Building a Stone Staircase

well just what we needed this morning was more rain when you're behind trying to catch up on projects and uh yeah looks like a little bit wet to work today [Music] so [Music] [Applause] so that we do something a little different today guys i wanted to actually share with you like some of the frustration that goes on with these jobs i kind of personally think it's there's just too many times like social media influencers decide that they want to look good and they don't put the struggle the grind the hustle the meat of what actually has to happen on a job to get it to where you see it and it looks so perfect so today i'm gonna leave a lot of that stuff in and i'm also gonna try something a little different too i'm going to bop in back and forth down in the lower screen and just share with you what i see as i'm seeing it how many of you guys want to bet there's no way tim's gonna let that boulder sit there no way nope not a chance what is he doing where'd they go was it oh 9 15. tim has to take a crap every morning at 9 15. it probably was 9 15. and here they come that's a good looking star it's kind of off though see how that stone he just placed slightly off yeah i got rid of that first one you don't like that one either i've worked with tim for 20 some years he's absolutely meticulous which makes it hard to bid jobs with them so i actually made him half owner of the company and now he's learning you do have to be somewhat efficient he'll watch him he'll put a grade rod on this thing he'll okay i don't know what he's doing here i don't know there's no way i don't like that song you guys like that one alex let me tell you a little story about him good effing ken and i actually swore he would never be allowed back in my house him and his family came over when he was like nine years old and him and his brother went down into my gym of my basement and destroyed it i mean they broke the ceiling fan and i'm like how do how are kids that destructive and when they laughed i said to my wife that kid's never allowed back at my house again and now he's got full access to everything well you know to repair stuff and stuff there you go look at that boulder that's perfect okay yeah good i like those two i like those two alex you gotta learn to keep your butt out of the camera i don't like that i don't like this new camera angle either but they decided to move it okay so let's talk a little bit about the base um this is called recycled class five and what this is um this is standard class spot class five in minnesota is three quarter inch rock and then it's got fines all the way down to dust and then it packs like concrete but here's a really really weird thing it's actually porous you can actually technically use this as drainage aggregate if you know what you're doing it's completely bizarre in a different video i was saying how we had we had to dig out the whole front of this commercial building and then it was like 15 foot wide and 15 foot deep we had to dig it all out because their basement was flooding and then backfill it and this was the material they specced out [Music] yeah i think we got plenty of base in there huh it would be nice and sturdy staircase a little bit overkill but this is just how it's working out coming along here a few more stairs to go we should be up to the top i love watching this process i don't know why i don't even mind the packer kind of being in the way but you can see the step is tweaked it's not lined up right all the mud clamps to keep the rod from scratching uh-huh but they can adjust that by hand you can see it's off the tip right so they gotta you know level it but they also gotta shoot measurements we gotta bring it back up just a hair huh well that side looks good yeah that's leaning back too far so we gotta jack it up a little bit it's crazy how different each step is huh that one's tipping forward just to hear what you want just a little bit take the water out that one could be brought up just a little bit in the back it'd be nice to scoot these in just a hair yeah they kind of this one especially kind of comes in a little bit at the end okay so if i push on push on uh that point right here it'll squeeze it together this whole one could maybe slide in just a little bit but the next step might be kind of tight on that so yeah none of them are the same nope kind of not perfectly level yeah pry over it's got to go that way a little bit oh yeah that would fix it right there let's see here yep how about side to side you're not gonna get a perfectly level side to side depends on what part of the rock you balance it on here you stand up there i'll shove some back here i lift it up too and if you want to do it that way i think this is a waste of time i mean it's doable but he'd have to actually pry the rock up to get it but sometimes things work that you don't think would work and i don't know in this case that that's gonna happen but it is what it is so what is tim doing here what has he got going on all right oh what oh that was kind of funny so that ah what was tim actually had thought he was recording an entire step process and he went to go check the camera and found out they had turned it off beforehand so that was the aha what um so we're back at uh putting one more step in on top of it ended up the best way to get like when your steps are leaning back you want them to lean forward the best way to do is you can shove rock underneath it i don't lay it i prefer just to lift the whole piece out as big of a pain in the butt as that is [Music] so what are you doing here alex backfilling back filling why are we using black dirt in the upper level here of the the wall darker soils what's the benefits of doing that grass on it yep better for growing grass otherwise nothing grows [Music] so tim has actually been hey kudos to him he's actually been trying to i've been asking him hey you know what talk to the camera tell people what you think that's not his natural ability and alex far from it he's not very comfortable he'd rather just head down and work but let's talk about what's going on with this right here he's basically just using a jumping jack to make sure that he can get that all the way around now i don't know some of you guys probably know this but some of you may not right um jumping jacks look like they'd be a really good compactor but they're not they're actually kind of a correct compactor so um and i don't mean that in a bad way there's it's place for it but like when you talk about how a compactor hits it looks like it's really pounding but in reality like the pounds per square inch i think it is i don't really quite recall what the technical term is really isn't that high compared to a drum compactor i think a drum compactor hits it 33 pounds per square foot or is it an inch and i think a jumping jack is rated anywhere from nine to eleven thousand maybe thirteen thousand i mean literally almost a third of what a sheep's foot compactor is um so what i wanna show you right here this is kind of a cool part because you guys can't see a whole lot and tim can either so from an operator's perspective when you're looking at how you're going to build the wall you'll always go can i build it from the front or do i or do i have to build it from the back side and what i say that is tim's actually you guys you guys are right in front of the camera he's actually up and at an angle looking down and he can't see diddly squat i mean just he's blind so alex has to be down in front and alex has to be his eyes and give him hands [Music] oh he's trying to put up a character stone too the character stone is he likes to break up the pattern instead of having everything look all the same he likes to throw in something cool every now and then but that forces him to make sure that he matches perfectly up to it and now he's trying to do it from the back [Music] where is he no no i'm sorry he does put one in from the back side though but not right here here he's just adding a base but it's actually good from this angle you can see how much meat he puts behind it so um you know he's trying to he's trying to optimize the flattest surface area so that the remaining stones can balance upon it and have something really good to sit on we'd always prefer to have our stones sitting on stones oh let's talk about backfill too because some of you guys i'm going to talk about boulder fabric as well and we have just got a lot of time um backfill three-quarter clear drainage how you get when do you use it when don't you need it you should always use it but you don't always have to okay and i say you should always use it because it's just good but you don't always need it and it can be frustrating and raise the price on your customers and if you don't need it is it then beneficial to put something in that isn't helpful to the job site that raises the price on your customer and may put financial strain on them so that's this case we don't need it why raise the price on the project and um you know we passed the savings a lot when don't you need it that's up to you every job is different don't email me your questions when don't you need everyone do you because i have to actually look at jobs i like right now i don't know whatever i had a whole case of these for free they're not bad especially if you add a little diet pepper in the palate all right alex where are we going with the camera okay um what so he ended up removing it oh fabric i'm sorry you guys i get into these things right all right let's talk about fabric fabric is definitely a good thing to have you will need fabric behind a boulder wall especially and you want to use a heavy duty interwoven fabric you got to use really heavy duty stuff not no no light landscape fabric period oh this is a much better angle thank you finally for moving the camera because it'll tear and rip now here's the here's the general rules and things that you need to be aware of with fabric in sandy soils you've got to have fabric because the fabric has to stop if your boulder wall is i don't know how this is going to look here so this is your rocks here's nothing and here's the dirt coming down your your fabric at this point will blind the backside of the boulder wall and then it has to stop the sand from migrating through the joint spaces around the boulder and joint spaces around the boulder are okay now in silty clay soils this is such a cool scene i love this part and silty clay soils fabric can actually become a detriment if you have a lot of a lot of silt and the fabric what will happen is it becomes a screen so the particles come through it and they hit that screen and then they booger it up and then no more water can pass through it and then all of a sudden it starts to bulge right and so now it becomes almost like a dam and so then you can actually have it rupture and when the fabric ruptures which is the weakest part it's going to have a channel that funnels all of that water right into that one area and so then you get these blowout areas right and that's when fabric can become a detriment for the most part i always recommend using fabric now here's an option if you don't want to use fabric you can still have an amazingly incredibly strong wall if you plant it my favorite love planted boulder balls they're a pain in the butt they look bad at if you don't take care of them um it's they're just but they can be amazing they can be gorgeous works of art too if you really take care of them they can be awesome um so it's up to you and you have to okay great they changed the camera angle see all