[ChuckMcM]

I would love to see a walk through of taking a container of unknown origin through a process to make it ready for a living space.

My uneducated assumption was that you walked into one and sprayed your sand/particle blaster at the interior surfaces until you've got raw metal everywhere, then you paint the interior with a metal sealant, followed by a powder coat. Then set up heating coils inside, take the interior temperature up to 210 to 220 degrees C, go back and remove the heating coils and then be ready to start installing flooring/walls what have you.

But I have no idea how practical that set of steps are, or even if they are sufficient. Hence the desire to see the process that someone has used successfully to prepare containers.

[wigiv]

Can't speak to living spaces since we don't do that, but you have the basic process in mind. You might rip the floor planks/panels out entirely, eliminating the smelly, pesticide- laden lumber and giving access to more metal surfaces during blasting. Or, much less ideal but possible: you can seal over the nasty flooring with epoxy then leave it or put another flooring layer on top.

Haven't heard of powder coating interiors - that would be a lot of wattage! - but maybe doable with radiant methods and insulation blankets, or putting the whole thing in a giant curing oven? Most often it's just spray-on epoxy over rust-converting primer. There are low(er)-toxicity formulations out there. For undemanding applications you can paint with household enamel over primer - wouldn't hold up on the exterior though.

Interestingly, the Cor-Ten steel many (most?) containers are made of is a weathering steel that forms a protective rust layer when left to its own devices. So you could conceivably just leave it there to develop a fine rusty patina!

All told, there isn't a single "right way," to clean up a container, but there are some best practices and trends. YouTube seems to have a wealth of folks documenting their container home builds.