Build a House With Shipping Pallets

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Build a House With Shipping Pallets

by Christina Clark (Subscribe to Christina Clark's posts)
Feb 20th 2009 @ 2:05PM

Filed under: Home

If you want to really downsize, consider building yourself a tiny house from shipping pallets. Or, use the plans for a garden shed or other area where space is limited.

The best part of the pallet house is that you can usually find pallets free if you look around. We use pallets to stack our woodpile on and have gotten them from a number of places. My husband got two at his office, we asked for some at a big box store and got two more and a business up the street has stacks and stacks that, once we asked, they said we could take as many as we wanted. Pallets are made of wood and can be used for all sorts of things, but mainly, they are looked upon as being trash.

Using pallets takes a little more work because of the nails or staples already in the wood, but a little more work is not such a big deal when you consider you are getting your raw materials for free.

[Via Green Building Elements]

Comments [1]

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

2-20-2009 @ 9:51PM

Phil L. said...

I've re-used pallets for a number of things - and there are some concerns.

- The wood used in pallets may look pretty good - until you pull the pallet apart. Most pallets end up with some of the lowest-grade wood available.

- The nails and staples used in pallets are often "ringed" or "threaded", or coated with adhesive. These fasteners can be remarkably difficult to remove without destroying the wood. This is often a result of their intended use: Many pallets are designed to be stored outdoors; lots of 'standard' fasteners don't hold up well in the elements, and don't hang on with the changes that wood goes through when exposed.

Notable exception to the above: I've noticed that many pallets used to ship large computers, printers or similar equipment are made with better grades of wood, and don't seem to be as dependent difficult-to-remove fasteners. If your workplace receives such shipments, pay close attention to these pallets.

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