In Brief
Project EcoHouse at Macalester College in St Paul, Minnesota kicked off in Fall 2007 with the move-in of four student residents. The 1950's era house house underwent significant "green" renovations in summer 2007, including the installation of a domestic solar hot water system, a recyclable steel roof, wall insulation and high efficiency energy star appliances.  While developmental work is continuing, this project has already gained the attention of several local newspapers including the Minneapolis Star Trubune as well as Macalester press.
 
The Vision
The vision of the EcoHouse is to be a unique exploration of practical green-living technologies and lifestyles that works with community partners to connect people to usable resources on green building and living while fostering open discussion on sustainable living.  Several functions of the house will to be a "live-in" laboratory for green and cost effective renovations and technologies, a clearing house for community org and efficiency resources and a participant and host in dialogues on sustainable lifestyles. This vision will be carried out with a covenant for all future EcoHouse members, through house events, skillshares and by building connections to on and off-campus resources, mainly through the use of a comprehensive website. This is a project in continual development.
 
Next Steps...
The Spring of 2008 will see the project move into a new phase through the dispensation of a community outreach grant from the Xcel foundation. This will consist of two workshops, one during the school semester and the other during the summer.  These events seek to engage citizens, professionals and local organizations in a teaching and learning collaborative on sustainable and green design. Future plans for the house include designing and funding a sophisticated
energy and resource monitoring system that will break down electricity,
gas and water usage in detail. Such a system will allow the EcoHouse
to provide empirical data on cost effectiveness of various house
systems that we can then share with many others.
We are open to expanding and developing the scope of the project and engaging community connections as we move forward on the project. This is a technical and social experiment and the more suggestions the better!