Shipping Container for Olive Mill

[rox]

What's in the barn or behind those garage doors?

Could you remove whatever is in there and store it somewhere else and use that space for the mill? Could you put what's in there in the container?

On what Dave said about circulating the air, the smaller the space, the harder it is to keep the air clean. Will the mill get hot while operating? In a container, that heat might become opressive. Is it loud? If so, it's going to be allot worse in the container.

Eddie

Eddie we are not permitted to build a mill with people living on top. It is in the regulations. We have full time tennants in the apt now, we used to only do holiday rentals. So we got a quote for converting the garage to a mill (I could go back to holiday rentals and just not rent it during the milling period dunno if this would have worked with the regs but had a thought so got the quote) That contractor was the high one at 55,000 Euros.

For a good review of how we arrived here pls go back and look at post #38. Your approach is surely reflected in your gender. You know how you could get a budget building built as you have talents that you can deploy into the project at different points and you own various tools and equipment. My hubby is not handy at all, not at all. In fact he has never drilled one single hole since we moved here, I do that. I can't do cement work guys and all our buildings here are cement work. For just a shell with a slab, 4 walls, and a roof, no doors or windows 29,000 (might have been 30,000) But the floor was tiled. This is best price, now sewer hook up, no plumbing and no electrical.

We are just going to have to sacrafice to get ahead. In the last 6 years we have paid 60,000 euros to have our olives pressed. It will take us to long to accumulate the cash to build that building. I guess we are greedy, we want to hang onto all our investments and not sell assets to build this thing. it is kind of like the problems renters have, it is very hard to save for a down payment when renting, same theory. Sometimes you move into a cheaper less desirable rental so that you can save money towards your next goal. Same concept here. Fact is we simply cannot afford to build a building why we are paying that "rent" to the other mill operators unless we sell assets adn we dont' want to do that. We just can't afford it and I'm not ashamed to say it. To many people live beyond their means and simply "hope" things work out. We are not like that.

I wonder if you folks have ever utilized the high cube containers, they seem roomy enough to me, those high ceilings give you air to breath. There is a big difference between the high cube and the regular height containers.

Let's move forward with your specific suggestions which we really do appreciate.

EddieWalker: On what Dave said about circulating the air, the smaller the space, the harder it is to keep the air clean. Will the mill get hot while operating? In a container, that heat might become opressive. Is it loud? If so, it's going to be allot worse in the container.

Windows, that is how it is done here. Milling is Nov & Dec overheating is not an issue, being cold can be an issue. But I understand why you ask coming from Texas, ya'll are always worried about the heat. It is going to be very noisy and we will have to wear ear protection all milsl they wear ear protection.

Question we saw the inside of a single use high cube container and stood on the plywood floor. Eddie unter the plywood is there steel or is plywood all there is in containers?

Eddie Walker: Running a sewer line up and into the container is going to be an issue that I'm unsure of how you will accomplish this. There will have to be some tunneling and cutting through the floor. In my containers, the floor was hardwood, but I don't know what's under the wood, or what it takes to get through it. Then building up the floor for the dain can be as simple as pouring a leveling compound, using thinset or something else. The expense to do this isn't going to come close to what a concrete slab will cost, but the slab will be permanent and have the slope with a great big drain built into it. In my experience, that alone is worth whatever it costs.

Eddie: - can you please provide me a link to leveling compound? maybe I'll try an go look on YouTube for soemthing. I don't really know what thinset is but I am sure over here they have it as virtually all the floors here are tile floors. It is pretty easy to get cheap tile here, may not be all the same but there is so much sold it is competitive. The press is going to weigh about 2,000 kilos but spread over about 12 feet long. Will thinset support that?

I think we will try for what Jinman suggested try not to ever cut into the roof or floor and bring in sewer and water into the side. I don't know how we will do that so we will have to figure it out.

Eddie: I don't know what it takes to make olive oil or work the machine, but my fear is that with a very small space to work, you might not be able to do the best possible job. With enough space and a workable layout, you will be more effective and probably produce a better product. The container limits you to such a degree that I question whether it's even practical.

