Tiny house bound for Colorado from WBHS shop

Building trades project nears completion
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By David Wilhelms Reporter

A mobile “tiny house” from the shops of Wittenberg-Birnamwood High School will soon join similar buildings from six Missouri high schools in Leadville, Colorado.

The seven structures will be part of a rental complex in the mountain town, said Caleb McPhail, WBHS building trades instructor. Tiny houses are a recent architectural and social movement that advocates living simply in small spaces.

The building, sporting an exterior that might be called a vivid green, is parked outside the shops at the high school. The color choice was the buyer’s, McPhail said. It will be done by the end of this school year. It was to have been completed last school year but the COVID-19 pandemic intervened, causing delays, McPhail said.

How the 26-foot structure became part of a western project is a story that starts in 2019. McPhail noticed a slide of a tiny house in a presentation on new technology and new teaching practices in Wittenberg.

McPhail saw the tiny house as a way for his students to something more than the “usual” shed, like the one built for Wittenberg Elementary School, involving skills from construction trades besides carpentry.

A little investigation uncovered the buyer’s name and residence in Pennsylvania. Further work solidified the contract for WBHS. Work began in November 2019 after getting school board approval.

McPhail called the board’s support “fantastic” with the only guidelines being that the students learn something and the project doesn’t lose money. The students are responsible for executing every part of the building, using the blueprint supplied by the buyer. This includes the expected tasks, such as putting up walls and installing windows, but also making and installing trim work and flooring.

The main goal is to expose students to tasks expected of a range of construction trades, McPhail continued. They are responsible for executing all aspects of the plan they were provided.

Making the execution easier is the remodeled shop space and addition of machinery and tools from the recent district referendum, McPhail said.

“Maybe a student wants to be an electrician but they ‘pull wire’ for two weeks and discovers they don’t want to be an electrician any more. Then another kid will find he likes being a plumber,” he said.

Because of ongoing health concerns, students work on the house in small groups focused on a task, such as finishing the piping under the floor, instead of focusing on one skill set, such as plumbing. “We don’t want anyone to miss out on trying different things,” McPhail said.

The real world orientation to teaching the construction trades will continue and may take several forms in coming years, McPhail said. The buyer behind the Leadville project wants similar buildings for a Florida complex and is interested in continuing the relationship with WBHS, McPhail said.

A community member has also reached out to McPhail for building a house. That is an exciting prospect, McPhail said, because it involves the students in working with a client, developing and executing plans and other pre-construction details. The instructor added he likes to see students involved in the design and early decisions, as it gives them more ownership in the project.

An example of that is the recently completed storage shed for the school’s baseball team. He noted some of his students were also baseball players and were pretty excited to build their own storage.

 


 

wittenberg@newmedia-wi.com