
Architects and engineers are turning old shipping containers into mobiled ICUs - engineeringp
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/day6/architects-and-engineers-are-turning-old-shipping-containers-into-mobile-intensive-care-units-1.5527523
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nimbius
speaking from experience as someone whos worked with shipping containers
(tunnel, opentop and swap-body) repurposing these containers can be a bad idea
unless you know exactly what was stored in them last.

Some containers come with their interior and moving parts slathered in
Cosmoline and other toxic corrosion inhibitors. Others may have stored
precursor chemicals to industrial adhesives or fertilizers. finally, theres no
real regulation on what you can do with an over-iso (super heavy sticker)
shipping container and many of them ship metals, or degraded plastics in
various stages of recycling. Nuclear? sure. Walk through any port storage
facility and theres sure to be a shipping container or two that will light up
a geiger counter because the type-A containers inside have cracked from the
heat and are leaking thorium tailings or other common low-level waste the USA
ships out to third world countries and back.

~~~
orblivion
> Nuclear? sure. Walk through any port storage facility and theres sure to be
> a shipping container or two that will light up a geiger counter because the
> type-A containers inside have cracked from the heat and are leaking thorium
> tailings or other common low-level waste the USA ships out to third world
> countries and back.

And here I was searching to make sure somebody mentioned methyl bromide. Holy
shit.

~~~
Kuinox
France is not a third world countries and reprocess most of nuclear waste...

------
wigiv
My company works with shipping containers daily - we modify them for
industrial and manufacturing purposes. We reached out to the CURA team several
weeks ago, offering our capacity if they scale/deploy their concept. They are
currently building their very first pilot unit(s), so we'll see!

As a basic structural shell, shipping containers are great - plentiful,
compatible with global logistics, cheap, dense/stackable. But, to bring them
up to habitable standards, let alone medical standards, takes A LOT of work.
Hard manual labor and also precision assembly work. We have some custom
equipment to help speed that retrofit process for our own purposes, but most
container mod providers don't - so while yes, you can deploy finished units
anywhere, stack them densely and connect them quickly, there isn't a reserve
of these units standing by, and you have no scaling advantage up-front in
manufacturing them right now.

I'll add that by the time you retrofit insulation, ventilation, utilities and
paneling inside (and you have to put this inside if you want to maintain side-
by-side stackability and weather impermeability) what was a "decent" small
room size becomes a bit claustrophobic.

For modular, dense, deployable, and durable emergency hospital facilities,
it's best to look at one of the many architectural prefab approaches -
volumetric, panelized, or otherwise. See: BLOX, Blokable, FullStack Modular,
Katerra, etc. This field is growing rapidly, and many of these companies are
already tooled to produce room and structure modules very efficiently.

Some pose the question of re-tasking hotels as temporary alternative medical
spaces. I could see it for housing medical staff in a more dedicated and
perhaps centralized manner, if nearby a hospital. There are several military
slide decks circulating around that describe exactly what's necessary to
create a field hospital out of a hotel/office - including ripping up the
carpet in the entire facility, heavily modifying HVAC (central or standalone
units) etc - and that's all doable, but I've wondered about the implications
afterwards. You'd have to basically rebuild the interiors entirely, battle
future customer perception ("Oh, the hotel that 100 coronavirus patients died
in?") and I'm certain the insurance situation will not be straightforward...

~~~
ChuckMcM
I would love to see a walk through of taking a container of unknown origin
through a process to make it ready for a living space.

My uneducated assumption was that you walked into one and sprayed your
sand/particle blaster at the interior surfaces until you've got raw metal
everywhere, then you paint the interior with a metal sealant, followed by a
powder coat. Then set up heating coils inside, take the interior temperature
up to 210 to 220 degrees C, go back and remove the heating coils and then be
ready to start installing flooring/walls what have you.

But I have no idea how practical that set of steps are, or even if they are
sufficient. Hence the desire to see the process that someone has used
successfully to prepare containers.

~~~
wigiv
Can't speak to living spaces since we don't do that, but you have the basic
process in mind. You might rip the floor planks/panels out entirely,
eliminating the smelly, pesticide- laden lumber and giving access to more
metal surfaces during blasting. Or, much less ideal but possible: you can seal
over the nasty flooring with epoxy then leave it or put another flooring layer
on top.

Haven't heard of powder coating interiors - that would be a lot of wattage! -
but maybe doable with radiant methods and insulation blankets, or putting the
whole thing in a giant curing oven? Most often it's just spray-on epoxy over
rust-converting primer. There are low(er)-toxicity formulations out there. For
undemanding applications you can paint with household enamel over primer -
wouldn't hold up on the exterior though.

Interestingly, the Cor-Ten steel many (most?) containers are made of is a
weathering steel that forms a protective rust layer when left to its own
devices. So you could conceivably just leave it there to develop a fine rusty
patina!

All told, there isn't a single "right way," to clean up a container, but there
are some best practices and trends. YouTube seems to have a wealth of folks
documenting their container home builds.

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flooo
A friend of mine has been doing this for some time. It works well but you're
gonna need some iterations with stakeholders to make it work. This includes
medical staff, transport experts etc. What's quite cool about my friends
engineering is that they manage to keep the containers sterile by pressure
[https://hospitainer.com/](https://hospitainer.com/)

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redis_mlc
Sounds like another half-baked "gotta do something" project.

What's needed is more quarantine areas the size of Javits Center or Moscone
Center, not shipping containers, which are essential for ending the lockdown.

One of the problems with the shipping container method are you're distributing
the facilities maintenance tasks into a distributed system of multiple failure
points.

Another is that if you do lose cooling, containers rapidly heat up in the
daytime.

~~~
Cthulhu_
They can just temporarily convert hotels, which are underused at the moment
with the effective collapse of most traveling, tourism and business trips.
Hotels have good rooms, air conditioning, power, and are fairly controlled
environments.

