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Bob talks to Derek Mercer and Delwin Carter of Tampa Armature Works about how to treat the steel exterior of the building to make it look more like a conventional house. The steel panel is a 16-gauge sheet metal which has been cut and grinded to fit the house. A recess has been cut into the sheets in place so the new sheet fits flush against the structure. Holes have been cut into the sheet at regular intervals which will serve as weld plugs through which the sheet can be secured to horizontal steel strips on the other side. A MIG welder secures the sheet through the weld holes, reducing the amount of vibration during high winds and preventing buckling. Then stitch welding is done on the inside. Then a grinder is applied so the wells will not be visible when the surface is finished. A plasma cutter is used to cut a window opening into the steel. In effect, a steel partition has been installed, creating a new outside wall and porch, while the original shipping container still provides structural integrity to the home.

David Cross from TAW shows Bob how the exterior is finished with heavy-gauge steel to bring any voids out to plane. It is then faced in a sheet-metal wrap to give it a smooth, uniform surface on the exterior. Bob remarks that this is much like an oven, set to bake in the Florida sun. Cross shows Bob how effective the SuperTherm insulative ceramic coating is at stopping heat transfer as he places a blow torch on one side, then touches the other side, which is cool and protected by the SuperTherm barrier. This coating has four different ceramics to help deflect energy from the sun and send it back to the source. Cross explains that just one coat of SuperTherm, sprayed on at 16 mils thick and dried to 10 mils, has the insulation equivalent of R 20, which is enough to keep this house cool and energy efficient in a hot climate.

Bob is in St. Petersburg, Florida, to tour a finished affordable home after completing projects in other parts of the country. The St. Petersburg container-built homes are part of a pilot project involving the use of idle steel shipping containers converted for use as housing units. The goal of the program is to create structurally sound homes that can withstand hurricane conditions. St. Petersburg contains an amazing variety of home styles that developed as people settled from all over the country during the early 20th century. The streets are lined with modest to medium-sized bungalows, Mediterranean-style homes, prarie-style cottages, two-story Dutch Colonials, and some Federal revivals to go with the true Florida bungalows. Along North Shore Park and Coffee Pot Bayou there are grander versions of the same styles. Most of these developments were built out during the 50s and 60s and the character of the housing has been well preserved. Bartlett Park, just south of downtown, was built as a working class retirement neighborhood in the 1920s. It has had a period of decline and problems with crime and poverty until a few years ago when the city and St. Petersburg Neighborhood Housing Services took action. With the Home Depot Foundation and the Federal Alliance for Safe Homes, the houses were adopted as pilot homes to see if it is feasible to use this technology to build affordable and storm-ready housing. Bartlett Park was once a depressed neighborhood, but is now experiencing a dramatic revival. Affordable housing and support for first-time home buyers is creating the "pride of place" needed to keep a neighborhood healthy and sustainable. This house was trucked onto the site in four sections, or "intermodal steel building units." These ISBU's are modified to meet the needs of the plan. The ISBU's were craned onto the foundation and welded to steel plates installed in the concrete. The conventional truss roof system was bolted to the containers. Each truss is attached with special hardware to resist hurricane-force uplift. The space between the ISBU's has been filled in with conventional construction. Steel sheathing was put in place, windows were cut, and the edges of the steel were ground down. The exterior walls were primed before stucco with a super-insulating coating called SuperTherm. SuperTherm prevents the walls from conducting heat, keeping the building comfortable and energy-efficient. On the last visit here, Bob talked with the architect for the project to get a feel for the space.

Bob talks about the vast number of steel shipping containers abandoned in America's ports. Because America is no longer an exporting nation, only an importing nation, it is too expensive to return the 700,000 containers clogging American ports. Tampa Armature Works (TAW) converts these containers to intermodal steel building units (ISBU's) for use by the military and as durable, affordable installations throughout the world. David Cross of TAW explains how they have developed a skeletal frame system that brings the container down to its most elemental structural elements from which anything can be built. Cross shows Bob "the world's largest toolbox," which is an ISBU converted into a series of bins, cargo holds, and roll doors that can organize, store, and protect all kinds of tools, gear, and equipment in a military setting. Once modified, these containers are perfect as storm-ready housing units, or "container homes", with corrugated sides, a bottom steel channel and flat-bar toprail functioning together like a steel I-beam. Inside, 1 1/8-inch marine-grade Apitone flooring is a huge and standard benefit in every ISBU. TAW can cut the openings for doors and windows, finish the exterior with heavy gauge steel, wrap it in a sheet-metal skin, spray it with SuperTherm insulative ceramic coating, and deliver it for $40 to $45 per square foot. The foundation and roof are then supplied on site by the contractor. With 17 million of these containers in circulation world-wide, this is a salvage, recycling, and green business initiative that can create heavy-gauge steel, hurricane-resistant housing fast and for about the same dollars as a light-gauge steel home. Cross and TAW are just looking for consumers willing to jump on board with the technology and opportunities ISBU's present.