Turning a Hill into a Flat(er) backyard pt/2

all right guys we got a jam-packed one today today we've got a customer that has just nothing but a hill for a backyard and with two small children they need a solution so today what we're going to be doing is cutting out the hill installing a retaining wall flattening out the top flattening out the bottom reusing the soil that we excavated when we did the excavation on the cut for the retaining wall to build the backyard and then sodding it this is going to be a two-part mini-series so what are we waiting for let's just dive right into the day all right we have arrived it's gonna be a little bit before blaine's here apparently so uh while we're waiting we're gonna run through the cat there's my baby look at you why you would put a wrapper on a thing of grease i do not know bad idea blaine and sam run through the equipment before the start of every day while sam is greasing blaine is checking the oil and the front pins on the cat are notoriously sticky so sam's come up with his own maintenance routine for that all right this is uh this is going to be a fun one here's what we got going on so we are going to level out this top portion of yard here you're on a pretty good hill and i probably can't really tell in the video but it's a steep one so we're trying to like i said level off this top part of their yard for them so in order to do that we gotta take this whole hill down so that's about the level of this slab here so if you can see there's quite a bit of it that's gonna have to come down and it's got a pretty good kind of thing going to it so we're gonna get that all graded down push it down the hill kind of regrade that area there now this fence is coming down and we're gonna be doing a wall along here where we shave this that's a big old hump right here there's some areas along there that we're gonna have to take down about six feet so it's gonna be a decent amount of dirt before anything can happen the fence has to come down and sam plans on hand disassembling as much as possible we can save the chain link but the posts are another story the posts come out easy except when they're connected to the house they've got to be careful that as they remove this it doesn't swing out and damage the foundation or that brick molding [Music] with the soil removed it comes out pretty easily the rough cut gets made for the retaining wall [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] blaine sets the string line to start laying out the wall that looks pretty good right right there from down here sam clears up the area before they start the cut for the footing which is separate than the cut for the general excavation the footing in this case will be 12 inches below the front of the grade that allows for six inches of rock to be used as a footing and six inches of buried course [Music] the boys have both rock and block on the dump trailer they need the rock so the blocks gotta [Music] go [Applause] we want to keep the street as clean as possible so we dump the rock directly in the bucket of the cab this is called three-quarter clear sewer rock it has no fines in it and it's all three-quarter angular rock in nature and we use this in both for the base and the drainage zone as soon as you pour it down it locks in place and resists movement [Music] have you heard about summer snow when it falls on you your blood runs cold they've got to get the first block set exactly right cause it melts away for it since we're trying to get these first blocks as tight as we can up against the side of the house we got some concrete flames gonna cut it off all right how do you get this one going choke and then just pull the thing we bought this saw last year to do some testing on it for a video and then never used it again so it's been sitting for about 10 months there's no way he's gonna get that fire up [Music] did that just happen that's been sitting i can't believe it that i don't know what to say i mean it fires up better than the steel chop saw we use on a daily basis so this will be the first wall that sam bases entirely on his own blaine is going to set the first block so that sam knows what to go off from but after that this was all sam and this real thing that i could fly that's a broken bridge after the blocks get based they've got to be towed in immediately [Music] while sam's basing and building blaine grabs a skid loader to bring in some backfills [Music] blaine has to be careful not to get any rocks in that series of lines and holes that you see on the top of those blocks if those get filled up with rocks they gotta be hand-picked clean [Music] have her [Music] we've been getting heavy rains every few days so they didn't want to break the trench open all at once but now they're on to the next phase of the project and they need to be very careful as they dig out that bank so they don't knock anything over into their retaining wall blaine shaves down the ground and smooths out his work song [Music] he uses the edge of the bucket to shave through the roots as well all right so we got our string line up we need to be a foot down from the string wing for the rocks and the caps we need to be six inches in front of it for a rock and we need to be 18 inches behind for rocks so that's what i was marking by marking out both the front and back of the trench sam make sure that blaine knows exactly where to take [Music] he carefully uses the skid loader to scratch out the footing he doesn't want to go too deep if he does then he's going to end up putting material back in and placing it and packing it which is just an extra step what he can't do with the machine he touches up the edges by hand [Music] we always use six inches of rock for base the only time we deviate from this plant is if we're building a wall in a swamp and we've got a soil correct the base then we'll go one to two feet thick and put geogrid in it all right well it is uh nine o'clock and 94 degrees oh yeah fun stuff but we got some mobile shade that 10 by 10 camp you 70 bucks at northern tool and i got a feeling that it is gonna pay itself off today [Music] well sam's facing out the block blaine is towing in the course that gets buried and also prepping the base course for sam to work down on [Music] i don't know where i'm going but i don't want to know what predictable life is not what i want putting one foot down one step at a time let the road turn that's just fine people ask all the questions the box you went to classify your life with the stroke of a pen take those old rules we're burning that box right now more breakers dream makers risk but takers ever silence your voice if you think you were made just to blend right in to avoid being mistakes or to tally your sins you might get to the end doing nothing wrong to [Applause] in we're just gonna lock it in so it doesn't go anywhere and keep on stacking [Music] now this next part has confused a few people they towed the wall in both front and back using the excavated material from on-site but once they're up to the height of the buried course then behind the wall they'll switch over to three-quarter clear drainage aggregate it's only for the tow end can they use the excavated material [Music] they have to maintain a safe zone away from the blocks when they're compacting so they can use the plate packer in the front and stay at least six inches to a foot away but on the back side there's no room for it so everything has to be done by hand all right guys well this is part one on the next part of this series we're going to be wrapping this project up and taking you step by step through the process so make sure that you guys stick around for that that's all we got for you today god bless you guys go get em we'll see you on the next one

Channel: Stanley "Dirt Monkey" Genadek

Views: 392,184

Keywords: how to, retaining wall, retaining walls, retaining wall on slope, landscaping, retaining walls ideas, how to turn a hill into a flat yard, how to turn a hill into a flat yard with a retaining wall, how to build a retaining wall youtube, diy retaining wall youtube, retaining wall installation youtube, how to make a yard, terracing a hillside, terracing a slope youtube, how to landscape a slope, fixing a sloped backyard, cheap retaining wall, how to install a retaining wall, 4k

Id: B7k8_qieUIo

Length: 14min 46sec (886 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 19 2020