Building a DIY RETAINING WALL with CONCRETE BLOCKS & LIGHTS!

[Music] if you've been following along with the not so tiny house build series since the beginning you'll know that the plan has always been to transition from the small deck on the house to a paver patio area and in order to make this paver patio end up flush with the deck i first needed to build a retaining wall in order to be able to grade the area and build up to height so before starting on the retaining wall i had some major cleanup work to do including filling in the trench leading from our main house which is where our water electrical and ethernet supplies run i needed to fill this trench in with multiple layers or lifts of soil so that i could properly compact the soil as i went and otherwise this area would have been prone to settling over time and would have freaked havoc on my retaining wall and patio which run right on top of this trench so after adding about six inches of dirt to the trench i ran a plate compactor which i borrowed from my buddy eric perkins through the trench to compact that first lift of soil after compacting i could repeat the process a few more times until i had the trench completely filled in and then i could go over the entire area with an excavator which i rented from a local rental company hampton equipment rental once that was done i got the tool that was the real star of this whole project setup the rotary laser and in case you're not familiar with them rotary lasers shoot a 360 degree laser line that is accurate over long distances and then you can use a reader to detect your laser line even when you can't physically see the line and the reader can be mounted to a grade rod and you can set the reader to match your desired height or depth in our case of whatever you're working on so to figure out that specific depth i had to do some quick math here as i wanted to ensure the top of the retaining wall ended up perfectly flush with our deck so for this cornerstone retaining wall block system that i used i needed to dig down at least six inches below the first corsa block and fill that area with a compacting base material to give the wall a solid footing we then needed four courses of the eight inch tall cornerstone 100 wall blocks on top of that and then the whole wall could be finished off with the cap blocks which are four inches tall so once i had that number figured out i could set my grade rod to that measurement we still had a decent amount of material to remove so i took out a few more buckets full of dirt with the excavator being really careful not to bash my brand new deck or more importantly those huge sliding glass doors [Music] but yeah like right here yeah so eddie and i continued cleaning up the trench with some hand digging and we also worked on widening it a bit since we needed a foot of clearance both in front of and behind the blocks making for a three foot wide trench with the trench for the front wall looking good i could start roughing out the other walls with the excavator and here's a quick overview of how our wall was going to look with it running around the perimeter of this whole patio area and if you're going to take on a project this large i'd highly recommend modeling it with some kind of 3d modeling software which was sketchup in my case as it'll really help you figure out your sizing the materials you'll need and it'll really just help you get a handle on the whole project so we roughed out both perpendicular walls making sure to check our depths with the grade rod frequently to make sure i wasn't digging too deep and eventually we were close enough to add the first six inch layer of compacting base material before doing that i ran the plate compactor in the trench to compact any of the loose soil which there really wasn't much of and then it was time to get the fill material delivered so i found a local company who specializes in delivering these types of material by the dump truck load and with the help of my 3d model i figured out that i needed a total of three dump truck loads of the compacting base material and another dump truck full of three-quarter inch washed gravel totaling 64 tons of material so of course the washed gravel was the first to arrive and so i needed to clear a path so i could move the compacting base which i needed to use first back to the site now i guess i could have moved all this material with a shovel and wheelbarrow but i decided to rent another machine from hampton machine rental a skid steer and man was this thing fun so i'd never driven a skid steer before this project but let me tell you they are really pretty easy to operate and this machine made quick work of moving this mountain of material back to the patio area [Music] so after clearing a path for the skid steer the dump truck arrived with the compacting base material which the material delivery company referred to as abc or aggregate base course and this material is made up of a mixture of crushed rock and asphalt dust and this dust really helps the material compact well making it an ideal choice for this kind of base and fill material after they delivered two truckloads i started moving the material into the trench with the skid steer and then started hand spreading it and i really didn't realize just how heavy this stuff was gonna be it was quite the workout to say the least [Music] i also changed the reader location on my grade rod to reflect the finished height of the compacted base which was six inches higher than the soil and then continued adding more material and spreading it through the trench also since this plate compactor was a little on the underpowered side i went ahead and compacted the material about halfway through filling the trench just to make sure everything was well compacted eventually i had the trench brought up to our target height and the following day eddie and i could get to work getting the trench screeded to final level so in case you're not familiar with screeding it's a process commonly used in concrete and hardscape work and involves sliding a board riding on a reference edge across a surface to get that surface perfectly flat and level and there are commercially available screed boards available if this is the type of thing you do for a living but they were