Underground man cave

AHarvey

AHarvey

AHarvey

Soldato
Joined
6 Mar 2008
Posts
10,084
Location
Stoke area
Hi all,

A friend has just found out his office needs to be turned into a nursery, his garage is actually used for his car/bike so he needs something to use as a man cave.

The garden is an ok size, 8-9m wide, and probably about 15m long but his wife wants to keep it 'clean' for the kids to play in, but said he can have a little shed. A little shed wouldn't really cut it for him so he's decided to go underground and use the shed as a stair case to get down there.

Anyone done anything like this?

He's thinking a 25ft shipping container however, from the research he has done by the time he's:

dug the hole and put a decent concrete foundation down
bought the container
added a lot of reinforcement to the walls and roof both inside and out
cut and welded a staircase in
found some sort of waterproof covering for it on the outside

it may just be cheaper/faster to have dug the hole, laid foundations and built a brick walled unit. He's been looking at polystyrene bricks that you add steel rods and concrete in as it should be waterproof and strong enough for what he needs.

Any advice I can pass on to him?
 
I knew I read someone asking about this sort of thing before ...

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18484623

I don't think shipping containers would be good idea given that they have a finite life and are probably not optimised for taking compression from all directions which means you might do better just building something from scratch with the amount of modifications you would probably need.
 
AHarvey said:
polystyrene bricks that you add steel rods and concrete
Click to expand...

That's generally how this is done, it's an expensive job though and without light tubes it might be a little claustrophobic.
Shipping containers are an obvious no.

Could he not convert the attic instead?
 
Surely adding what is effectively a bomb shelter to you garden is going to be expensive as hell and a planning permissions nightmare? Does he have any idea what could potentially be under his garden at present?
 
lmfy2k said:
http://www.viralnova.com/fallout-shelters/

:)
Click to expand...
fallout19.jpg


And thats exactly the type of person that buys them:D
 
I would suspect a brick / Breezeblock / Concrete option would be better than a shipping container. You would not have to worry about rust weakness especially if you're piling mud and people ontop. There is of course the inherent risk of root penetration. I don't know if you would need to use a special membrane for that.
 
Top tip, don't bury shipping containers. They aren't designed to take the side and top loads.

 
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