" If you've ever visited a major port like Charleston Miami or new York New Jersey you know that shipping containers are the standard method of moving goods around the world. Because the US is no longer a manufacturing nation, we don't have many goods to export. But we're real good at buying foreign goods so we end up with a lot of empty containers and it doesn't make economic sense to ship them back empty. There are 700,000 of these containers just abandoned in US ports. Here at Tampa Armature Works a team of engineers and shipping experts have been converting what are basically really sturdy steel boxes into what they call intermodal steel building units or ISBUs to be used for military contracts and used in operations around the world. Given the urgent need for affordable and storm resistant housing that can be built in a hurry in places hard hit by hurricanes and earthquakes it makes a lot of sense to find a way to adapt ISBUs be used for residential use."

" Well TAW has been working on a skeletal frame system a system that allows us to take an intermodal cargo container down to its most - its barest element components. And it's done through a series of intermediate posts. And from that we can build just about anything. Here we have what we call the world's largest toolbox. And yes it has some fold up awnings. Some fold down awnings. us. Some roll up. Doors. And an inside. This particular unit has a cargo handling system that allows the military to go to door two container 123456. 123456 and number bin number or three and find whatever it is they're looking for for their particular project. For shipping cargo container is designed and built. built built to cargoes around move cargoes world interchange interchanging cargoes out from one port to another. And I An an ISBU ISBU, ISBU is steel building unit unit, that cargo container has been changed and modified to become a housing system. So to suit the customer's application this particular particular know. unit needs be unit needed to to shortened up feet feet. What's on What's going here is the use of a you some plasma torch gives us a very clean cut other than little grinding we're ready to weld once we take -- this end off. in In conversion In the container into -- an ISBU, view an intermodal steel building unit. unit, what have here is a nine foot six inch tall I beam which is created. By this created by you see down here. This corrugated web. Of metal web of all the way up to this flat bar top -- that is rail effect a large I mean. We lose beam. integrity when we cut out this window aperture that you note up here and so bringing back. This channel back this that lost structural integrity."

" These units comes with a Marine grade apatone -- flooring. Its an inch and an eighth thick, to make you sick it's of many laminations nations and it's just it's a feature that's with the ISBU containers that we couldn't build into them. It's already there."

" So the floor is wood but basically the container is one big steel box and isn't gonna be murder living in a steel box in the Florida sun. One would think sir but this particular unit this house system will be coated with supertherm ceramic insulative -- paint. This coating is gaining great popularity in Europe in the and the Far East. And it's starting to gain ground here in the US. Well, all right, so we'll see more of that later in terms of applying it to to the actual. Yes sir. All right let's talk about the economics of it is you know you have to, if is it's an alternative to building with concrete blocks or with wood and yet you still have to have a crane involved in it and you got to pay something for these -- what are these."

" cost. Well a raw container used only a few times one roughly 4200 to 5600 dollars depending on the volume. With the value add that we do to the system the overall of particular unit you see here as a roughed in dried in framing package will be. be anywhere forty to 45 dollars a square -- foot. Wow. So can spend 45 dollars a square foot on putting in the house together does that include the skin of the house on the roof roof. it It the exterior, skin of the house, sitting prove it includes the ceramic insulative coatings. a -- The balance of the home for its fit and finish. The foundation and the the trusses will need he supplied by the general contract contractor. -- see, So how many of these are floating around the world. -- if there's seventeen million -- TEU, were twenty foot equivalent unit containers around the world in use today today. and And the US. U.S. our imbalances because we we consume far more than we export we're building up at one time we haven't in the neighborhood of 700000. 700,000 TEU in the USA, and on the the books. 700,000 containers -- idle and the books just empty sitting in the ports of America. And you're saying the main reason is because we we we don't manufacture anything anymore except rubbish and yes so we don't have anything to export in them. And but who paid for. Well American consumer the American consumer. I am confident has the cost of the idle equipment built into the cost of the goods report so it's so.. It's a salvage business that we're looking at. In many ways yes sir or recycling or green business are or a business business. Now place them all down and what will be the next step in terms of building this house -- envelope. to place them down then to permanently weld them to the plates that are embedded in the foundation. And then where we're standing there will be soon. Joist panel in fill going along here in -- yes sir. And and then of course the the sub flooring on top of that and so sure now while that's once that's taken place. The the staining of the exterior some other fellows can come in and start to drywall. Some roof trusses can go up -- and conventional construction sometimes one job is waiting on in the right it's a very fast system that's one of the big advantage is not a but also. Caesars -- sturdy items when when you think about hurricanes yes sir they're going to perform very well right yes sir and they're built for about the hostile. Maritime. Dynamic environment aboard a ship and yet here there permanently affixed to a stationary foundation and I think as important. Steel construction is gaining ground in residential construction. But that's light gauge steel construction and here's a heavy gauge steel construction solution that is approximately the same cost -- we'll look at those early adopters to consider their choices terrific."