Plenty of people in this town have watched water come up. If you're buying a container partly because of that, it's worth being very clear about what the steel does — and what it doesn't.
We get asked some version of this most weeks: will a container keep my gear dry if it floods? The honest answer is no, and anybody who tells you otherwise is selling you something.
A cargo-worthy container is wind and watertight. That guarantee is about weather coming down on it — rain, spray, a storm crossing the coast. It is not a guarantee about water coming up.
The reason is simple enough when you look at one. The roof, the walls and the floor are sealed panels. The doors are not — they're two big steel leaves closing onto rubber gaskets that are designed to keep rain out, with the whole assembly sitting at ground level. Water rising outside will find those seals, and once it's in, the box that sheds rain so well now does the other thing it's good at: it holds what's inside it. People have opened containers after a flood to find the water still sitting in them days later, and everything at the bottom ruined twice over.
There's a second thing worth knowing. An empty or lightly loaded container is buoyant. Twenty feet of sealed steel with air in it will float in deep enough water, and a floating container goes wherever the current takes it — which is a problem for your gear and a bigger problem for whatever it hits. It has happened here.
If flood is on your mind, stop thinking about the container and start thinking about where it sits. The 2013 event is still the local yardstick, and most people around Bundaberg have a fair idea of what went under and what didn't. Use that. Council flood mapping will tell you the rest, and it's free.
Put the unit on the high point of the block, not the convenient corner near the driveway. If the high point is only half a metre better than the low one, that half metre is still worth having — flood levels don't respect the difference between "almost fine" and "just over". And get it up on blocks, sleepers or pavers under the four corner castings regardless. That lifts the floor clear of sheet water in ordinary heavy rain and lets air move underneath so the cross-members dry out between falls.
Here's where a container genuinely earns its money in a flood town, and it's got nothing to do with sealing.
A shed is where it is. A container can be picked up and taken somewhere else — including days before a river peaks, if you've thought about it in advance. When a warning goes up with lead time, a tilt-tray can lift a 20ft off a low block and put it on higher ground the same day. That only works if you've left the access to do it: room for a truck to get in and swing, and nothing built up hard against the container in the meantime.
The other genuinely useful role is afterwards. When a house is stripped out and being dried and repaired, a lockable, weatherproof space in the yard for the furniture and tools that survived is worth a great deal. That's a container doing what it's good at, without anyone pretending it's something it isn't.
Separate to flood, and much more common. Their container never leaks, and their gear still comes out mouldy.
The culprit is condensation. Warm humid air gets sealed inside during the day, the temperature drops overnight, moisture condenses on the cold steel roof and rains back down on your things. Through a Bundaberg summer that cycle runs most nights.
Three things fix it. Vents at both ends so air can cross rather than sit. Desiccant — proper hanging tubs, not a couple of sachets, and check them monthly through the humid months. And a moisture barrier under everything, because the slab or ground underneath sweats too.
Clear the roof of leaf litter and check nothing is ponding. Wire-brush and paint any scratch that's started browning. Grease the door gear so it still opens when the timber has swollen and you're in a hurry. Do the daylight test — climb in, shut the doors, wait a minute, look for pinholes.
And if the unit is light and a blow is forecast, weight matters. An empty 20ft is about 2.2 tonnes and roughly fifteen square metres of side. Load it low and heavy, or anchor it properly at the corner castings.
Not sure whether your spot is a problem? Ring 07 4152 3388. We deliver into this country every week and we'd rather talk you into the right position than sell you the wrong one.
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