Underground Bunker

[csop]

Hey,

This is purely hypothetical

Say I was wanting to bury some insultated reinforced shipping containers to create an underground bunker, has anyone had experience or knows anyone who has done this in the UK?

I'm wondering how much heat it would create if this was done with / without planning permission - I can imagine the council nazi's would have a field day with this so I shant mention locations for obvious reasons...

Cheers,
CSOP

[Devonian]

Do a quick search, this has been discussed many many times....

[Hamradioop]

Don't do it, they are not designed to be buried.

[sfcfinchrs]

I second the advice not to use shipping containers.

They are great things to use for many things.

They however, are not in any way designed to be used to bury and hold up to the pressures of burial.

I will however qualify this with a caveat.

If you dig a hole. Lay a concrete slab. Drop the container onto the slab. Build forms with rebar to pour concrete for walls around it and then pour a concrete roof on it with rebar. Then you can overfill with earth.

So in short. Use block and concrete to do the job.

The BIG issue you will have is that in most places you need planning permission to dig down enough to do this.

[grenfell]

The BIG issue you will have is that in most places you need planning permission to dig down enough to do this.

I think that was what the OP was concerned with rather than the nuts and bolts of the physical build. Same problems with whatever one is thinking of using to construct an underground bunker.
One thought , people talk about burying containers which as you say needs planning permission , but as far as I know and understand simply placing one on land doesn't . Now if you lived in a fairly hilly part of the country couldn't ( again hypothetically) you put the container close to the slope and once reinforced mound soil over said container? Much easier and less problems with drainage etc .

[Yorkshire Andy]

seen a 20ft container used as a tunnel to some fishing ponds and with only 500mm of earth on top it was sagging badly due to the weight

[csop]

Hey,

Thanks for all the advice

I was planning on putting I section steel in and/or on the container to make it strong enough to withstand up with a couple of meters of soil on the top and the pressures from the sides...

Sorry, I should have explained a little more clearly, its the permission issue that will present the largest problem for us, I think...

But as sfcfinchrs said its only a problem if you were to dig down, I'll have a look into just mounding the sides of the containers as planning permission is prohibitively expensive (plus then you have to start jumping through all the hoops they present you)

[bob the builder]

I'm sure there is some rule that says bomb shelters don't need planning permission if they are as deep as they are far away from a building and under a certain size. But you still need to pass building regs.

[Hamradioop]

there is an exemption from Building Regs and Planning Permission provided:

Internal Floor area no more than 30 sq metres

depth is no greater than the distance to the nearest building. para 2


http://www.planningportal.gov.uk/permis ... ns/classvi

para 2 refers.

[Briggs 2.0]

I may have mentioned this before but I love shipping containers. My tuppence of comment is don't bury it, hide it.