prohibitively expensive so i opted for the low tech solution of a straight 2x4 before screening we needed to set our screed rails which served as the reference edge for the screed board to ride on and again there are commercially available options here but three quarter inch metal emt conduit is a great low cost option and that's what we went with here unfortunately i had somehow really overfilled the trench so we had to dig down a good bit to set our screed rails to height and then had to rake some of that excess material to loosen it up enough to screed eventually though we had the excess material removed and could use the screed board to level the surface and this kind of sawing motion is extremely helpful when screeding rough material like this abc [Music] we then continued screening the rest of the trench working in roughly nine foot sections and we also continued the process around the corners and into the area for the perpendicular wall on this right side and then we could finally start getting the locations of our first course of the cornerstone block laid out to do this we first set up a string line that corresponded with the back face of the first course of block which needed to be 12 inches behind the face of the deck fascia to run a string line here we used these line blocks which allowed us to run the string line off of a retaining wall block sitting on the ground and the string line wrapped around the line block and then it could be hooked behind the edge of the wall block we repeated this process at the other end of the front wall and then we could check our measurements along the length of the deck using a level as a reference and the nice thing about using these line blocks is that it's super simple to move the retaining wall blocks to adjust your string line versus using something like a jet stake which we did need to use for the perpendicular line since there wasn't room for a wall block there after setting those two string lines we used the three four five method to check that the lines were square which by some miracle they were after the first attempt and then we could get the first block uh corner block in this case set in place so as you can see these corner blocks look a little different than the regular cornerstone wall blocks and their measurements are a little different as well measuring nine inches deep rather than 12 inches deep like the wall blocks and this meant that we needed to space the back edge of the corner block three inches off of our string line since they were set up to align with the back face of the wall blocks once the corner block was in position i could double check it for level and made any minor adjustments with a dead blue mallet before setting the wall block in place i needed to remove the lugs on the bottom face of the block which we knocked off easily with a hammer and these lugs are what reference these cornerstone blocks against the previous row and helped set that offset between the rows but they needed to be removed on this first row since these blocks were being set directly onto the compacted base and the lugs would have made them out of level otherwise with that done i could set the first wall block in place which was no easy task considering these blocks weigh in at a whopping 75 pounds each thankfully i was able to modify an inexpensive brick lifting tool i found on amazon to work with these blocks by adding a couple of wooden wedges to the inside faces of the jaws and these wedges match the angled edges on the wall blocks and i would not attempt to build a wall like this without some kind of tool like this and i'll link to it in the video description below in case you're interested anyway after setting and leveling the wall block i could continue on down the row lining up the back face of the blocks with the string line as i went and this is important as you can see that the front face of the blocks have some variability due to the rough texture so you always want to be referencing the back face of the blocks with this cornerstone system once we got a good section of the front wall in place we could prep for the second course by completely filling the cores of the blocks along with the area in front of and behind the first course with more that abc material compacting the material after filling also speaking of the footing a lot of people asked in the comments on my previous decking video why i even bothered with this tiny deck on the front of the house and then just build the retaining wall right up against the house and as you can probably see in this shot it was because this footing area on the retaining wall and the footings on the house would have interfered otherwise anyway after sweeping off any excess material from the surface of the first course we could start on the second course of block again starting in the corner so as i mentioned these courses are offset from the previous row by about half an inch and this offset is set by the lugs on these cornerstone wall blocks and these corner blocks obviously don't have these lugs so i had to set that offset myself also as you can see this corner block was set perpendicular to the previous corner block and this positioning sets the running bond pattern between the wall blocks which helps strengthen the wall next i could set the wall block in place using those lugs on the bottom of the block to help set its position relative to the block in the previous course before setting the other wall block closest to the corner i needed to knock off one of the lugs since there wasn't a spot for the lug on the corner block and then i could set it in place fine tuning the position of the corner block to match after setting those first couple blocks on the front wall i needed to take a little break and cut a notch section for the drain pipe which needed to be installed behind this corsa block and to cut this notch i used a cut-off saw which can easily be rented for a project like this i first marked where i needed to cut the block making sure to mark the block on both faces so that i could keep the cut nice and square and then i could get to cutting and this particular saw can be hooked up to a hose which essentially eliminated any airborne dust which was a really nice feature after making the vertical cut i used