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I have a 40' container in my back yard that we loaded my mother in law's household goods in after she needed to go to a nursing home. It seems to work very well for that: it doesn't seem to leak at all, and the D-con I put in it when we loaded it up does not seem to have ever been touched. When it was delivered, I set it on about 10 railroad ties on a section that had been pretty level lawn. It is secure enough for this location, out in the country, but anyone with a bolt cutter could cut the padlock fairly easily. There are a few downsides. I don't know what has been shipped/stored in the container before, but it has a strong, lingering odor that gives me a headache if I am in the container very long. I have worried that the odor was from application of pesticides or other possibly dangerous chemicals. This Summer, my wife and her siblings are going to come and look through the container and hopefully haul some of the "stuff" away. I plan to open the container and set up a couple of box fans before they start working in there, since I sure don't want them getting sick. It also gets extremely hot in there in the afternoon sometimes. The containers come in different qualities. The one I bought is supposed to have been the highest quality my local seller ever gets, almost good enough so the company that previously owned it would keep using it. It was also pretty expensive (I think about $2700 delivered 6 to 8 years ago). My brother bought one for less than $1000, but it is not nearly as tight, and looks like it might have been dropped and crushed a bit. If I had been paying attention, I could have bought another 40' container for about $1500 from a neighbor, but I didn't know he was going to get rid of it. The containers are not beautiful! Mine still has the reddish brown paint that it had when it was used for shipping. I have seen some that people have tried to paint, and the new paint has not held very well. They look even worse with peeling paint. I suppose it is necessary to prep the surface and prime it just like any other metal. I have thought about getting another container and setting it up parallel to the one I have and about 24' apart. Then I would build a roof over the space between the containers using standard 24' roof trusses on walls built on the edges of the containers. It wouldn't be hard at all to extend the roof to the other edges of the containers. I don't think there would be any chance of wind lifting the roof system if it was fastened down well and if there was "stuff" in the containers. But I sure wonder what the building codes people would think about my "temporary" structure. With the container I have, I don't think that I am being taxed more for having it, but probably I would be if two were roofed over. If I was going to use my container for something other than a hardly ever opened storage unit, I would figure out some way to power ventilate it. I haven't noticed any condensation problems, but I live in a fairly dry area. In an area with lots of humidity, I suspect that condensation inside might be a real problem. Would I buy my container again? Sure. It has already more than paid for itself storing my MIL's junk, rather than paying for storage space each month. It was pretty quick and easy to get set up in my yard. If I had it to do over, I would have used concrete railroad ties, rather than the wood ties. Concrete ties are available in my area pretty cheap, and they would never rot out like the wood ties might. The container is also a whole lot cheaper storage than I could have built using either pole or stick construction, and I didn't have to deal with building codes to set it there. If you go shopping for a container, look it over carefully for bad damage to the metal and for rotted wood floors. And spend a bit of time inside, to see if there are objectionable odors that concern you. You also might check to make sure that somehow zoning will not allow you to keep it on your property. Good luck!
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