Container home companies – a polite and friendly review, considering..

I was going to title this post, “Container Home Companies – Zombies and Shonksters” but I figured that might have legal implications so I didn’t.

Firstly, I am still waiting on the engineering, but once that is done I will then have my Construction Certificate issued. The reason this last step has taken so long is that I had hoped the engineering would be done by the company that builds my house. Instead, after crazy delays and encounters with crazy people, I have given up on that and I figure engineering is engineering and whoever builds it will have to follow the engineer’s specs for steelwork, so I’m getting it done as a standalone. That way I can finish off the paperwork required by council.

I will now share my experience to date with container home companies.
In a few cases, it has not been pleasant, in fact it’s been a comedy of errors which I am sure will be funny one day. Until then I might drink.

Please note, for any lawyers out there, this is just my personal experience and my personal opinion and does not necessarily reflect the experience that other people will have. No children or animals were harmed in the making of this post but the experience is not fictional and does represent real characters. Some of the language is creative but you have to have a sense of humour about these things, or otherwise curl up into the foetal position and wait for numbness to arrive.

Some of the behaviour by these companies is just frustrating, like the silent treatment and not ever answering emails or phone calls. Some of the behaviour is more serious, like being intentionally misleading;  two cases of this behaviour were both followed by a wonderful karma-type twist of fate, with the companies going bust soon after. Other companies have been OK and just weren’t the right fit for my type of build, but might suit others.

I will start with the two bigguns, the ones that take your hopes, and your time and money, and dash them against the rocks with a gleeful and unapologetic lack of ethics.

Number 1 – Nova Deko Modular. They fibbed.

They are Number 1 in a you-wouldn’t-want-to-meet-them-in-a-dark-alley kind of way. This is the original company I had 6 months of phone meetings with, getting input from them on the structural stuff including their standard wall structure, what was possible and what wasn’t, and the standard inclusions they provided for internal fittings. My DA was then submitted based on their standard building specs.

I noticed during the design development stage that their prices were rapidly going up, and I was told they were phasing out of doing custom builds and mine would be one of the last. So I kept checking with them if they could still do my build, if the price would be the same etc, and I was reassured that it had all been recently checked with the factory and with the MD and they would stick to their commitment, at least with a very close price. I did a triple check on that before submitting my DA.

After my DA went in, the guy I had been dealing with, Matt Chernishov, left the company. Before he left, he said we needed to get my build into a final agreement, which I heartily agreed with. The agreement was not in place before Matt left, although until the very day he left he assured me it was close, and copying in the factory manager and the MD he said of the MD  “You’re in good hands, Jim is a good man and will honour the original pricing the best he can.” Days after Matt left, Jim and the factory manager said they had no intention of building my house. They don’t do custom builds. No apology, no concern.

Soon after, the company closed its offices in Australia – they still operate overseas and you’ll find their website easily enough. If you want a simple build that is not a custom one then perhaps they are worth a try, but the lack of accountability and transparency within the company would bother me. If something goes wrong you might need an Italian friend to help sort it out. I have one of those but he’s not local unfortunately.

Jokes aside (memo to lawyers, that Sicilian threat idea was a joke) – a little honesty a little earlier would have saved me a lot of stress and time. Marks to Nova Deko Modular for customer service, zero.

As an aside, for anyone looking for a Mafia style threat I found this surprising website offering an online service  www.onlyinitaly.com/mafialetters

Knowing someone like this might help in dealing with some of these companies. (Pic from here)

Number 2 – Rubix Modular. They asked me to fly to QLD, then fibbed.

I only found these guys recently, it looked like they’d had lots of positive media coverage and seemed reasonably solid, although none of these companies have been operating for very long given container house building is pretty new in Australia. I couldn’t find many negative reviews at the time, just one and that’s not bad these days. They used to sell Nova Deko Modular builds, but had troubles with them (which I related to) so they were doing their own home models nowadays.

It took a while to get an answer to my initial inquiry, but after one phone call finally got through they were keen and helpful. A few written quotes later and it was clear they hadn’t quite got their heads around my BAL FZ custom build, and suggested I go up to QLD and sit down with them to sort out the details (at my own cost of course). I booked flights for Tuesday last week, hired a car and day tripped up there and had a good meeting with a team of four of them including builders and Joshua Fisk the MD. It all seemed pretty positive. They had to go and check out a couple of details, said they would get the engineering sorted ASAP, and were keen to do the build. They showed me around the factory where some basic builds using insulated panels were under way, and it was good to see the size of two containers joined together.

They did act; within two days they had obtained a quote for my engineering and promised a full quote for the build by Friday. The next week (ie a few days ago), there were no answers to my phone calls and emails and I found a google review from this last week showing they are going into receivership and had to be out of the premises by last Friday. They would have known that was coming, but invited me up to QLD to lie to me in person anyway.

Seriously, how do these people sleep at night?
Or is that when they normally come out to feed?

I had a lucky escape, by the recent google reviews popping up now there are some people who have lost money or are stuck with dodgy containers that leak in the rain.

