Green Living
For Glen Donaldson, home sweet home is in a shipping container.
His Old Fourth Ward residence is made out stacked containers previously used to transport goods on ships from country to country, says Donaldson, owner of g a d design + construction.
His reuse of a product not typically destined for the housing market shows how Donaldson – who appears to be the only Atlantan with this type of housing – has embraced green living. He hasn’t stopped there, bringing other eco-friendly choices into his unusual home.
The concept
A few years ago, Donaldson read a magazine article about uses for old shipping containers. He did online research and didn’t see many examples of this happening in the U.S., but he heard about a quirky installation of buildings in London known as Container City. He toured a couple of shipping container homes to see how they were constructed.
“I thought, this is a great idea,” he said.
In the home Donaldson had built previously, he wanted to use steel construction with floor-to-ceiling windows, but it wasn’t cost effective. So he used a little bit of steel in that home.
“Most of it was a traditional frame construction, although it was a modern design,” he said. “Shortly after that, I found out, here’s a way I can built something out of steel, which has a greater permanence than building something out of wood.”
He sold his previous home and purchased six containers. Assisted by structural engineer Runkle Consulting, based in Lawrenceville, they built a three-bedroom, three-bath home on a vacant lot in Old Fourth Ward in 2007.
The three-story home, on top of a four-car garage, has about 1,900 square feet. It had too much space for Donaldson, so he turned it into a duplex, renting out the other side (he uses the two-bedroom, two-bath portion).
The cost
The total cost of the containers was $200,000-$250,000, says Donaldson. He recently built a second home made of shipping containers next to his existing residence. That one, which has a balcony and features including granite countertops in the kitchen, is on the market for $399,000.
The challenges
Donaldson embraced the difficulty of building on a narrow lot, which was 27 feet wide by 80 feet deep.
“A lot of people get so turned off (by the lot obstacles),” he says. “I like the idea of doing urban infill. You’re using very little land to build your house on it.”
He had to get approval from organizations such as the Old Fourth Ward Neighborhood Association and Neighborhood Planning Unit (NPU-M) to change the variances and setbacks. His 16-foot wide by 40-foot long home is essentially the width of two containers side by side and length of one container.
He points out that choosing Old Fourth Ward over neighborhoods with historic districts such as Grant Park, was beneficial for his untraditional design.
“If you want to build something modern, you don’t want to be in a neighborhood with a historic designation,” he said.
The learning curve
In building his second shipping container home, Donaldson learned from living in the first house. He put a darker tint on the windows and added more spray foam insulation to keep the house cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter.
The roof material is a white rubber membrane, which Donaldson said appears to be able to better reflect sunlight and cool the inside, resulting in more savings on costly air conditioning.
The eco-experience
His home’s uniqueness continues inside, where the original teak plywood floors were sanded and finished.
“It’s got all these kind of cool screw heads holding it down,” he said.
Not having to put in new floors helped with the budget, but also was an eco-friendly choice by using existing material.
Features such as double pane Low-E glass and a high-efficient heat pump system helps keep his utilities to about $200 a month, for the entire building. He also has incorporated a couple of rain barrels, which collect enough water for landscaping.
He chose to reserve the traditional floor plan, with the bedrooms on the bottom and the living area on the top floor. Skyline views of Midtown and downtown are seen through the floor-to-ceiling windows.
“You can take advantage of the daylight,” he says. “I never have to have a light on in the house.”
