Floating shipping container makes ideal low-cost home

It may not be a country cottage or a smart high-rise apartment but a home in a floating metal box may be the answer to low-cost housing.

One man from Bedford has creating his dream house in a metal box.

It started as a dream of becoming mortgage free but Max McMurdo's design has prompted so much interest it could provide the blueprint for low cost housing.

To turn an old shipping container into the home of your dreams is no easy task.

But that's just what he's done and now he's enjoying life on the water at Bedford Marina.

There has been a huge amount of interest in the project, in part due to it featuring on the Channel 4 programme George Clarke's Amazing Spaces.

It followed Max as moved from his cottage near St Neots and used the money to convert the container. He's now mortgage free.

It is an amazing space.

The shipping container home is just 40 feet long and yet packed with ingenious ideas.

There's an under-bed wardrobe for instance. Or the shower that conceals a bath beneath.

There are a number of hidden compartments and a single tap that services both the kitchen and bathroom.

Max's philosophy is that we're all too hung up on bricks and mortar.

Caught up in the rat race believing that when it comes to our homes - bigger is better.

That, he says, makes us slaves to mortgages and household bills when as his waterside home demonstrates there is another way.

It cost £47,000 to create this dream home but £10,000 of that was the cost of the concrete pontoon on which the container sits.

Max has started a project to create a more generic version of the container home.

If plans are given the go-ahead there could be 14 built at Bedford Marina.

Click below to watch a video report by ITV News Anglia's Russell Hookey