Muncie, Ind - Eco Rehab is a non profit organization located at The Yard in Downtown Muncie. The organization builds and transforms older houses into sustainable, eco friendly homes. For the last sixteen years Eco Rehab has worked hard remodeling older homes into modern houses, while keeping their classic features. Eco Rehab created a program called Skilled Trades Education Program (STEP) for sixteen to twenty-four olds to get hands on experience in construction.
“We are able to provide housing for a population that’s wanting to become a home owner that doesn’t like all the headaches that come with a lot of renovations and stuff. We take care of all that ahead of time.We do renovations through sustainable practices, looking at energy efficiency,” said Jason Haney, CEO of Eco Rehab.
Additionally, Eco Rehab has partnered with the Professors of Architecture Tom Collins and Pam Harwood, along with their architecture students to look at ways to do panelization. This collaboration will also let students get experience designing houses that will actually be built in Muncie.
“We developed a great opportunity to learn how to build panelized walls. We learned a lot how to basically do it correctly and things that we have learned we are gonna be sharing with the public through this merchandising mark, that were building now,” said Pam Harwood, Professor of CAP at Ball State University.
The elective architecture class called “Hands on Timber” has been exciting for students and taught them to persevere through all struggles.
“The biggest struggle has also been the best learning opportunity and that is to find, to learn about the specific ways that things go together, which is basically architecture in a nutshell. But to be able to do it hands on and to see like you may have just witnessed with the specific conversations about specific elements and finding out how those things fit together is really important and its been challenging but really interesting to learn,” said Logan Heller, CAP Student at Ball State University.
The Ball State students have been working hard at the Yard frequently and although the program is relatively new, a lot of progress has been made.
“So it’s really been fascinating to watch this develop, where we will have Ball State students actually working on designing homes that are going to be built here in the community and coming up with the drawings and renderings and processes to make this happen and then our students will take it from there and actually construct those homes so it’s really been an exciting process,” said Jason Haney, CEO of Eco Rehab.
Contact Stella Davis with comments at estella.davis@bsu.edu.