Non issue, it is the press and your proccess that takes great olives and makes it into great oil. The container does provide sufficient space. 40 foot is long! The press end to end is only going to be about 12ft long I think. The mill we visited this week they can process 4 tons (4,000 Kilos) per hour, the DLE portion is outside under a roof with 3 walls, inside the crusher, maloxer, and extraction took place in a room about 16ft x 16ft. No ventilation only windows. They had this big roof with 3 walls, with the cleaning opertion under that roof and then an aluminium building 16' x 16' flat roof to do the actual pressing. At the back end of the 3 walled shelter is the room with the huge tanks holding oil. Compare this to our mill which will press 5% per hour of what they press only 200 kilos of olives per hour. The part that takes room is your storage and we are not going to store our oil in the container we have an olive workroom on our lower level, walk out basement. I dont' think a 40ft container is enough to hold our entire operation including storage and bottling. We have pallets of bottles and pallets of boxes etc. A 40ft container is enough to handle simply the pressing part of the oepration, it is plenty big. I would not want to build a mill like theirs in the future as this is right by my house and I want something more pretty.


EdC: 2. The shiny aluminum bubble insulation, it is called something like Refletix in the states, works pretty well and does have an easily cleaned surface. The "R" value is low but it reflects a lot of the radiant heat back into a building and that helps a lot. The Reflectix and a small 1500 watt radiant heater made my unheated garage in Great Falls MT habitable in the winter when it was -10C and below outside. Admittedly I was active but it does help. It also is very thin so would not take away any of that 8 foot width.
3. I don't recommend concrete for the floor, I don't think the container would handle it without being greatly reinforced. How about marine grade plywood over sloped joists and then painted with a non-skid epoxy?
4. Definitely coat the floor with something like a non-skid paint. The floors are very very slick when wet.

Thanks for giving me the practicle experience of the aluminum bubble insulation. That is a very valuable piece of information for us to have. The press is going to weigh about 2,000 kilos once we add in the decanter. Would you think wood floors would support that? I don't think my husband nor myself have the skills necessary to build a slanted floor out of wood, unless you guys can tell us how to do it and it is easy. Maybe somethign crazy like put sand down sloped and then put two layers of plywood on top of the sand. Something like that we could do. Otherwise we would have to bring a mason in to do the cement floor, if the container would support it. How much the floor can support needs further exploration but I was pretty sure that shipping containers by standards have to support a lot of weight.


Fallbrookfarmer: Hi Rox,
My 2 Euro worth. I have to agree with the gist of most of the discussion here is that you would be better off to start with a more permanent structure to begin with.
If you were to start with a metal/pole type building, you could later add a stone facing or some other type of covering to make it more attractive.
BTW, We once spent a week in Salon, after being unable to find a room in Aix, Great little town. I remember they had a parade with farm animals dressed up. Cool.

Thank you! We do have a very nice city don't we? It's really very pretty. I think it is really neat that you can relate having stayed here.

Jinman & CurlyDave I'll reply to your specific posts as you ahve multiple ideas, pahlease everybody please keep the ideas coming.

 

[rox]

rox:

1. I think you might need more concrete than 6Sunset6's calculates. We hadn't gotten to how deep the central channel needs to be when he did that. There is an interaction between the number of places you put outflow drains and the depth of the channel. While you can decide on on a depth arbitrarily, you are far better off to go back to the mill you currently use and measure their channel depth.

I pay attention to things I am interested in. I have been interested in buidling our own mill since our second year so I notice how things are built. I feel confident based on what I have seen in 6 years of going to mills that a 1" deep floor drain is sufficient. Maybe 2" wide was a bit wide and 1 1/2 wide would probably be better. This week my husband and I discussed the channel floor drain while we were there standing on it at the mill we visited. I put my hand in it. I'm the first one to ask for expert help and advice when I don't know something but I saw enough floor drains in mills looking at how they were contructed etc. that I feel pretty good about 1" deep being enough.

2. Ventilation. You certainly need ventilation. Right now I see two reasons, and don't know which one will have the higher requirement. One is water vapor as we have already noted. The second is volatile organics released from the olive processing (think smell & possibly other stuff).

