Ecovi

We want to make tourism more sustainable and enable you to stay in a low CO₂ vacation home in Valencia.
We are all about the living of the future! Every house needs energy for heating, cooling and for the appliances of modern life. Our homes will produce more energy than they consume.


We need solutions
Our vacation homes are designed to give people the opportunity to experience what it means to live in a way that conserves resources. Through new technologies and creative ideas, we make living in harmony with the local ecosystem possible. For Spain, for Germany and for the rest of the world. Phew...sounds megalomaniac. Don't worry. We'll start with a house. And only when that's done, we'll move on to the next one. And in the meantime, we'll share our knowledge and hopefully inspire many more imitators. On Mallorca, on Sylt, and somewhere else where Goethe has been before.
It doesn't matter whether you want to help slow down climate change, prefer to vacation in a natural house, or want to know how to become independent from oil and gas. In the end, you can get a little closer to all of these goals by supporting us.


The problem

• almost half (!) of the world's (!!) waste is construction waste (!!!)
• the production of cement and thus concrete consumes more energy than the entire air traffic✈️
• sand is needed for cement and concrete production. Sand, however, is a finite resource that is rapidly running out. And yes, sand from the desert is unfortunately useless for construction
• Water is becoming an increasingly scarce commodity worldwide. Especially in Spain
• Energy problems we are experiencing right now on our own body, it urgently needs alternatives.

A sustainable vacation home: what is it actually?

• Small footprint.
This is a beautiful vacation home with a minimal ecological footprint. We produce our electricity for e.g. air conditioning and the usual household appliances with solar panels. Our hot water is produced by solar thermal. Both systems are located on the flat roof of the house.



• Low water consumption
We save water by not polluting it and using it multiple times. We use only biodegradable soaps and cleaners. This way, with the help of special filters, we can use our water for watering the plants, for example.


• Waste separation
Of course there is the possibility to separate garbage with us. We take care of the correct disposal for you. We also offer little tricks and tips on how to avoid waste. In our house you will always find shopping bags, reusable bottles, drinking water filters and food storage containers.



• Sustainable building materials
In sustainable building, (natural) stones, clay, straw and wood form the basis. They are locally available and can easily be returned to the natural cycle. Compared to buildings made of concrete and steel, there is hardly any environmental impact. On the contrary: if renewable raw materials are installed professionally, the CO₂ they contain is stored and can no longer escape into the atmosphere.

The design for our first house is 60 m² construction area and 45 m² living area. The house has a bedroom, living room, kitchen, bathroom and a covered terrace and is suitable for up to 4 people.
Building a straw house saves so much energy that you can heat with it for 70 (!) years. We can show ecological ways, make them tangible and thus contribute to the faster spread of sustainable buildings - not only on vacation, but also at home with us.

We will prove

• that sustainable building is absolutely feasible.
• That sustainable homes not only feel much better, but look damn good too.
• That every euro we put into sustainable homes pays for itself in the long run.

We want

• make tourism more sustainable.
• apply alternative building methods and make them visible.
• build with what nature gives us and what it easily takes away.
• reduce the use of petrochemical building materials.
• pass on knowledge to as many people as possible.
• become a public benefit corporation.
• build a community.

Moving forward together.
Governments are currently stepping up their efforts to meet the UN Sustainable Development Goals by providing more and more funding for sustainable development. However, this requires projects like ours that build communities where knowledge is collected, applied and shared.

Rethinking the tried and true.
Our ancestors already used stone, clay, wood and straw to build their houses. With a combination of these materials, scientific knowledge about their optimal use, and modern technologies, we can build a new and comfortable kind of houses today. Thus, we not only save energy, but produce more than we consume. And we actively remove CO₂ from the natural cycle, which is stored in the walls.

Zero Waste
Ecological materials are locally available and can be built without the use of chemical additives. They can be reused when the house is demolished or returned to the natural cycle.

Applied Science
Science provides us with knowledge on how to achieve as good thermal insulation and sound and fire protection values with ecological materials as with concrete houses, in which many petrochemical building materials (oil-based) are installed. In addition, ecological buildings bring some advantages that are difficult to achieve in any other way.

