Nowadays, container houses are gradually being used in various construction industries such as residences, hotels, shops, and homestays due to their low cost, quick completion, uniqueness, novelty, stability, and mobility. What are the main application areas of creative container houses? What will be the development trend in the future? Blogs Container House will take a look with you.

In China, prefabricated houses were gradually used as early as the 1970s. In the late 1990s, some companies saw that the application of container houses would gradually expand in the future and might have a revolutionary impact, and began to shift from simple mobile board house manufacturing to the production of permanent residential whole houses. Foreign countries are represented by Japan's integral folding houses and the United States' box-type mobile houses, which have developed to a very high level in the past 50 years.

Application fields and classification of container houses

At present, container houses in my country are mostly used for temporary offices and dormitories at construction sites; construction houses for large-scale field exploration and field operations such as transportation, water conservancy, oil, and natural gas; temporary houses for large-scale sports activities, exhibitions, etc.; leisure villas and holiday homes in tourist areas; post-disaster turnover houses and military fields; various clubs and low-rise residential buildings, etc.

Container houses are divided into two categories: movable houses and prefabricated houses: movable houses can also be divided into disassembled houses and mobile houses. Disassembled houses, such as quick-assembled container houses, all parts are assembled on site.

Mobile houses can be divided into assembled mobile houses and integral mobile houses according to their transportation methods, such as quick-assembled container houses and packaged container houses. Mobile houses generally adopt a box-type structural system. The overall strength of the house is very good, the mobile performance is outstanding, and the supporting facilities are detailed. Generally, they can be put into use when they are delivered to the site. At present, it is mainly used in oil exploration and other sites where houses are frequently moved or in harsh use conditions. Its application in urban construction sites is currently increasing rapidly. Prefabricated houses are mostly used for temporary construction with high comfort requirements or to meet permanent use needs. Their design is flexible, focusing on comfort, and are generally tailored to customer requirements, so the degree of standardization is low. Due to their personalized appearance, comfort, and rapid construction, they are currently widely used in the tourism and vacation field, and are developing rapidly in this field.

Container houses have a wide range of applications

1. Temporary buildings for urban construction and real estate projects: mainly including temporary buildings for construction site offices, temporary dormitories for construction site workers, sales offices, etc.

2. Temporary buildings for transportation, water conservancy, oil, natural gas and other projects, mainly including temporary facilities for field operations and offices, temporary dormitories for workers, etc.

3. Tourism buildings, including camping houses at tourist attractions, leisure facilities and corresponding service function buildings, especially suitable for seasonal tourism service facilities. 

4. Transitional resettlement housing, mainly used for demolition transitional housing and supporting service facilities and temporary resettlement housing and supporting service facilities in disaster areas. 

5. Temporary commercial facilities, including small shops, newspaper kiosks, etc.

6. Temporary medical service buildings and supporting service facilities: including temporary wards, registration, outpatient clinics, warehouses and other facilities. 

7. Municipal public areas, including security booths, traffic booths, bus dispatch booths, postal newspaper kiosks, factory community gate booths (guard rooms) and power distribution rooms, etc.

8. Military field, mainly used for: temporary command posts for military exercises, field hospitals, parade villages, etc.

9. Temporary buildings for exhibitions, on-site meetings, sports, etc., mainly used for: conference facilities, temporary commercial service facilities, etc.

The future development trend of prefabricated container houses

1. Development of standardization

Since the reform and opening up, my country's economy has developed rapidly, large-scale urbanization construction has continued to advance, and the demand for housing and construction has increased significantly. When building and using a large number of permanent buildings, structures, and water, electricity, roads, bridges and other facilities, a large number of temporary buildings are needed to support them. In order to reduce the cost of using temporary buildings, many companies have begun to consider temporary rental housing products to meet their construction needs, and many companies have considered purchasing temporary building facilities for reuse. These trends require mobile housing product manufacturers to design their products to be standardized, modular and reusable, which will promote the development of standardized and container housing products to further develop the market leasing model, which will be more in line with the country's sustainable development of the green circular economy policy.

2. Development towards comfort and personalization

With the improvement of design and manufacturing levels, the safety and comfort of modular housing have gradually improved, and the concept of using modular housing has gradually been recognized by the society. At present, prefabricated housing products have been widely used in developed countries. After decades of development, the performance of prefabricated housing products and permanent buildings has become increasingly similar. The comprehensive performance of prefabricated housing even exceeds that of traditional fixed buildings. In North America, prefabricated housing is currently the main form of housing. With the continuous development of the economy and the improvement of consumption capacity, users' requirements for the performance of prefabricated houses will gradually increase, and the market demand for high-quality and comfortable prefabricated house products will gradually increase, occupying an important position in the prefabricated house market.

3. The application field gradually expands from the construction field to the civil field.

At present, 80-90% of my country's integrated housing products are used for temporary housing in the construction industry. There is a large gap between other industries and the civil field, which is in sharp contrast to the modular housing in developed countries that is mainly used in the civil field. Compared with traditional buildings, prefabricated housing products have unique flexibility and environmental protection, and have special advantages in the field of immediate demand. In the future, with the further recognition of modular housing products by the society, its products will be increasingly used in the civil field. After years of development, my country's prefabricated housing products represented by disassembly and assembly of mobile houses have achieved long-term development. The number of enterprises producing packaged container houses has increased year by year and is distributed all over the country. The ability of integrated housing enterprises to adapt to the market is gradually increasing. The construction of resettlement houses after the Wenchuan earthquake promoted the rise of container houses. In one and a half months, 680,000 square meters of housing were quickly built in the disaster area of ​​Sichuan, which played an important role in achieving a comprehensive victory in earthquake relief. The construction of relocation resettlement housing has rapidly transformed relocation resettlement housing from an unknown form to a household form. Due to the particularity of this earthquake-resistant resettlement housing, the large-scale involvement of steel structure companies in various parts of the country with their technical, equipment and personnel advantages has become a major feature of resettlement housing construction. With the unprecedented publicity and popularization of resettlement movable houses, the influence and use area are expanding day by day, and more and more steel structure companies and building materials manufacturing companies have begun to produce modular housing products. Local imitation manufacturers have sprung up like mushrooms after rain, and market competition is becoming increasingly fierce. 

In foreign countries, complex buildings built of corrugated boards can be seen in many places, and water, electricity and gas are all available. European and American customers often have high requirements for the functional design of modular houses, and other buildings should have waterproof, windproof, sandproof, soundproof, fireproof, lightning protection and other properties.

From the commercial practices of developed countries abroad, container multi-storey houses are mainly used in municipal, commercial, tourism and other fields, while my country's large container buildings have not been widely used in the above fields and are mostly used in construction sites. Therefore, there is still huge room for development in the application field of prefabricated houses in my country.