I LOVE the smell of an olive mill it is just like perfume. There are no foul orders unless you are pressing olives that have first been fermented and that stinks to high heaven. We don't make that type of oil, if we would do an odd batch for a customer we would do like allt he other mills do, opent he window.

My brother in law owns a HVAC engineering business I think I'm going to ask him about ventilation.

You have more than enough electricity to do put in a forced draft vent (fan). We can leave the details until later when we know requirements. One thing you will definitely need is what is called make-up air. Essentially for every cubic meter of air you exhaust out, you need to let a cubic meter in somewhere. Nothing fancy, just screened openings low on the walls, near the floor, but don't forget them.

Nobody has this in their mills, nobody. Everybody just opens windows as needed and closes them when not needed. Where the oil is stored temerate is controlled with air conditioning and heat in order to preserve the oil, but in the actual pressing not a big deal. In fact I bet I am the only one who even would have heat and simply because I am from Wisconsin so I am very sensitive to cold. At the other mills they just wear winter jump suits when it's cold out and keep on working.

3. Insulation: the more ventilation you have the less good insulation does you. In addition to the heat losses through the walls, you have to heat the incoming air to whatever temperature you maintain inside.

I agree that insulation outside the container might be better than inside, but there is a cost. Not only do you need to install the insulation, you also need to make it weather proof. You may end up building a wood or metal structure that costs as much as the garage I was talking about. I think you need to get further along and then tell us the cost of electricity for radiant heaters and the installed cost of insulation. I can calculate how long it will take to for the insulation to pay off, and you can decide.

I will check next week about the cost of that bubble insulation as well as the cost of concrete. We are required to have a smooth cleanable surface inside so that is prolly the only insulation we would use if we do insualte. Cost will be a determing factor.

I see Eddie has found the thread.

I had considered tents before I suggested the metal garage. In the US, a tent would cost about the same as the least expensive metal garage and last for a much shorter time. Tents not legal for a mill

But, I am still in agreement that a container is not the best for your purpose. I also agree it is not the best solution a buidling is better, but we can't afford it. Although not the best solution it will work, it will provide sufficent space and meet code. Now weather rox freezes her butt off remains to be seen LOL

Again, I will still make suggestions on it, but think about what we are saying. I was trained as a chemical engineer, and I have designed more than a few chemical processing plants. Never an olive mill, but I did do a sugar mill once.

Please look at the schematic again the press is a mini press made by the biggest and best press manufacturer in the world. They spun off the mini presses as a seperate marketing entity but the same workers who build the big presses build these mini presses and the same engineers. I am attaching the schematic again so you don't have to go hunt for it.

 

[rox]

Rox, you need to have the word "pond" in your title for Eddie to see it. He's moved on from shipping containers a long time ago. Maybe a PM might get his attention.

I am still thinking about the insulation and humidity issue on the container. I think the external insulation as MarkV suggested would work to a certain degree, but you still will have a huge mass of metal to heat up in the structure of that container. Those cold walls will be like blowing your breath on the windshield of your car on a chilly morning. Just consider how much warm air it takes to clear off your windshield on your car. Now consider your warm/humid environment inside that container and the walls will be dripping. The current mills that exhaust air by opening the windows don't have cold metal walls. Their walls are insulated I am sure, either by conventional methods or by the fact that they are concrete block structures. The humidity is there inside the mill, but it just doesn't condense on the walls/roof like it will inside your container. So, I think you will need a good inside insulation and a waterproof cover for cleaning. The insulation will allow you to quickly warm the space without the thermal lag of all the metal in the container and the wall covering will be a vapor barrier as well. I would suggest that there may be pre-insulated vinyl or plastic panels available to do just what you are talking about. Think about the insides of refrigerated truck trailers. Perhaps that industry has a good product in standard sized panels for you to use.

Also, a dropped ceiling with drop-in panels for the roof might also be a very easy to install and be especially functional for lighting and running electrical power in a protected area. The ceiling would give you probably all the insulation you need for the roof. Also, the support rail matrix for a drop ceiling would probably only need one anchor in the middle of the ceiling, maybe not even that. It might span 8' with no support. Those "T" channels are pretty strong.

Just more ideas for spending your money.