a mason chisel to break out that area which was easy enough but now i see why they have those molded hand guards on some of these chisels and it's really easy to miss and hit your hand when you're focused on where your chisel is and not where you're hammering [Music] anyway i got the tee fitting nicely and then we cut off a short length of drain pipe to extend the tee past the front face of the block and once that was installed in the block we could set it in place and continue working down the wall next we could work on setting the first course on the other corner of the wall and while we do that let's talk about the sponsor of this week's video chirp audiobooks so i'm a huge fan of audiobooks and love listening them while i'm working and they were especially helpful on this retaining wall project passing the time during all of these repetitive tasks so chirp is unique as there's no subscription fee like other audiobook retailers and chirp features incredible limited time deals on audiobooks at up to 95 off so i'm a die-hard stephen king reader and if you're a fan of spooky supernatural tales i'd highly recommend a book that's currently on sale on chirp necronomicon by h.p lovecraft in fact if you use my coupon code crafted workshop 5 which will get you 5 off your first book on chirp you can get necronomicon for free or five dollars off any other audiobook on the chirp store so if you're looking to pick up a new audiobook to help make a long sanding session or your commute more bearable find the promo code and click the link in the video description below and big thanks again to chirp for sponsoring this week's video once we got that second corner set we called it for day three and day four was my last day with the excavator rental so we went ahead and marked out where the rest of the wall would be located so that we could dig those trenches a little later and then we could start backfilling behind the wall and getting the drain pipe set in place so we added a second drainage outlet towards the left end of the front wall making sure both pipes exited a good distance from the footings on the house and then we got the perforated drain pipe attached to the tees and this particular drain pipe just snapped together with the tees and also had these accordion sections for bending around corners and we also added a little bit of material in the center of the wall to help slope that section of pipe towards the two t's and then we could start back filling the wall with the abc material so when adding this backfill we made sure to leave roughly a foot behind the wall for the three-quarter inch wash gravel which is what the drain pipe would be surrounded by because otherwise the dust in this abc material would clog the drain pipe making it essentially useless and in case all these instructions sound a little bit overwhelming cornerstone has some great instructions on their website and this is where i learned all of this stuff i highly recommend this cornerstone system it was really simple to work with i've never done this type of retaining wall project before and they were available here locally in asheville and they were delivered right to my backyard anyway after backfilling and compacting with the abc i came back with the three quarter inch washed gravel and filled in the area behind the block as well as in the cores of the block and this three-quarter inch gravel will help to lock each course of block together since the gravel can flow through each course into the previous course and the gravel also adds a ton of weight to the wall making it even stronger after adding the gravel we swept the excess off of the top of the box which also removes just enough gravel from the cores to allow room for those lugs and then we can start laying the third course of block once again starting in the corner and once again alternating the position of the corner block to keep that running bond pattern going once the third course was added on the front wall and around the corners we continued backfilling before digging the rest of the trenches as i knew it'd be tricky getting the skid steer over those trenches once they were dug while eddie spread that backfill material i got to work with the excavator and got the trenches roughed in which was pretty tricky considering all the trees and other trenches i had to work around eventually though i got the trenches dug which was a wrap for the excavator and then i switched over to the forks on the skid steer to move around some of the blocks so that they were a little bit closer to where we'd be working so because of the way our yard slopes it just wasn't necessary or economical to have this wall be the same depth around the entire perimeter so the bottom course of the wall needed to be stepped up in areas to do this we needed to repeat this same process of filling the area below where the wall would step up with at least six inches of abc and then we could screed the section using a screed rail at one end and using the previous course of block as our screening surface at the other end once that was done we could continue on with the topmost course until we got to the block which would span across this elevation change and before adding this block we needed to knock off one lug since again it would be set directly onto the abc material and then we could just continue on with that course treating it like a first course and knocking both lugs off we continued along on this wall turning another outside corner and we stopped short so that we could still get the skid steer into this middle area without driving over the wall also we needed to cut another block here at the corner and let's take a look at how we did that so first we marked our measurement all the way around the block since we need to make cuts on all sides of the block to cut all the way through it and the reason for this is these blocks are eight inches tall and the blade on this cutoff saw can only cut about three inches deep so we had to make these cuts in a few passes on four faces of the block we continued on at the opposite end of the wall making another level change and also turning an inside corner this time which was nice as they don't require corner blocks and we eventually got each end of the wall to where the final level