Dream Eco Home For Under £50,000!

Few individuals possess the ability and expertise to transform a metal shipping container into a cosy home. Using his experience from setting up his own up cycling company, Reestore, Max McMurdo turned an empty shipping container into THIS floating home in just 3 and a half months! @EverythingElectricShow @fullychargedshow

For just £46,000 Max has created a dream home decked out with all sorts of efficient home energy, from infrared heating, solar panels, space saving techniques and battery storage.

ID Buzz Camper Unit https://www.outlandishcampers.com/
Infrared Heating: www.astectherm.com

00:00 Introduction
00:30 How did the Shipping Container idea come about?
01:09 How to be clever with minimal space
01:43 What clean technology has been installed?
02:12 Battery Storage
03:34 ID Buzz
04:34 Infrared Heating
05:53 What technology has been the most effective?
06:30 Living off-grid?
07:02 Creative space saving ideas!
07:34 The Bathroom
08:00 The Bedroom
08:19 What advice would you give to someone looking to do something similar?
08:47 Are you actually saving money?
09:33 Living on the water

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Wouldn’t it be nice to live by the water well how about a 40t shipping container floating on the water we’re here in Bedford Marina to meet Max and find out about his journey to going off- Grid in His stunning floating home welcome to the everything electric show if you like

The everything electric show you will love our everything electric exhibitions around the world next up everything electric Australia and everything Electric London get your tickets today I suppose from a very young Agee I thought I wanted to live differently off grid potentially in a small space and it

Felt like upcycling being my passion an old shipping container was the obvious choice the water bit was a bit weird actually that came about because I just wanted to have the best view and I I’ve always levitated towards water whether it’s the coast or the river so yeah it

Felt like the perfect combination of all of my passions really which is pretty lucky because Bedford is not near any Coast not really it’s almost the furthest point from any Coast I believe so yeah to get my fix instead of driving 3 hours to the coast I can just look out

My window and go for a little paddle board down the river now a shipping container isn’t exactly tiny but you do need to think quite carefully about how to optimize the space so that you can live in it comfortably and do all the other bits and Bobs that you need to do

Now currently I’m sat at the table but this is also part of the floor and this is absolutely incredible when you walk in you have no idea that this is here and then pulling this little tab here bring it up and then you can see in the

Floor and still gaze out of the water absolutely incredible and so creative and next to me is a table which the B amongst you might recognize as also a washing machine drum in terms of Technology what have we got what are the kind of big key items

So I think I want the space to look like there isn’t much technology but that’s potentially when technolog is a good thing isn’t it when you don’t see it in your face so I’ve not got lots of digital looking stuff but I’ve got infrared heating in the ceiling that’s

Power by a bank of batteries and that’s all powered by solar panels on the roof so they’re the main kind of things I want it to be as off- grid as possible cuz a I’m quite tight and don’t like spending loads of money on bills but B

It’s better for the planet and it’s more sustainable so talk to me about your battery how much storage have you got oh that’s a very good question I should know the answer to that so to be honest they’re recycled batteries my friend owns a is it a UPS company so

Uninterrupted power supplies so he gives me all of his old batteries because they take them out of some of those uses within 24 months so I’ve just got a Bank of old secondhand reused batteries so you’ve got you’ve got second life batteries and you actually presumably they’re so fine that you’re not even

Having to think about how much capacity you’ve actually gotten them either exactly because the house boats it’s quite small it’s perfect for one or two people though I never feel like this space is too small to exist comfortably but it means it’s more energy efficient

As well so it takes less energy to heat it to light it yeah it just makes sense to me so we’ve opened up the doors at the back of the shipping container to to reveal this this is what is powering this shipping container and immediately you can see just how simple these

Systems are there is not really that much to see along the bottom we’ve got the batteries those are second life batteries which is absolutely incredible there’s some spare ones just in case this is the system that is coming from the solar panels on the roof so you’ve

Got your inverter here which is able to see if it needs to draw energy from the batteries or from the connection on the marina this is the control system for the infrared heating so super tiny and super simple and then just a fuse box you’ve also got an electric vehicle

So presumably you can use that as some additional storage as well well initially I wanted to use the B directional charging on my van so I could actually use the solar to charge the van and then during those non- peak times use the van to run the house boat

But that’s not quite possible yet as you probably are aware but then I have heard it will have a software update and then suddenly it will be possible and that’s another reason I haven’t invested in massive power packs for the batteries because ultimately I should be using the

