Written by Foster Myhre
Algona High School has the unique opportunity to have a construction class. This class is a dual credit class, meaning students get credit from Algona High School and it is an Iowa Lakes Community College elective. The class is advised by Travis Birkey, who is the construction teacher at Algona High School. The students currently enrolled in the class are Braxton Bierle, Jaxon Eischen, Will Limbaugh, Foster Myhre, Brenden Sampson, Wes Streit, and Levi Walker. Taevyn Zinnel left this class after the second term to graduate early and was replaced by Reese Rahe.
The Bulldogs have been hard at work since the first day of school. Safely the Bulldogs started off by shingling the roof of the house they have been working on for Tim Altman. The first few weeks of the school year the boys worked hard de-shingling the roof of the two story building. After de-shingling, the boys re-sheeted the roof with some hardy plywood. The Bulldogs then laid down underlayment and drip edge for prepping the roof for the shingles.
After finishing the roof, the boys moved on to the garage on the property and took the tin off the sides and roof off the building. Then the boys started tearing the metal beams off the ceiling of the garage and replaced them with wooden trusses to complete the roof of the garage. They then sheeted the roof with plywood and prepped for shingles and shingled the roof of the garage. While the garage was being shingled, two boys had the task of learning how to side a house. Brenden Sampson and Foster Myhre took on the challenge of siding the two story home. After all was said and done, everyone stuck together to finish the garage with fascia and soffit. They then finished the walls of the garage and decided it was time to head inside with the cold coming fast.
Inside of the two story home the boys took on wiring. They wired everything from outlets to puck lights and all of the way to dryer outlets. That was a homerun because they then had to run all the wire back to the breaker box from all of the outlets and light boxes with helpful tips from Dean Meyer Electric. Since being inside, the boys finished insulating the exterior walls recently and are now working on drywalling the ceilings of the rooms.
While working on the house, four days were taken off to work on the Bulldogs’ baseball diamond. The boys are re-modeling the clubhouse shelves and also making player cubbies inside. They are also expanding the dugout outwards, making for more celebration space for the ball players. In addition, they are making better barriers for the outside of the dugout in both the home and visitor dugouts.
Will Limbaugh is very excited about this class and states, “Working hard is fun, and this is a very good learning experience.”
The construction class is still dry-walling the ceilings and walls and when they're finished with that, they're heading to the baseball diamond to finish the dugouts.