Number 3 – Price and Speed Containers. Please leave a message at the tone…

This one started out hopeful, just like all the rest when I stop and think about it. It turns out that all the movies are right and hope is a powerful thing. Mix it with some eternal optimism, some stubbornness, and a basically trusting nature and belief that most people don’t lie all the time, and the damn stuff can keep you going on, and on, and on.

This company is Sydney-based and they do container modifications. Mostly pop-ups like cafes and bars plus some temporary single-unit housing stuff, but they had a design on their website that was very similar to my house with the 3 x forty foot container layout and they had done it as a pop-up bar. So I thought it was worth asking what that model would cost and if they could modify it to build mine.

I thought they might just do the containers themselves, for me to then organise the internal fit-out but on inquiry staff member Joe Caruana said they can do internal walls and insulation, electricals, plumbing etc. His replies were fast, generally within 24 hours and quite helpful including discussions on cladding, transport and installation of the build, and getting the engineering done. Until I sent him my plans that is; then I received one more email saying thanks and they’d get back to me with a full quote, then all communications ceased. I left quite a few phone messages and emails over a few weeks, the last ones just asking for confirmation they were no longer interested in my build. No response.

Obviously they are no longer interested but apparently don’t have enough courtesy for a simple call, text or email to let me know. I guess if you’re not interested in the first place ignoring an email isn’t so bad, a few of us are probably guilty of that, but to be in mid-discussion and suddenly disappear is bit weird… maybe something happened and the night feeders above got Joe or something.

This lot could be worth a go if you want container modifications only. They could be perfectly nice people, who just need to work on their communication skills.

Number 4 – Container Build Group. Preparing for the Zombie Apocalypse

This is also a company that has done a lot of single-unit temporary housing and general container modifications, and is now getting into finished container houses. They have a bunch of multiple-module house designs on their website, some of which look pretty good. Overall their sales person was helpful and I’ve been in touch with them twice now, last year as a general inquiry and just recently to see if they could do my build now that Rubix Modular has proven to be a waste of time.

The main issue here is the cost. I sent my plans through, they said they remembered the design from last time and within an hour or so sent me a brief four line quote for a very large sum of money, not including the BAL FZ extras of cladding, decking, roof or even the internal stairs. It did include the 6mm toughened glass double glazing. At a per square meter cost the quote was around $2300/m, which is on the luxury-finish side of a traditional house build (if you believe that stairs between floors are beyond a luxury item and are actually a pure indulgence that doesn’t belong in the main costing).

They use insulated panels for the inside walls, which are based on colour bond steel so to hang a picture you’d need a rivet gun, and to attach something like a TV you’d need to know where you want to put it (forever) so they can insert a wall stud. They said the standard flooring included in their builds was laminate, not hardwood, and not gold plating.

Why anyone would pay that sort of money and be restricted by the dimensions of a container home I have no idea.

On further discussion, they said several things:

• That building with containers was not actually cheaper, that the advantage was structural soundness compared to other methods. They can stack 9 high and last for decades at sea, so they are much stronger that other build methods.
  I’m not preparing for a zombie apocalypse so would be happy with a building that complies with BCA, I believe they tend to stand up OK for quite some time. It seems a bit crazy to build with containers based on that rationale alone, unless you’re in an earthquake zone or something. In my opinion the main attraction of this build method is that the structure is already there, in theory making it cheaper to build.
• They make their money out of the internal fit-out. No kidding. I asked would they sit down and discuss different internal options to save on the budget? They said if I agreed to that price they would be happy to discuss it more. Huh?
• Would they be interested in just doing the container modifications not the internal fit-out? No not really, they want a good finish inside that is done to their own specs for the photos, to help them build up a good reputation. I’m not quite sure how steel panel internal walls and plastic floors fit with that, but each to their own.
• They did eventually say if I sent through all my other quotes they might try to come close, or I could make an offer and wait and see. They were very interested in who else was quoting and how much. Given they didn’t even give me an itemised quote to work from (so that I’m not quite sure what I get for that large amount of money),  I’m a bit reluctant to give them all that information on the competition as it doesn’t seem fair.
  They also said they do a lot of single-unit basic stuff, and at the other end of the scale they have some very big multiple-module jobs on with 11 containers or more, but nothing much in between and no factory space at the moment. They said it’s possible the builder over quoted me because he’s not really interested, and from my experience he wouldn’t be the first to do that.

Zombie Apocalypse. If you have a container house, it might well be the only thing still standing. But it will cost you. (Pic from here)

So if you want a single-module house, or have millions to spend on a massive build and don’t care about the per square meter cost but want something that would survive a zombie apocalypse on land or at sea, give them a go. Or maybe if factory space frees up later they might be interested, it could just be bad timing.

Number 5 – Cube Modular, the strong silent types

Based in Western Australia, I don’t have much info on these guys. To be fair to them it looks like they might only build their own designs and not do custom builds. I sent them an inquiry about a custom build, no response.

Others – oh please let there be others…

There are two more companies I am either in discussions with or about to contact again –  Container Domain Designs and Port Containers. I’ll keep you posted.

 

Feature image from here