This is a work in progress. As time permits, a detailed outline of the project sourced from Bruce
My story starts in finding a great piece of land in Northern Arizona with great views.
Once my wife and I closed on the property, I set out finding a structural engineer to help us realize are dream of building a container house. It was going to be a 8 container house. 4 on top and 4 on the bottom making it a 2 story, 2400 sqft house
Started doing the research and calling structural engineers to see about price and services. Holly from BE Structural called me back and was very assuring that the task was up to her firms ability. She mentioned they not only build plans but create modeling (which I am still not sure what is meant by modeling).
To get things started they wanted a deposit, which seemed fair. On July 20th, 2020, I sent them $4250.00 to get the ball rolling with a 4-6 week turn over time.
I started checking in once a week while my wife and I started clearing the property, selling our house in Phoenix and buying a travel trailer for the build time.
About the middle of August, the firm comes to me and tell me that they are having problems with specifications from the manufacture of the 1st container we bought. After a little back and forth it was determined that the containers were built on a standard and the ISO standard would be used.
Because of the delay in figuring out specifications, I asked on August 28, 2020 on how much longer, was told 3-4 weeks via an email. I thought this was still doable.
There are lots of back and forth at this point but want to stick to the facts included in emails. On September 28th 2020, Holly said plans would be ready that week via an email.
A few more weeks went by and all I had was my plans that I had drawn up, reformatted from my AutoCAD to their system, with some slight changes, but I was hopeful.
On 10-19-2020, after an email asking for a phone conference from Bruce Ensor, talked to Bruce about the time approaching 90 days since payment. He was not sorry or sympathetic, he is definitely lacking some basic customer skills. I gave him a ultimatum for a week to be done. This is when it got worse. The plan sets that started coming through were not physically possible. One major point was he had me welding large steel beams to the bottom of the containers. The containers would have to be flipped on their tops and all 4 welded and flipped back based on the way the containers are made. Remember, they are all built the same based on the ISO standard. Find me a crane that can do that! I had given him pictures of a 2 story, 8 unit apartment complex in phoenix made from the same containers with none of this extra material.
The town only offers us to live on site for 90 days without a valid filed building permit. I fianlly decided to cut Bruce loose and order some traditional building plans. As of yet, no refund has been offered. What an end to a dream, lesson learn.
