June 2004
Contact: Holly Brooker
(845) 255-1450 xt. 1301

Ulster BOCES Students Wire Habitat for Humanity House

If you happen to drive by a two-story house under construction on Gill Street in Kingston you’ll notice a flurry of activity behind the large “Ulster County Habitat for Humanity” project sign propped in the front yard.

Part of that activity is being generated by a group of 16 students enrolled in the Ulster BOCES Electrical Construction and Maintenance program. The students are contributing their expertise in electrical wiring and will soon have the Habitat House wired from top to bottom.

“They’re doing a fantastic job,” says Dave Beattie, project coordinator for Ulster County Habitat for Humanity. “They are a great bunch of individuals. They should be proud of what they’re doing. ”

Students in the Electrical Construction and Maintenance program at Ulster BOCES learn residential, commercial, and industrial electrical wiring skills. They graduate from the program with the knowledge and skills needed to enter the electrical field as apprentices or continue their education at a post-secondary school.

Jim Countryman, Electrical Construction and Maintenance teacher at the Ulster BOCES Career & Technical Center in Port Ewen, is very proud of his students. “They are an excellent group, mostly seniors and a few juniors that I felt were ready,” he says.

Two of those students, Andrew Dolan, a senior at Saugerties High School, and Dan Dunham, a senior at Kingston High School, were working at the building site recently under the supervision of Countryman. The two were drilling holes in the kitchen floor joists to accommodate wiring they would later route through the floor to the electric control panel in the corner of the basement. Both young men say they plan to continue their education in electrical construction and will be attending Hudson Valley Community College in the fall.

While Dolan and Dunham prepared the floor joists, Adam Vedder, also a senior at Kingston High School, hauled a 1,000-foot spool of electrical wiring into the basement. He climbed a ladder and began feeding the electrical wire through the drilled holes to his co-workers. Vedder will be leaving for Basic Training in the U.S. Army following his high school graduation. He hopes he’ll eventually be put to work in an area where he can use his electrical construction skills.

Drilling through floor joists and wall studs, routing and bundling wire, and installing switches, receptacles, and fixtures are only part of the job when it comes to electrical construction. Whether it’s a 1,000-square-foot Cape Cod or a 350,000-square-foot football stadium, the electrical contractor must know the hows and whys of wiring principles, says Countryman. Also vital is extensive knowledge of the National Electrical Code (NEC), which contains installation requirements for meeting industry standards.

“We’ve recently reviewed job safety as well as the National Electrical Code. I’m more than confident they know what they’re doing,” says Countryman. “We like helping the community out wherever we can and its valuable on the job experience for the students – a win-win situation for everyone.”

Habitat for Humanity, an international organization, works with families in need to build simple, decent, affordable homes that are then sold to partner families with no-interest, no-profit mortgages. The families work on their own houses and the houses of others to complete mandatory sweat equity hours. Habitat and its affiliates have built and sold more than 150,000 homes in 92 nations. For more information visit www.habitat.org.