Many thanks for taking your time to think about our project and comment we do appreciate it.

Next week i will get quotes on the aluminium bubble wrap insulation then we will see. Drop ceiling is going to be a non starter to start with, sorry, costs to much. I am taking the attitude of this can be a multi year project as well. CurlyDave said he would do the payback calculations once I give him the cost of the insulation. Certain things we need to do to open the doors, the floor, plumbing, and electrical have to be done to start. Heating and insulation don't necessarily have to be done to open the doors but planned for. Could be done or could not be done. No mills run heating during the harvest, I guess the equipment must keep it warm enough to keep the oil fluid. It is during storage that temperature must be controlled. But I am worried about rust. I am thinking vents that you can open and close might be good.

Not only have I spent a lot of time in olive mills in France I ahve attended numerous seminars where they bring in Phds from Italy, where 95% of all the presses are built, and have seen many pics of mills from Italy and Spain. It is not food processing like you would think nice and neat and clean, these mills are in old buildings with stone walls where the paint is falling off, not in France our mills tend to be a bit nicer. There are hoses running all over the floor and debrie that falls out and needs to get swept up, tools laying around. It is really kind of messy looking but once the olives enter the press everything is clean and sanitary running though stainless steel equipment. But the process and the area that happens before the olives hit the crusher can be kind of messy. One thing is consistant even at the best run mills there is always drama and a low level of chaos. This doesn't have to be nicy nicy looking just functional. However everyone builds a very nice boutique to receive the public and sell the oils. But behind the curtain stuff is flying all over LOL.

 

[EdC]

Rox

The experience with containers I was mentioning in my first post consisted of buying about 50 of them and then having them modified for the US Air Force. As I mentioned, I was told the strength is mostly in the perimeter frame but I will certainly try and contact the company rep I was dealing with and see if they think the stock floor can support a 5,000 lb load on a footprint that is about, guessing here, 15 square feet?

 

[jake98]

They do decks and shower pans with fiberglass now, considering the contours, that might be worth a look too.

 

[jake98]

Your approach is surely reflected in your gender.
[/COLOR]

How do you guys do that smiley face thing??

 

[ToadHill]

As far as the residue from pressing goes, is there any way you can compost it?

 

[EddieWalker]

How do you guys do that smiley face thing??

 

[CurlyDave]

OK rox, here is an outside the box suggestion.

I know you aren't allowed to process olives in your existing garage, but can you store them and heat them in the garage?

If you can do that, the way I would set this up would be to put a warming station in the garage.

Then I would get a 20 foot container. You say the equipment can be installed in a 5.6 meter length, which is 18.67 feet. The equipment can all be installed inside the container. And I don't really think you want to do anything in that container other than process olives. From reading the literature on it, and looking at the drawings, it appears that this mill is pretty self contained. You dump olives in one end and pump olive oil, dirty process water, and depleted olive paste out at various locations.

Set the mill in the container up close to your garage. Get a some wagons which can be used to haul pre-weighed olive crates to the input end of the mill. Dump the olives into the hopper and go back for more. I don't know what your olive oil carts look like, but you either need to get ones with wheels big enough to roll on your gravel, or put them on wagons with big wheels.

Here is the kind of wagon I am thinking of - Harbor Freight Tools - Quality Tools at the Lowest Prices I have exactly this one and it will easily carry hundreds of pounds of material over my gravel driveway. I have also seen ones with wire mesh sides, but don't have a link to them.

You will probably need more than one, but they are inexpensive. You can either pull them by hand, or use some kind of tractor or vehicle to tow them. If you can use your neighbors mini-excavator with forks that would be ideal. Instead of wagons, put the boxes and oil containers on pallets and fork them around.


You don't have to bring the wagons into the container. Dump the olives into the hopper by hand and pump or drain (depends on how the centrifuge works) the oil out into oil carts already on the wagons.

This eliminates dragging anything heavy over the floor and opens up the possibility of concrete, vinyl, or fiberglass over the floor.

When you say that tile floors are acceptable do you mean ceramic tile or vinyl tile? Are vinyl floors like those used in kitchens (similar to rolls of linoleum) acceptable?

