What have done towards your prep?

[Steve]

Wifey has made some Gooseberry jam off our bushes, mmmmmmmm very nice I must say. Looking forward to the Blackcurrants and Raspberries too, but the little winged twats are assaulting them but I have plenty of ammo

My gooseberries aren't ready yet, still like small marbles. Do you know what variety you have ?

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Ordered 25 sheets of plasterboard faced 50mm insulation board. £1000 - Eek !!! Enough to fully insulate and dryline my shipping container and hopefully have 2 sheets left spare.

Incidentally, I checked the maximum weight that can be loaded onto a standard shipping container and was surprised to see it is 192 tonnes. Obviously that weight is supported by the corner posts, not the "roof", but it shows how strong these things are.

Is that weight not the max loaded onto the base? I assume it's not the maximum available to load on an internal shelf system?

That is the weight of other shipping containers that can be stacked on top. As I said, it's only the corner posts that can take this weight, so if you intended to bury one deep you would need a substantial steel frame from the corner posts across the roof or a strong reinforced concrete slab that was capable of supporting itself and the earth from the corners, not forgetting that the foundations under the corners also need to be substantial enough to prevent the container corners being forced into the ground and the floor bulging upwards.