change would be but before laying those blocks we went ahead and laid the fourth course in all of the areas of wall we had already set so that we could get that main area back filled before boxing out the skid steer once we had the area filled as much as we could we got those last sections of wall set and these sections ended up only being one course high we also had to do a lot of hand digging here as the locations i dug with the excavator were a little bit off finally on day seven of working on this project we got the last blocks laid which was a huge relief as i'd also managed to strain my pectoral minor during this process day seven was also my last day with the skid steer so i made sure to get all of the fill material added around those last sections of block and do a little more grading work in front of the wall to blend in that transition before sending it back with john and hampton machine rental anyway with the wall blocks installed now all that was left to do was to get the cap blocks added before adding the blocks i went ahead and ran a low voltage wire through the front wall for the hardscape lighting which i'll show in a bit next we could start adding the blocks and we kind of lucked out on the front wall and ended up being able to use full cap blocks with no cutting and we just butted them up against each other at the corners rather than mitering them since the measurements just worked out perfectly and before setting them in place with construction adhesive we set up a string line to make sure they were nice and straight we set the string line so the blocks would end up with roughly a quarter inch to half inch gap between the front edge of the block and the decking and this was just to account for the kind of craggy front face of these blocks once the string line was in place we could start setting the blocks and we added a heavy bead of titebond tight grab which is an outdoor rated construction adhesive before setting the block also i thought this battery-powered caulk gun would be kind of a gimmick when i first got it but man has this thing come in handy for these kinds of projects we went through two cases of this adhesive adding these blocks and i know my hands would have been dead trying to squeeze out this super thick adhesive otherwise while eddie worked on adding the rest of the cat blocks at the front of the wall i got to work wiring the hardscape lights which run around the perimeter of the walls and these lights are super simple to install and are low voltage so they're very diy friendly so first i needed to cut a notch for the wire to run across the top edge of the block and the cutoff saw made quick work of this [Music] i stripped the wire on the cord as well as that landscape wire i'd run to the front of the retaining wall and another length of wire that ran to the location of the next light in the chain once the wire was stripped i twisted together three wires matching up the wires with writing on their sheathing which i used as my positive leads next i added a waterproof wire nut making sure all of the exposed copper was tucked into the wire nut and these waterproof connectors are filled with silicone and keep your wiring from shorting out even when they're buried and subjected to the elements i repeated the process with the negative wires and then finally wrapped the bundle of wires with some electrical tape to act as a strain relief just to keep us from ripping the wires apart if we tripped over them before burying them i continued wiring the rest of the 12 lights i used around this wall while eddie kept adding blocks in the next section and i should mention that we also checked these string lines using the 345 method to make sure they were nice and square before adding the next row of blocks you also see that we needed to miter the corners on the rest of these blocks and our process for doing that was similar to cutting the wall blocks marking layout lines on both faces of the block and then cutting through from both sides and getting these two cuts to match up was a little tricky but eddie knocked these out while i kept chugging along with the wiring we repeated the process for this next section of wall and that's where i threw in the towel for day eight as my chest was killing me and i knew i was only gonna make it worse working out there thankfully eddie soldiered on and was able to finish the rest of the cat blocks and then i could wrap up the lighting install so i mounted this low voltage transformer on the back side of the tiny house and connected that wire i had run through the retaining wall and since this outlet isn't actually live yet i had to plug the transformer into an extension cord before i could fire up the hardscape lights to see how they looked and i think they look awesome they're not so bright that they're annoying but they'll hopefully keep people from tripping over the wall in the dark plus i'll eventually add a few more of these lights to the stairs i plan to add to either side of the wall later and with that we could call the retaining wall part of this project complete which was a huge relief and now we're ready to tackle the porcelain paver patio which will be the next video in this series all right hopefully you guys enjoyed this one this was obviously a massive project and there's still a lot more to come make sure to go ahead and get subscribed and ring that little notification bell so you don't miss next week's video which is going to be on installing the porcelain pavers on this patio area and as always i'll have links to all the tools and materials i use down in the video description below alright thanks for watching all and until next week happy building

Channel: Crafted Workshop

Views: 357,908

Keywords: Crafted workshop, retaining wall lights, diy retaining wall, build retaining wall, retaining wall, retaining wall diy, build a retaining wall, do it yourself retaining wall, diy, how to build a retaining wall, retaining walls, how to, outdoor lighting, retaining wall design, retaining wall construction, retaining wall ideas, hardscape lighting, landscape retaining wall, how to retaining wall, how to build a block wall, building a retaining wall, Retaining wall drain

Id: 8S7RXx0wgX0

Length: 21min 6sec (1266 seconds)

Published: Sun May 09 2021