If you can put seamless vinyl from a roll on the floor that is vastly easier than concrete, as Jake says. But to have that material last any length of time you have to keep all the olive crate dragging, oil cart moving, etc out of the container.

There is a second reason to eliminate olive crates and oil carts from the part of the container with the machinery--they won't fit. The pinch point is the centrifuge. If you place it the way shown on the schematic, it is 1.94 meters wide and the inside of the container is only 2.33 meters. This means you can have 18.5 cm (7 1/4") of room on each side. You might think you can do better by turning the centrifuge sideways, but the 1.70 meter length there does not include the space for that nice big, fat olive paste hose that I see in the flow chart picture.

No matter how you slice it, access to the container will be from each end, and there will be a nearly complete blockade as far as moving or dragging anything past the centrifuge. This is a very good reason to make the container as short as possible.


How many operators does the mill require? I don't mean people loading olives, or removing oil and waste products, just people babysitting the machine itself. My sense is that you only need one person to start it up, watch it run and maybe make adjustments from time to time. And, once it is running that is only a part time job. If this is correct, I would design the operation so that this person was the only person who went into the container. The people feeding the machine and taking away product don't need to go in there.

Now, if you need ventilation anyway, just keep the original swinging doors on the container and open both ends wide for ventilation. The only reason to consider heating the container at all is if you have to go in there to repair the equipment. Especially since that is how all of the other mills do it. rox, you can buy a lot of snow bunny suits for the price of the heaters and electricity you will need to heat that container. Especially with both ends open.

The other thing to think about is that the picture on the MillFlowChart shows what I would call a skid-mounted olive oil press. Now, I know you aren't planning to buy this, but is something like that legal for use in France? The reason I ask is that I don't see the bowl shaped floor and channel running down the middle.

If the skid mounted unit is legal, you might want to consider the extra cost of the skid mount vs. the cost of a floor with channel. How wide is that metal platform?

I bet you it would be possible to slide that skid lengthwise into a container and never have to worry about the floor.

 

[rox]

Rox

The experience with containers I was mentioning in my first post consisted of buying about 50 of them and then having them modified for the US Air Force. As I mentioned, I was told the strength is mostly in the perimeter frame but I will certainly try and contact the company rep I was dealing with and see if they think the stock floor can support a 5,000 lb load on a footprint that is about, guessing here, 15 square feet?

MANY thanks!!!!!! That would be awsome if you would do that, Merci

 

[rox]

OK rox, here is an outside the box suggestion.

I know you aren't allowed to process olives in your existing garage, but can you store them and heat them in the garage? We think so and probably will do this although prolly not 100% legal. Rain is our issue here, we need to keep the olives out of the rain.

If you can do that, the way I would set this up would be to put a warming station in the garage.

Then I would get a 20 foot container. You say the equipment can be installed in a 5.6 meter length, which is 18.67 feet. The equipment can all be installed inside the container. And I don't really think you want to do anything in that container other than process olives. From reading the literature on it, and looking at the drawings, it appears that this mill is pretty self contained. You dump olives in one end and pump olive oil, dirty process water, and depleted olive paste out at various locations. That is it, that is why I made the flow chart.

Set the mill in the container up close to your garage. It is going to be 50ft from the garage, that is why I went out and took site pics to post, to show the site. Get a some wagons which can be used to haul pre-weighed olive crates to the input end of the mill. We already have a wagon very similar to what you show jsut smaller, I think it holdds 4 crates 2 on the botttom and then stacked 2 on top. It has the tires that go over gravel. Dump the olives into the hopper and go back for more. I don't know what your olive oil carts look like, but you either need to get ones with wheels big enough to roll on your gravel, or put them on wagons with big wheels.

Here is the kind of wagon I am thinking of - Harbor Freight Tools - Quality Tools at the Lowest Prices I have exactly this one and it will easily carry hundreds of pounds of material over my gravel driveway. I have also seen ones with wire mesh sides, but don't have a link to them.

You will probably need more than one, but they are inexpensive. You can either pull them by hand, or use some kind of tractor or vehicle to tow them. If you can use your neighbors mini-excavator with forks that would be ideal. Instead of wagons, put the boxes and oil containers on pallets and fork them around.


