So i want to bury a shipping container

[Baloo]

Just for clarification are you talking about actually burying the container below ground level or having it sit on a concrete pad at ground level and then piling soil around and over it ?

well that should be simple to answer really but its not lol, i have such a lot of elevation changes on my land that its hard to work out what to call ground level, but the process of moving the "bunker" to final site dictates that l need to move around 10 tons in one section, this l propose to do by attaching a lorry axle under the bunker in the centre and then towing/pushing the bunker to its final resting place so i do not want any steep gradients along the way which would mean i would have to dig down 2.2m or there abouts and then cast the base, so the answer is it will be mostly underground as its around 2.7m tall then a meter of earth above that

[Baloo]

Using the container as a shutter for the concrete seems about the most or perhaps only logical way to go about this. I've worked on a couple of jobs where new basement areas were constructed . Starts with a hole in the ground and a base pouring first. Reinforcing is used and turned upwards at the edges. This allows the "walls" to bond to the floor slab. . I think concrete beams were used for the ground floor level. The container would of course require bracing on the inside maybe with scaffold and trench props or timber to hold the sides of the container in place while the concrete sets and I would say casting insitu would be the best way to go. Trying to move a forty foot container with a foot of concrete around it wouldn't be easy. It would have to be left to cure for some time as green concrete is quite fragile for a while. Depending on how you intend to get into the container you may have to construct a shutter in front of the box itself to accomodate stairs or whatever.
I think you mentioned earlier about people noticing concrete deliveries and you may also have a large amount of spoil to get rid of. Most of it won't be much use as it won't be topsoil. I always say very little is impossible even burying a shipping container and turning it into a bunker but and there's always a but it's an awful lot of work , time and money to achieve what I would say is very little.

i see it the opposite way i think it saves a lot of time using a container as a mould for concrete its cheap as i already have it, its robust enough to extend the walls out by a ft or so and anchor shuttering to it and it achieves a lot if i have somewhere to disappear to when the occasion arises, how would you go about it with out using a shipping container as the core in a cheaper manor that dosent expose its location to all and sundry im all ears and happy to change my method

I think we're saying the same thing , the container IS the shutter. As to a method that doesn't expose the build , at least as much , you could dispense with a lot of the concrete thus reducing deliveries. Rather than poured concrete for the walls you could build it with blocks laid flat. It would be built with little machinery other than a cement mixer and a welder to weld a few ties to the container. The roof could also be done as an arch using blocks or beams if the delivery isn't too obvious...

yes we probably are the container just provides the internal walls and somewhere to anchor the form work/ reinforcing structure to so its not really burring a container anyone who thinks you can just burry a container clearly isent the sharpest knife in the draw and shoudent be allowed out with out a responsible adult to accompany them around.. i havent given up entirely on concrete i would enjoy making all the forms in the ground, it allows so much more scope in the shape and layout of the rooms and sizes, the 40x8' shape of a shipping container is quite restrictive when you factor in a corridor along its length but i see the secret part of a secret bunker high on the priority list and thats what drives me in the direction of using a container if i was shuttering up and pouring the concrete the "site" would be exposed for 2 or 3 months allowing plenty of opportunity for it to become "known" where as the "container can go in and be covered up over night then it can grass over and stay hidden (hopefully) and no one knowing about it is the best form of defense if there were looters/gangs then they would just walk on by ,
but as i say its not set in stone yet i might opt to biuld my own container out of 60x60mm box that way i can have it a more useful size with more internal walls that support the roof, say 20ft x 16ft

i was fiddling with the idea of using "crash barriers" some more, the concrete base needs an abutment in at the base for the barriers to sit on to resist downward pressure and inward pressure, the "roof" barriers need to sit on top of the side barriers so the container sees no load, you could put the container in the cave afterwards as it were, once in place i was thinking of placing 100mm polystyrene around the barriers and then a pond liner over that to make sure i dont get any water ingress, the polystyrene is only there to protect the pond liner from being punctured by the steel sheets

[Baloo]