Van that’s just over there oh the ultimate the ultimate dream so this is Max’s ID buzz and it is currently being charged from the house booat and just imagine how even more amazing that’s going to be when the B directional update is made as well but

Whilst we’re here I have got to show you this because Max has been rather busy one of his other companies is called outlandish and they make these incredibly beautiful modular and lightweight kits that you can convert your van into a camper van and I’m guessing one of the most

Newest additions is the infared heating that we can see above our heads tell us about that what’s that like so initially the heating I didn’t know anything about boat life so I was told by the marina everyone runs off diesel or oil and I thought that doesn’t sound very clean

And sustainable but let’s go with it so I had an old arer that was secondhand and it was just costing a fortune plus you had to get you had to pump the oil from the shore across the water using like drip trays and stuff and I thought

If that spills we’re going to pollute the water so um I then went to Electric radiators and I had 4 Kow of electric radiators which were quite costly to run and then I heard about infrared so I’ve now got 1.4 Kow of infrared heating in the ceiling but they’re not quite panels

They’re more like a material and it’s made up of this carbon nanot tubes that are in this sort of mesh like structure this from a really interesting company called Aztec THM and they’re producing radiant heat which is a little bit different from convective heat that you would get from a radiator because it’s

Not heating the air between the source of the Heat and you the sort of object absorbing the Heat and it has the wonderful effect of kind of feeling like the sunshine on your face and because it’s all over the ceiling you don’t get sort of spots which are warm and spots

Which are a bit colder it’s this wonderful consistent temperature throughout the building and so in terms of the things that have been most effective it sounds like the infrared heating is definitely up there would you say that that’s been the best Improvement that you’ve made so far I think the infrared heating first

And foremost reduced the energy consumption to hot water so a few of my friends here at the marina they’ve got massive hot water tanks bubbling away all day long and I’ve just got a tiny little 10 L water tank on an instant hot water system so yeah the hot water the

Heating and then little things like induction Hobs then the solar the batteries yeah it’s quite addictive also I find sustainability you start looking at your smart meter thinking oh I’m generating this much power maybe if I could just reduce my usage a little bit

More so right now are you off grid or is that the aspiration so at the moment I’ve got a subsidy from the grid so I’ve got a multi a multi plusus controller it’s very spe it’s very technical I don’t know how it works but that’s connected to the solar and to the grid

So the grid automatically Cuts in when I don’t have enough solar like this time of year when it’s slightly darker but then in the summer I’m producing excess so the idea is that excess then goes to my van and then like we said the dream

Is to be able to draw that power back from the big battery in the van This whole Space is just oozing with creativity and really clever ways to reimagine existing objects into new purposes these lights are jelly molds this knife sand is a bunch of books and this tap and I think this is my absolute favorite thing in this whole building is

A piece of scaffolding that when you turn it this way is for the kitchen turn it the other way is for the bathroom that is so neat and another super amazing way to think about how to make the space really efficient now when you think that this is a shipping

Container you might think that that means that some of the rooms are very small and very Pokey you might think that the bathroom would be super cramped but we’re in here there’s a lovely big shower lovely space and this is the really really clever thing in each of

The rooms there is a little hidden space so we saw with the dining table underneath the shower is in fact a bath and next door that’s the real piece Resistance and in here is a walk-in wardrobe and an exceptional hiding place and I really think that this kind of epitomizes just the degree of creativity that exists in this entire Home presumably I I think I know the answer to this question that if you could do this again you probably would um but what advice would you give to anyone else who’s considering doing a project like this oh that’s a good question so if I was to do this again I

Think I’d probably make the insulation even better I think it’s easy to want to spend your money on the fancy stuff the shiny bits but actually it’s fabric first get the insulation as good as you can spend some additional money there and then the energy you put into the

Building needs to be less so you’ve obviously created a life that feels completely idyllic with your your Ducks visiting you in the morning but are you actually saving money and was this really expensive to build in the first place so the initial outlay was 45,000

Pound I did a lot of the work myself but it’s perfectly feasible to do that with a narrow bow or some sort of floating container and I’ve spent an additional over the last couple of years with the additional kind of sustainable items I spent maybe ,000 on the heating a couple

Of, on the solar but they will pay for themselves in the next 3 years so the return on investment is phenomenal there are additional costs though there are there’s a monthly moing fee as well and that ranges between 250 and 500 depending on the size of your property

But yeah it’s well worth it as you can see from the views alone it’s been absolutely wonderful to come here and see Max’s approach to reimagining space energy and materials now if you enjoyed this episode please do make sure to check out these ones on screen and as ever if you have been

Thanks for watching