You don't have to bring the wagons into the container. Dump the olives into the hopper by hand and pump or drain (depends on how the centrifuge works) the oil out into oil carts already on the wagons.

This eliminates dragging anything heavy over the floor and opens up the possibility of concrete, vinyl, or fiberglass over the floor. The press itself is still gonna be pretty heavy.

When you say that tile floors are acceptable do you mean ceramic tile or vinyl tile? Are vinyl floors like those used in kitchens (similar to rolls of linoleum) acceptable? I don't think we can have vinyl. See in my next post the attached file item # 6. Looks like the flooring has to be fireproof.

If you can put seamless vinyl from a roll on the floor that is vastly easier than concrete, as Jake says. But to have that material last any length of time you have to keep all the olive crate dragging, oil cart moving, etc out of the container.

There is a second reason to eliminate olive crates and oil carts from the part of the container with the machinery--they won't fit. The pinch point is the centrifuge. If you place it the way shown on the schematic, it is 1.94 meters wide and the inside of the container is only 2.33 meters. This means you can have 18.5 cm (7 1/4") of room on each side. You might think you can do better by turning the centrifuge sideways, but the 1.70 meter length there does not include the space for that nice big, fat olive paste hose that I see in the flow chart picture. That is an excellent term, pinch point. We will eliminate the tub that receives the oil off of the centrifuge that will give us a bit more space. But you are right we are going to have a pinch point which is why we will go with the 40 ft container. I want to have room on one side for crates on the intake side, think rain, and 60 liter drums of pressed oil on the output side. We need ingress and egress on both sides of the pinch point. This is going to be inconveinent but workable. It is not ideal but there is room in the container for the press. It'll fit. But a 20ft one Dave I think is just to small. We also need to add a floor scale as shown on the flow chart you need to weigh first the olives then the finished oi, 20 ft would be to small. Although I might sotre olives pre press in our existing garage I don't think customers are going to want their drums of oil in the garage, I'll need to keep it inside the container, just for estetiques. They will drop off olives one day and pick up olive oil the next day. The price differrence between the 20ft and 40ft was not that bad and we have the site space so unless you come up with another compelling idea I'm pretty sure it is going to be 40ft.

No matter how you slice it, access to the container will be from each end, and there will be a nearly complete blockade as far as moving or dragging anything past the centrifuge. This is a very good reason to make the container as short as possible.


How many operators does the mill require? I don't mean people loading olives, or removing oil and waste products, just people babysitting the machine itself. My sense is that you only need one person to start it up, watch it run and maybe make adjustments from time to time. And, once it is running that is only a part time job. If this is correct, I would design the operation so that this person was the only person who went into the container. The people feeding the machine and taking away product don't need to go in there. Mainly it will be one person but frequently 2 people.

Now, if you need ventilation anyway, just keep the original swinging doors on the container and open both ends wide for ventilation. The only reason to consider heating the container at all is if you have to go in there to repair the equipment. Especially since that is how all of the other mills do it. rox, you can buy a lot of snow bunny suits for the price of the heaters and electricity you will need to heat that container. Especially with both ends open. We do need lighting, we do need windows, it will be to dark without windows. Also the cargo door end will be facing north and we get very very strong northern winds called the Mistral. When we have wind, which is frequeently,
I'll want to open the East/West windows for ventilation.

The other thing to think about is that the picture on the MillFlowChart shows what I would call a skid-mounted olive oil press. Now, I know you aren't planning to buy this, but is something like that legal for use in France? The reason I ask is that I don't see the bowl shaped floor and channel running down the middle. You can see the regs in my next post. They are going to want the whole container floor to be sloped.

If the skid mounted unit is legal, you might want to consider the extra cost of the skid mount vs. the cost of a floor with channel. How wide is that metal platform?

I bet you it would be possible to slide that skid lengthwise into a container and never have to worry about the floor.

Dave again, thank you for thinking of this, for spending your time thinking and then posting your ideas.

 

[rox]

Attached are the regulations in French of course. Just use Google translate
Language Tools to translate.

