THUNDER BAY - A sustainable housing trend that started more than 10 years ago using recycled materials could be popping up in local neighbourhoods.
Modstruct Inc., a local contracting company, is now offering shipping container homes as an alternative option to home ownership in Thunder Bay and surrounding region.
A completed modular home was on display this weekend at the Spring Home and Garden Show at the CLE grounds.
Anthony McRae, co-owner of Modstruct Inc. said after a lot of research, the company decided to expand to modular houses and this February they received their first shipment of recycled shipping containers.
“We are not reinventing the wheel whatsoever, we are just taking a different way of providing sustainable and affordable housing and bringing it to Thunder Bay,” he said. “This has been going on for the last 10 or 15 years across the world. As young entrepreneurs we are always looking at innovative ways to build and provide something different to our clients.”
According to McRae, shipping containers that arrive from foreign markets are not shipped back empty because it is more cost effective to build new containers. Therefore, North America has an abundance of shipping containers available to be recycled.
With the building season in Northwestern Ontario so short, McRae said modular homes provide a quick and easy way for a homeowner to get into a home sooner.
“These buildings are factory built in a controlled environment,” he said. “It allows the client to have minimal disruption in their life and minimal disruption on their site.”
The homes are built at a site on Twin City Crossroads and then transported to the property by truck. The model home on display at the Spring Home and Garden Show was 600 square feet and included a living room/kitchen area, one bedroom, and one bathroom. Generally, the cost of building a modular home is between $150 and $200 a square foot.
And while modular homes can provide alternative housing options for people in urban and rural settings, McRae said they can also be used to provide affordable housing for remote northern communities.
“This is a great way to cut down costs of building houses in northern communities where it takes a lot of money and effort to fly materials up with planes and have guys on site for two or three months,” he said. “We can build the house in Thunder Bay and ship it up by ice roads and only be up there for a week putting it together.”
The modular home was just one of more than 150 displays at this year’s Spring Home and Garden Show that was held all weekend.
In past years, the show has been held in the Sportsdome, but since its collapse in 2016, organizers have expanded it to the five venues on the CLE grounds.
“Since the dome went down, we’ve been trying to expand back over here,” said show chair, Judy Anderson. “Originally it started here with the one building, but we expanded to all our buildings.”
The show was busy all weekend, with hundreds of people getting ready for spring and summer after a long winter.
“Its terrible winters and everyone is looking forward to spring,” Anderson said. “But this is certainly the introduction to spring for sure.”