~~~
mc32
Wouldn’t central air without HEPA filtration be an issue in a hotel setting? I
don’t think it’s easy to retrofit (it can be done but not quick and cheap).

~~~
ohples
Most hotels don't have central air per say, at least in the room. Each room
has one of those standalone units usually near the window.

I can't find the clip right now but in one of NY Gov Cuomo's briefings they
had an guy from (I think from the Engineers Corps) talk about this.

~~~
sp332
This one
[https://twitter.com/USArmy/status/1241185656094801923](https://twitter.com/USArmy/status/1241185656094801923)

~~~
overcast
Can this dude just be the spokesperson for everything during this pandemic?
Clear, concise, no bullshit straight to the point. Here is the issue, here is
the plan, here is what we're doing.

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layoutIfNeeded
Why use shipping containers when portable shelters exist?

E.g. [https://fortsusa.com/models/military/portable-military-
shelt...](https://fortsusa.com/models/military/portable-military-shelter/)

~~~
lreeves
Presumably because there's millions of excess containers and that site you've
linked builds those on demand?

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blackrock
When China was building the special modular hospitals in 10 days, I thought
why didn’t they just choose to convert old shipping containers instead?

Since it could be mass manufactured offsite, and trucked in. Then they’d just
have to assemble it onsite.

Then, they could ship it all over the world, to hotspots that needs emergency
field help.

But it turned out, ocean transport time is horrendous. It takes 21 days to
transport from China to Los Angeles. Then, the time to load the ship, and
unload the ship, and transport by land to the actual hotspot, would add
another week. Then the time to actually assemble it onsite would add a few
more days. So now, you’re looking at over 30 days to build that emergency
hospital. By which time, you’d already have a bunch of dead people, just
because it took you too long to transport it.

So in retrospect, it was probably better that they built it modularly onsite
instead. At least this way, you can still fly the components to your hotspot.

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raghava
software engineers use "containers" to densify deployments. But in cases like
this, real containers can't densify or offer mobility. Indian Railways
engineers have submitted a proposal to mobilize trains for quarantine and
mobile hospitals. Retrofitting is not too difficult and a prototype with
designs have been shared. (even to SAARC nations, I guess).

[https://theprint.in/india/governance/rail-coach-as-icu-
how-m...](https://theprint.in/india/governance/rail-coach-as-icu-how-modi-
govt-plans-to-beat-healthcare-gaps-in-remote-areas/388043/)

Most related excerpts below:

‘A good idea’ According to media reports, a Kochi-based firm called Asset
Homes had submitted a proposal to the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) where it
offered to fashion hospitals out of trains.

“We have 12,617 trains with 23-30 coaches in our country. We can easily
convert them into ‘mobile hospitals’ with facilities like consultation rooms,
medical store, ICU and pantry,” the firm’s managing director reportedly wrote
in the letter.

“Each train can accommodate at least 1,000 beds. Using the 7,500+ railway
stations, the patients can be admitted to the trains.”

A senior railway official said it was good idea to convert coaches into mobile
isolation wards, but added that it would be easier to first convert the
railways’ Accident Relief Medical Equipment Vans (ARME) — or rail ambulances —
into isolation wards.

“These are basically moving hospitals meant to provide medical treatment and
assistance in case of rail accidents,” the official said. “It might be easier
to convert them into isolation wards since they already have some medical
facilities.”

Among other steps taken to check the pandemic, the railways have been
instructed to introduce isolation wards at railway hospitals.

------
dang
We changed the URL from [https://www.engineeringpassion.com/engineers-are-
converting-...](https://www.engineeringpassion.com/engineers-are-converting-
old-shipping-containers-into-mobile-icus/) to the article it copied from.

------
lnsru
As people already mentioned, containers are hot in summer. I spend couple
weeks in a such temporary office. Daily 30 degrees, not enough windows, sweat
and very bad smell around.

At the moment a school in neighborhood is being demolished and a temporary
container building was assembled as replacement. It’s very comfortable and
nice inside, though school has vacation in summertime and this application is
ok. ICU in a container might be good for Scandinavia or Alaska...

~~~
chrisseaton
You can put an air conditioner on them. I worked in a medical station built in
a shipping container in the Afghan desert in 40 degree heat for a summer and
it was fine.

~~~
lnsru
The problem is, that there are enough buildings in other places than Afghan
desert and containers make no sense at all. One can find many empty government
buildings in every city. From offices left days ago, empty schools to not yet
finished hospitals or empty exhibition halls.

~~~
kaydub
You also need to consider the build out. I feel like it'd be easier to get the
experts required to build out a mini-icu in one central location and develop
methods to mass manufacture the standardized container than it would be to fly
people around the country to one off a bunch of buildings.

The portability also brings other benefits.

~~~
lnsru
Think about availability of doctors, not the ICUs. There’s a need to
accommodate 2-3 shifts of doctors and nurses. And these are not endlessly
mobile unlike containers.

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magwa101
These things are flimsy AF. Better off with tents or temp wood structures.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
In what sense are they flimsy? They can support a few more (loaded) containers
on top of them, so... fifty tons roof load?

If you're worried about impacts on the side walls, I'm pretty sure your tent
is going to be even more flimsy. Your temp wood structure might well be, too.

So how are they flimsy?

~~~
deftnerd
They are only strong at specific points, namely the corners and to a lesser
extent, the edges. If you have a load on top, or an impact on the sides, they
deform easily and that can cause structural collapse.

In situations where people bury the containers, they often have to weld in
additional squarestock steel pillars and ceiling joists to improve the
structural integrity of the roof, and the pillars often add needed support to
the walls that face substantial forces from the weight of the earth