The floor must be fireproof and sloped. The walls msut be fireproof well you know resist fire for a certain period. There are other regulations much longer but this is a subset for olive mills, well I guess sunflower mills also. Mills that produce vegetable oils.

 

[MarkV]

Rox I did not read all of the regulations but I'll be very surprised if the bubble wrap insulation would be fireproof or hold up to pressure washing.

MarkV

 

[jinman]

Rox, I read all those requirements using Google Translator and they are exactly as you say. I certainly understand your challenges. I'll have more later, but here is a product I think you should consider. This product is strong enough to be used on the inside of auto carwash walls. It would meet all your code requirements and also be easy to maintain and clean.

Duro-therm Panels

I'm also thinking of other ideas like fold-down doors on the side of the container that allow access as ramps and also provide more open area inside. If you had a fold-down door you could add a canvas canopy (fold-out) above and maybe curtain walls. You could enter or exit the container by these ramped enclosures. Raising and lowering the ramps could be accomplished with ropes, pulleys, and counterweights for ease of operation (not drawn). They would also improve your ventilation tremendously.

 

[Egon]

Rox:

The container dilemma and redesign!

So far I've heard whatever is used has to have fireproof floors and walls and not be considered a permanent structure. It is also understood that the container idea is fixed!

So, assuming the container is so designed to be supported on the four corners and has a metal floor lined with plywood and no idea of the walls other than metal on the outside.

Locate the site. Install a piling for each corner. Cut out the floor area for the press and pour a cement foundation for it. Skin the floor using concrete and put the proper slopes and drains on it. [Not very hard to do and the container should be able to support this with no problem.. Just use ordinary high strength concrete with no rebar or wire mesh for cost purposes. Cut out the doors and other access points as required and use the cutouts for fabricating the new doors. Have the doors open out wards so they do not constrict inside space. Build dirt ramps for the access doors. Cheap.
Install several ventilating fans high up one at each end. Bathroom fan would work.Install one pressurizing fan at floor level in the center of the container. Again bathroom fan. If the walls require fireproofing use a stucco or cement slap on and trowel smooth product. Don't worry about insulation.

Getting services in should be no problem as torches work on metal quite well.

Keep it as simple as possible and all will work out!

 

[radioman]

I just found this thread- I was wondering why not put two shipping containers with doors open point to each other 20 ft apart? pour a small concrete pad say, 8 by 20. put up a 12 by 20 shed over the concrete pad with a roll up doo ryou wanted and build a wooden floor on the open space for the toilet/sink area? This way when you are done in 3 years from now and you have a biuld a nice building somewhere you wanted, move the shipping containers somewhere for storage or remove it, you have a 12 by 20 building for other purposes? just cover up the ends. This would keep the costs down I would think.

 

[EddieWalker]

Hi Rox,

The 40ft Sea Container really does seem like the best fit for what you need. To make it work, the biggest issue seems to be the drainage of the floor. Figure that out, and the rest is pretty basic.

One of the problems that I’m having is how to slope the floor to get to the drain. Then installing the drain has me a bit perplexed. At first, I thought you would have to center the drain on the floor, which would mean cutting a hole in the floor and tunneling under the container to get to that location to install your pipes. I’ve realized that this isn’t the best way to do this.

I think Jim mentioned side drains, but I didn’t get it at first. Now I think I do. I would put in three drains. I would cut holes into the side of the container on the side where the sewer lines have to run. Those holes would be similar to the cartoon mouse holes that you always saw when watching Tom and Jerry, or some other cartoon. I would then create a catch basin at the bottom of that hole in the wall where the water will run down and into the drain. You’d have to work out a way to seal it up from the elements, but that shouldn’t be too difficult. The idea is that the water will run into the hole in the wall, and then down into your drain line.

This will allow you to slope the floor from side to side. A one inch slope over the 8ft width of the floor is now pretty simple to do with mortar or whatever is available there. I would contact your tile guy and ask them what they use when they do a shower floor. With three drain lines, you could easily have a barrier along the low portion of the wall that would resemble a big base board, which would help channel the water to the drains. With water on the floors, you will need some sort of waterproof baseboard all around the walls anyway. Maybe what you end up using for insulation will also provide a water proof barrier to direct the water to the drain lines?

