbers; weight, weight distribution, stress, reinforcement, etc.; gone over by a licensed architect before comitting to build, but I really think the stairwell designs I've got are going to work out fine.

Certainly, if the floor space of a container up on end were for use as regular flat living space, perhaps even used for storage of weighty furniture, the corrugations would try to fold up like a cheap suit, but with the only load being an unoccupied space with no furniture, I think there will be ample opportunity for reinforcement where necessary to make those up-ended container staircases work, even knowing how big the furniture is that'll have to be lugged up said stairs in the end.

Someone also mentioned that there's no need to continuous-seam weld them all together, but I have a penchant for over-engineering things. If it needs to hold 4 T, I crank the numbers for 8 T. If it needs to hold together at 150 Mph, I make it safe for 300 Mph. I know these things are designed to stack staticly to absurd heights, but that's when all of the corner blocks match up, and I'm going to criss-cross alternating layers, so pretty much everywhere a wall in one floor crosses over a wall in another floor, I expect there to be a bit of a gap there, so I want to be able to apply any jacks necessary to remove any possible sag from removed wall areas, and then weld the shoring blocks in between. I also want to know that there will be no wind whistling up from the basement from between adjacent TEU floor segments, so they're getting seam welded. With torched out walls to open up larger rooms being used to fill in floor in the four places per level where no TEU floor lands, those walls will have to be seam welded in place anyway, for strength.

You might have noticed there's a core to the house that will have full support at each corner from the basement footer to the roof. I want that to complement a continuous exterior skin to make this house as impervious to the elements as it can possibly be made. Besides the tongue-in-groove styrofoam insulation and spray-on ceramic thermal barrier, I don't plan to use any kind of house-wrap. With the seams all welded tight and then sealed with ceramic/plastic, I just fail to see the point. I want this house still standing in a millennia when the next ice age sees the new glaciers scour it from the earth.

And I like the naysayers. They keep me honest.

 

[JDToumanian]

Aw, that's too bad... I was rootin' for you to get a crane!

 

[GoHot229]

Hey Wrench Wench, its hard to answer all your questions in this format. There are a lot more questions you will need answered that you have not asked yet!! I was wondering if you are a one person operation or many people. The 40' containers have the lifting points for crane lift at the extreme corners. 30' slings are a minimum length required to maintain a safe angle of the slings. Stacking 3 high is definately do-able but will require tag line and personnel to square each box on top of each other and keep the box from swinging into the crane boom. Someone has to climb to the top of each box to unhook the slings and shackles. All container yards where you see stacking, have a container handler(read: huge a$$ forklift!). GL actually had two of these on sale recently, I think in Fla. If this venture of yours comes closer to reality, you can PM me for any help that I may be able to provide. Cranes are my business, literally!!

Verrrry good points indeed.