Shipping Containers

A shipping container is a cold steel box. That is where the water comes from.

Our ThermoCork spray is excellent to stop condensation in shipping containers. It is also good for the exterior.

Why a container drips

Warm air carries moisture you cannot see. Put that air against a surface colder than it is and the moisture comes back out as water on the surface. A shipping container is about the plainest example of that you will ever stand inside: a thin steel skin with nothing behind it, sitting out in the weather, going cold overnight and cold again every time the wind turns.

So the steel is colder than the air in the box, and the coldest surface is where the water lands, every time. It lands on the roof in particular — and then it drips back down onto whatever is being stored underneath it.

What the cork does about it

ThermoCork insulates the surface itself. Sprayed straight onto the steel, it takes the cold out of the face of it, so the inside of the container sits nearer to the temperature of the air in it instead of well below. Once the steel is no longer the coldest thing in the box, the moisture in the air has nothing to condense on. No water forming on the roof, nothing dripping onto the contents.

The other half of it is that cork will actually stay on steel. The coating is super-adhesive and takes to a range of surfaces that most coatings will not look at, steel among them. Here it has gone over the corrugated sides and up over the roof ribs on the inside, and outside over the door leaves, the hinges and the locking bars — following the shape of the pressings rather than filling them in.

Someone asked us on our spray cork render page whether this could be done to the inside of a metal container roof to keep the condensation away. This is the container we were talking about.