With any drain line going into a septic tank or sewage line, there has to be a way to block the sewage gasses from coming back up that pipe. Traps are used to hold water in the lines and block those gasses from coming through. Be sure to include them in your drain lines, or it will be very nasty in there. With the drains being outside of the container, it would be allot easier, faster and cheaper to install them. You could also run your vent lines right up the side of the container. Again, it would be so simple this way that there really isn’t any other way to do it.

The more I think about it, the better it sounds. I’m actually changing my mind on the container approach and thinking that it just might be the best way to go. I don’t even think you should consider it a three year, temporary solution. You could easily add on to the container, or buy another and connect them if and when you need more space. I would build and plan for it to be a permanent part of your operation. Adding a nice roof and covering it in rock to pretty it up would be allot cheaper than building another building.

Eddie

 

[CurlyDave]

Jinman:

Could you post the translation? For some reason I can't get the translation tools to work.

Rox:

A big question I haven't seen covered before. What is the capacity of this mill? How many kilos of olives per hour does it process. How many liters of oil per hour come out?

* * * * * *

The reason I am suggesting a shorter container is not for cost. It is because doing any kind of work inside this container is going to cramped and miserable. I am trying to get everything that doesn't have to be inside the container out of it.

The press itself is still gonna be pretty heavy.

The press is stationary. How heavy it is doesn't matter. The durability requirements of the floor depend on what is being moved over the floor constantly. Vinyl flooring is fireproof. You may have to look hard for a vendor, and it will be expensive per square foot, but it can be found. When all the costs of concrete are considered, it may well be less than concrete.

We do need lighting, we do need windows, it will be to dark without windows. Also the cargo door end will be facing north and we get very very strong northern winds called the Mistral. When we have wind, which is frequeently,
I'll want to open the East/West windows for ventilation.

I hadn't gotten that far yet. You need artificial lighting. When you run 24/7 the windows will not let in any light at night. You can have all the windows you want for ventillation.

From the way you describe practices in other mills, I really believe heating and sufficient ventilation are incompatible in the process area. Now in the incoming olive storage area, the weighting area, and the finished oil storage area you need much less ventilation and heating those areas might be possible, or even necessary.

Are the unprocessed olives considered flamable? Is it legal to store them in the garage?

How about the finished oil drums? What are the temperature requirements for storage? Do you have a picture of one of these oil drums? I think you called them "carts" before. I am having a hard time visualizing this. You said 60 liters. I have seen 15-gallon metal drums, do they look like those. Wheels? Dimensions?

We also need to add a floor scale as shown on the flow chart you need to weigh first the olives then the finished oi, 20 ft would be to small. Although I might sotre olives pre press in our existing garage I don't think customers are going to want their drums of oil in the garage, I'll need to keep it inside the container, just for estetiques

Why couldn't the floor scale be in the garage? It needs to be level, and the container floor has to be sloped.

What is the practice with the drums? When you take you olives to the mill do you also take empty drums to hold the finished oil? Where are they stored at the mill? Both empty storage and after they are filled.

 

[jake98]

Seems like the cost of setting this kind of machinery up and then doing it all over again would be more than the difference of doing the final building first. How about putting in the concrete pad with the drainage and power, and throwing a tarp over the machine untill you can get the building around it? Gotta be a better way than to waste all the installation labor and supplies.

 

[rox]

I just found this thread- I was wondering why not put two shipping containers with doors open point to each other 20 ft apart? pour a small concrete pad say, 8 by 20. put up a 12 by 20 shed over the concrete pad with a roll up doo ryou wanted and build a wooden floor on the open space for the toilet/sink area? This way when you are done in 3 years from now and you have a biuld a nice building somewhere you wanted, move the shipping containers somewhere for storage or remove it, you have a 12 by 20 building for other purposes? just cover up the ends. This would keep the costs down I would think.

Many thanks for looking at our project and contributing. I hope you continue to participate as we need as many opinions as possible. The reason we would not do as you have suggested is becasue the 20ft containers cost 2,900 Euros BEFORE the 19.6% tax and the 40 ft container costs 3,600 Euros before 19.6% Tax.