Clay, for example, provides

• binding of pollutants (allergens are removed from the air, unpleasant odors disappear)
• regulates humidity (mirrors do not fog up)
• a pleasant room climate: the excess moisture escapes. If the air in the room is dry, clay releases moisture into the air in the room. Especially good for astmatics and people with chronic bronchitis.
• a very high heat reflection, which triggers a cozy feeling even on cold days.

Up-to-Date
Modern technologies allow us to combine environmental sustainability with comfort. In the future, houses do not have to rely on external energy sources, or can even produce surplus energy.
Through good planning and clean execution, we can massively reduce the energy and resource requirements of the house. With an average of only 3.5 rainy days per year in the greater Valencia area and all the more sunshine, solar panels on the roof can produce additional energy for electric vehicles, air-to-water heat pumps or local power. Shower water can be reused in the toilet, so no valuable drinking water is lost, and thanks exclusively to ecological soaps, the water can even be reused afterwards to irrigate plants.

Education
Those who come to us can simply enjoy their vacation or go on a little educational journey. One concept we work with is called casual learning. Discreet opportunities to learn about how the houses work and the advantages and disadvantages of ecological construction are made accessible via QR codes.
Those interested in individual topics can book guided tours or learn techniques of ecological building and living in the form of workshops. Seeing and touching these alternatives often works better than pure theory. We install raw materials professionally so that the CO₂ they contain is stored and can no longer escape into the atmosphere.
The house should not only be a beautiful place to enjoy the benefits of ecological living in peace, but also a model project with which people learn something.

Common good
For us, the symbiosis of economic, social and environmental sustainability is a must-have. We will build a common good company. The compass for our entrepreneurial decisions will be the values of human dignity, solidarity and justice, ecological sustainability, and democracy and transparency. We will put our economic activities to the ethical test and publish a common good balance sheet.

• because you like to go on vacation to Spain.
• because you don't need a vacation from sustainable living.
• because you want to support the energy transition.
• because we have the right networks.
• because we plan to do more than build vacation homes.

For the local ecosystem
For every night you book with us after the campaign, a tree will be planted in the Valencia region. This way we support the local reforestation.

Vision
We want to be a lighthouse project and inspire many people to build sustainably. Our dream is to build a small ecovillage in the long run. With an organic store, workshop site, community kitchen, upcycling workshop, permaculture garden and much more!

For the people
Democracy and co-determination is an important value to us. Initially, we want to build the company in pairs. ecovi is meant to grow and flourish, however, and there comes a point when we need more support. There are firm plans to democratize ecovi as we scale up. Our current favorite model is a cooperative.

After successful financing, we first establish ecovi in Spain and buy the land. After that, we start with the detailed planning of the house. Permits, architects and structural engineers are involved. The costs for the planning are about 12% of the final price. After that we will finish the shell of the house, i.e. foundation, walls, roof and connections. To make the house rentable we will then take care of the furnishing, so that we can welcome the first guests.
The last investment, will be aimed at sustainable technologies, such as solar and air conditioning (or air-water heat pump), a solar thermal system and a battery to store the solar electricity.

How do we finance the house and land?
The total cost of our design is 166 250 EUR. Half of the start-up investment is financed by the NextGeneration Fund of the European Union. Another quarter is equity that we invest in the project. And the last quarter we want to finance through crowdfunding (crowdlending). 50% EU funding, 25% equity and 25% crowdfunding.

We can reduce the cost of the house with a lot of own work and apply to European funding pots to apply for more money. However, this will increase the construction time.

Who takes the money?
Unfortunately, as a Spanish company, we cannot collect the money directly through the Startnext platform. These are the regulations of Startnext. However, the following is a common workaround that other projects have successfully used.
The entire revenue generated via crowdfunding will first be collected on behalf of ecovi by Jan-Philipp Brinkmann in trust as a freelancer (sole proprietorship) in Germany, managed and then transferred in full as a transitory item to ecovi (name may differ) S.L. in Spain before the end of the fiscal year 2022.