Shipping Containers

Versus vs. and

Rigid and spray foam

Everybody argues rigid foam versus spray foam. Brian builds with both.

John Henry beat the steam drill and died with the hammer in his hand. The crews that did well afterward were the ones who learned to run the new drill and swing the hammer. That's this whole site: Authentic Intelligence and Artificial Intelligence, rigid foam and spray foam, the hammer and the hose.

Everyone else argues versus. Rog4UE builds with and.

A sledgehammer and a spray-foam gun and hose crossed on a dusty floor, fresh foam beside them — AI illustrationThe hammer and the hose, working together.

The mountain · 52 minutes in 47 seconds

First light

A morning out Brian's window on the mountain, from dark pines to sunrise, with one stop at regular speed for the ride out. Every great model starts before anyone else logs on.

GoProThe sweet spot starts at first light.

York, South Carolina · summer 2026

A summer of prototypes

Before the mountain, Brian spent the whole summer of 2026 in York, South Carolina, setting shipping containers into a hillside and trying spray foam on them, one prototype after another. That's how he found out foam can do more than insulate. July 28 was foam day.

A worker in a white protective suit on an orange ladder sprays foam high on a container wall, between wood strips and wrapped windows — PhotoFoam day, July 28. Closed-cell foam going on over the steel, between the strips.

The full length of a foamed container wall, with the sprayer on a ladder at one end — PhotoThe whole wall, one pass at a time.

A long foamed container set up on a red clay berm, someone spraying on its roof, a second container below — PhotoSet into the hillside, up on the berm.

Low view across a corrugated container roof toward the foamed container, a man climbing a ladder — PhotoFrom the roof of the second container.

A second container lying in red clay beside a green army truck, the foamed container in the distance — PhotoThe second container, waiting its turn.

Wide view of the foamed container above a lower container, cut into red clay — PhotoTwo levels against the bank.

Two men standing inside the open end of a container behind a tall wooden ladder — PhotoThe crew at the open end.

A judge's gavel on a courtroom table beside a foam-packed model house and a building permit, the jury box empty behind — AI illustrationThe permit was on the table the whole time.

Get rid of the air you don't want

The radiator wall

A shipping container is close to airtight, as long as you don't cut it. Spray foam seals every cut you do make. So you get to choose where the air goes.

Brian's radiator wall has an air cavity built into it: ribs glued up behind the finish, a path from top to bottom. Warm room air is pulled in right behind the computer, runs down through the cavity, and leaves into the unconditioned end of the container. The air you don't want does one more job on its way out.

The open end of a container with fans mounted in a door panel, a French door inside, and a ladder — PhotoYork, July 28: the fans in the door, where the radiator wall began.

YORK, SC · WEST WALL

Dump the sun

The west wall takes the hot afternoon sun. The cavity carried that heat out before it reached the room: the exhaust air measured 140°F. The east wall got a commercial ventilated system (InSoFast X-Brackets), so the summer was a side-by-side test.

THE MOUNTAIN · NORTH WALL

Warm the bank side

On the mountain the radiator wall faces north, against the hillside, and never sees the sun. Now the warm air washes the coldest wall and keeps it warm and dry on the way out. Plenty of people warned about condensation. So far there's been none.

Same wall, opposite job.

On Brian's board

The Revit drawing of the radiator wall, layer by layer and with the airflow, is next. Brian is drawing it.

Foam-in-place packaging in cardboard boxes on pallets in front of a new metal shipping container — AI illustrationPackaging for things. A container is packaging for people.

Foam as structure

Packaging for people

Spray foam isn't only insulation. In York, Brian's prototypes showed that closed-cell foam can hold a wall: a demising wall and a top beam held by foam, with no fasteners.

Industry tests point the same way. Closed-cell foam has raised wall racking strength by 70 to 200 percent, and in a 2014 study, 1.5 inches per stud bay tripled it. The packaging world has always known it: foam-in-place holds the contents still. A shipping container is a package. We're the contents.

Straight talk: there's no published code design value for spray foam as a fastener. This page is what we built and watched, not an engineering stamp.

On Brian's board

Rigid foam and spray foam, layer by layer, drawn in Revit. Brian is drawing this one too.

Above 6,000 feet

No left or right. Just up or down.

A walk from the container to the top of the hill, past two dreams on the same mountain. Brian filmed it on a GoPro, cut it himself and wrote the words.

GoProThe home of Team Rog4UE. 2 min 12 s.

What's next

Four buildings on the mountain

Two facilities get drawn live on stream, in Revit: the York prototype and the mountain. The mountain plan is four buildings. Every drawing ends up on this page, and you can watch each one get made and ask questions while it happens.

Watch the streams

A man at two monitors drawing a building model in Revit on a live stream, headphones on, a ring light behind — AI illustrationDrawn live, in Revit, on stream.

Railroad workers swinging hammers side by side with brass steampunk robots on the same track, steam engines behind them — AI illustrationOne crew, one rail.

Who made this page

A crew of John Henrys and a crew of AIs

The John Henrys: Brian built it, filmed it, and is drawing it, with the York crew on foam day.

The AIs: TechSmith's image AI (running on Azure OpenAI) drew the illustrations, from prompts Brian sharpened by hand. Auggie (Claude, by Anthropic) did the research, the writing, and the web work. Brian checks every one of them.

Anything marked AI illustration is an idea, not the job. Photos are the real build.