Very good points all round.....So by the time the concrete has been reinforced enough to support the shipping container inside, which in turn has poop loads of bracing inside that, you've got yourself a reinforced concrete bunker anyway! If it's shuttered up correctly, reinforced, sealed and poured correctly, the whole structure will last a long time and will stand up to everything except a direct nuclear strike! You could do without the container and the expenses that it's incurred (the cost of the container + the haulage costs + the crane hire fees).Devonian wrote:Its not quite that simple, you would also need to reinforce the concrete else you risk the concrete placed on the roof shearing off from the concrete on the sides then squashing the container from above!!grenfell wrote:Yeah I was thinking the container would stay in place after the concrete went in, painted before hand to prevent corrosion. The alternative if building a concrete bunker would be to form the shutter in timber and remove afterwards which would be expensive (although comparible to using a container?) and time consuming . I was just thinking if in the very very unlikely event I was ever to build one it would be simple enough to brace with scaffolding and acrow props and cast around it. Once set the concrete would be self supporting and not impose any stress on the container.
On a similar note wasn't there someone in the first Doomsday Preppers programme that was forming an underground bunker with school buses linked and buried in an old quarry. Again they aren't designed for that but I can't remember how they got around the weight of soil problem.
In a low water table area you could excavate 4 trenches (to the size of your bunker perimeter)
300-600mm wide and up to 2m deep with a mini excavator. Larger machines will go deeper obviously. Once you've got this square / rectangular trench dug out, pop in the rebar and pour the sides. The earth trench walls form the shuttering. Once cured the central portion of the earth can be excavated to expose the walls. Once open and all dug out the floor slab can be poured and then the roof.....
This method uses slightly more RMC but you save time and expense by not having to strike up the formwork and then having to remove it all after. You can't apply waterproofing as effectively this way as the process is a little back to front but the waterproofing you are able to do will be good enough in low water table areas.
The school bus shelter complex is Bruce Beaches Ark 2:
http://www.radmeters4u.com/arktwo/photo ... otocon.htm
