Small Scale Engineering

Posted on 26th February 20201st June 2021 by Ashley — 8 Comments

Planting Trees; Finally Some Shade!

For the past (almost) two years, we have been living on a property with no trees whatsoever. We’re all tree people, so have been missing having some leafy friends around. It was probably a good thing. We didn’t have to worry about damaging any trees while container trucks were delivering and positioning the shipping containers for the house. But now that the house is up, it was time we got around to planting trees. We are finally getting some shade into our yard!

Posted on 19th February 202018th February 2020 by Ashley — 7 Comments

Collecting Finishing Materials

It seems rather strange to me that the week after I have posted an article about minimalism, I’m posting an article about collecting finishing materials in order to complete the south container on our container home. However, the materials we bought are necessary and it’s quite exciting for us to have all the boxes arrive, ready for installation.

Posted on 12th February 202011th February 2020 by Ashley — 8 Comments

How Much Stuff Do We Need?

Having a large percentage of our possessions in storage has been very conducive to reflection on “stuff”. How much stuff do we need? With our living space much reduced while we build our container home, we had to be quite strict with ourselves in what we kept out to use, and what went into storage. It has been a good life lesson on learning to do with less.

Posted on 5th February 20203rd February 2020 by Ashley — 4 Comments

DIY Aquaponics; To Do or Not To Do

One of Small Scale Engineering’s recent jobs for a client, was to remove a DIY aquaponics system out of the yard of a family that emigrated. Three bakkie loads later, we find ourselves with a pile of random bits of plumbing pipe, water pumps, old baths and river stone. We had a decision to make. Are we going to use these items to set up our own DIY Aquaponics system, or are we going to just get rid of it all?

Posted on 29th January 202028th January 2020 by Ashley — 2 Comments

How to Find Space in a Container Home

One of the biggest problems with shipping containers is the width. At only 2.4m wide, it makes for a very narrow room and leaves one pondering on how to find space in a container home. But there are ways around this problem and we have come up with a solution that works for us. You might think we cheated.

Posted on 22nd January 202018th January 2020 by Ashley — 6 Comments

Decorative Wooden Wall Panelling

What do you do when you have a pile of old tongue and groove wood sitting with the rest of your building supplies? You turn it into beautiful decorative wooden wall panelling for your sitting room, of course! And that is exactly what Louis has done.

Posted on 15th January 202015th January 2020 by Ashley — 6 Comments

Container House Interior Cladding

It’s the hottest time of the year for us. It is way too scorching to be working outside on the North (sunniest) face on the exterior cladding. So we have temporarily moved indoors and have started working on our container house interior cladding.

Posted on 11th December 201910th December 2019 by Ashley — 4 Comments

Our 2019 Accomplishments

Our last post for the year seems like a good time to actually look back and see exactly what our 2019 accomplishments were. At times, for us, it does seem like the project is moving at a painfully slow pace, but the reality is that it has been galloping along quite quickly. So herewith a bit of a review and a couple of never-before-seen photos of our progress!

Posted on 4th December 201929th November 2019 by Ashley — 4 Comments

Cleaning a Fire Damaged Shipping Container

This post is about our experiences on what was possibly the worst thing we have had to do so far, to build our container home. It is no easy task to clean a fire damaged shipping container. It was so awful, I couldn’t help myself but laugh when I was standing under a shower of sooty, soapy water.

Posted on 27th November 201924th November 2019 by Ashley — 4 Comments

Container Home Entrance

We have a front door! It’s not completely finished yet, but Kevin and Louis have been working hard on our container home entrance. The results are fantastic so far, so I’m quite keen to see how the end result works out. Our entrance way fits the industrial look of the containers. The door is big and chunky just like a shipping container. Best of all, Kevin has designed the entrance so that we will be out of the rain when we are locking and unlocking our new front door.