This sounds a great "Build it once" project. So probably worth spending max effort at the planning stage. I can't help thinking that someone adept at working out stresses and best structure design, will be essential. Either that or keep reviewing the plans and mistakes made by others. Funny how few online designs feature the kind of reinforcements envisaged here.
https://graywolfsurvival.com/2625/why-y ... tf-bunker/

im too old to want to biuld it twice so yes best get it right, before i retired i was a steel fabricator i use to make amongst other things frames for signage at the entrance to retail parks like this one



part of the process was having it passed by a structural engineer who would do the clacs on it, so once ive decided what im doing i will pay him the £300 or what ever it is to look over my ideas after all its going to be me inside it

and as to why its not common practice to use crash barriers is that they havent been freely available until the government/highways decided they want to replace them with concrete all over our motorway network, M42 is being done now i was looking at them strewn all over the hard shoulder yesterday wondering if i should pop back in the middle of the night ,, now they are everywhere a quick look on ebay reveals thousands of them, we have just done a river bank project using them 30 times cheaper than conventional shuttering and i like recycling lol

[Baloo]

Where you label 'drainage' I label 'moat' *

Ignore me. I'm only jealous because the poster has his own coppice and JCB.

*I know: It's only a horseshoe around it.

i see a moat as well lol

and i do have a jcb for my sins lol
well 5 to be accurate ive bought a few non runners and rebuilt them saves them being turned into bake bean tins and l enjoy tinkering with them
heres 3 having a conflab

another outside the workshop


and one of the lakes i have dug with them , strange hobby i know but i was fascinated by them as a kid i wanted to be a digger driver when i left school but failed to make the grade lol

[jansman]

If you do this,then I presume you will install a secondary escape hatch?

[Baloo]

Hi. Yes of course. Same type as atlas survival shelters, sand hour glass type

[grenfell]

Just thinking ( to myself as much as anyone else) . The comment about shipping containers not being designed to be buried made me think of what is designed to be buried. One thing that springs to mind is septic tanks. It's possible to get some fairly large ones that should be big enough to stay in for a limited time , obviously not if the plan is for months living underground although I suppose it wouldn't be impossible to join several together. But from a discretion point of view a septic tank arriving and subsequent excavation work in a rural location probably wouldn't get a second look and if access is via a manhole that too would probably be overlooked by the "roaming hoards" . Just a thought.
Actually another thought if you have a number of containers . Bury one upto it's roof height or very slightly deeper doing all the relevant supporting work to the walls and then put another container on top so it just looks like a single container sat in the yead. Access the lower one through the floor of the uppermost. Use the upper one to store "junk" to disguise the entrance..

[Baloo]

Just thinking ( to myself as much as anyone else) . The comment about shipping containers not being designed to be buried made me think of what is designed to be buried. One thing that springs to mind is septic tanks. It's possible to get some fairly large ones that should be big enough to stay in for a limited time , obviously not if the plan is for months living underground although I suppose it wouldn't be impossible to join several together. But from a discretion point of view a septic tank arriving and subsequent excavation work in a rural location probably wouldn't get a second look and if access is via a manhole that too would probably be overlooked by the "roaming hoards" . Just a thought.
Actually another thought if you have a number of containers . Bury one upto it's roof height or very slightly deeper doing all the relevant supporting work to the walls and then put another container on top so it just looks like a single container sat in the yead. Access the lower one through the floor of the uppermost. Use the upper one to store "junk" to disguise the entrance..

septic tanks tend to be not very big, ideal if its for one person for a short amount of time but there are tanks out there that would be suitable , usually water of fuel storage tanks



but alas one hasent come my way for a reasonable cost in the last few years

however your idea of stacking one container on top of the other with the bottom one below ground is interesting, certainly deserves some more thought , have a gold star sir...

[jennyjj01]

Just thinking ( to myself as much as anyone else) . The comment about shipping containers not being designed to be buried made me think of what is designed to be buried. One thing that springs to mind is septic tanks.

I also saw sectional culverts, but that may not be a UK thing. Plus they look expensive.
How about a scrap petrol tànker type thing. Cylindrical, large and with access holes on top?
Are some by of those sceptic tanks plastic or fibreglass?

[jansman]

I believe it’s been asked previously; Howmuch water will you store? How will you deal with sewage? How will you have GUARANTEED airflow?