those little joint spaces in there all those little little spots if you were gonna plant this wall you would pack those from the front with uh material you know with organic material or whatever i don't know what you're gonna plant it whether you're gonna plant it with something that vines and crawls i don't you know everybody's in different zones so it uh it is what it is oh i didn't like how alex had to put his hand there you're not gonna stop that boulder alex i don't know man guys when they're working alongside a piece of equipment the equipment makes it look like moving something is so easy but it's not and then guys i always want to jump in and help out it's like it doesn't matter how long you've been doing it a guy always wants to jump in and help out see how tim had that leveling around on top of those stones earlier what is he doing here oh he's digging out more bass what do you think character stone i think it's time for a character stone i think the next one needs to be something cool but i trust his judgment yeah that's a character stone but we can't see it because it's almost off the screen but that's why tim runs heavy equipment and he's not a videographer hey tip notice the camera we can't see you move the camera tim oh thank you dang he's pretty smart boy he um a little story behind tim self-conscious is all get out holy crap balls um he just never believed in himself he was always like never good at math and never good a lot of things and he doesn't really feel you know qualified because now he's like co-owns the business right and um but you know i always listen to tim we worked together for dec decades and he'd be like i'm getting older i don't know what i'm gonna do you know it's like dog well you gotta we all get older and it hurts right it just crap hurts just waking up hurts eventually um so you know oh do you want to be in sales you want to do this and like yeah eventually like i'm just making him the call owner he cares that's why i mean that's all he cares he's i trust him that's the that's the most important things right see put that character stone in that's tough i don't like that one tim he doesn't either that's good i like that one if you can get it to stay uh what are we doing different stone huh oh no same one oh yeah there we go what do you think that looks good i like that i like that a lot i like it what are we doing here oh fabric i think what i don't know what the next step is they're doing oh they're fabricing behind okay so they're just connecting fabric to one other layer of fabric i mean i don't know what else you want to know about that fabric is fabric boulders i guess a good point would be boulders or one of the few retaining walls that you do want to put fabric vertically behind it i always get vertically and horizontally mixed up i don't know 49 years old and i couldn't remember my light my left from my right up to about 10 years ago things that really matter to you right okay so the grapple that's kind of a cool technique see how when we grab oh grab dirt usually we grab it sideways get you a big fat scoop down what are we doing live action that's uh the old turtleman oh i still like that guy what are we doing here guys oh digging out more dirt i just seen it was a timber retaining wall so we had actually it was a railroad tie retaining wall and i say i like that because railroad has a reverse and timbers to dispose of harder don't know what they charge in your neck in the woods for timbers but around here i don't even remember what it was it's just some exorbitant amount got to be careful can't go too deep if he goes too deep you can't just put the soil back you've got to put it back and compact it and compact it and compact it um no if you don't go too deep you can compact it with a jumping jack you're really good and you gotta oversize your whole you can't just fill the spot you did i gotta admit digging with the grapples not always the fastest but you can make it work i do kind of like how you can tip your bucket and just feather dirt well we're down to the last little bit here running low on selection of boulders though kind of come up to that boulder right there that's what we got left up there there's like two more up in the front yard and then we got right here at the moment and he must have got it in place and so this is the remaining so this is the pile that we typically have left over um so we'll bring this this pile back down to the yard and like oddball stalls like this are kind of tough to build a wall with but they make for really good character boulders and they make for like character boulders and boulder settings not really so much character boulders in a wall but character boulders to highlight a wall so like let's say we build a boulder wall and a customer has a pretty massive property and you've got a wall just here by itself well you kind of want to tie something to that wall right well you can take a few uh these more interesting stones that really don't have a good shape to use for you know structurally and partially dig them into the soil so it's like mother nature has exposed this thing and then you plop in a couple cool trees like here i love pine trees i mean how heck we've got them here i think pine trees and boulders may be cliche but i don't give a crap they're cool right um and so that's that's why we save those stones for that and so we could just use these to tie stuff together but we actually got a lot more work to do on this job site the boulder wall is done and then i don't know if tim's capturing the footage or not to be honest with you i asked them to um the customer then asked us to build some chilton state um a walkway and it looked gorgeous at least from the pictures that i seen it looked really good and that's our video for today god bless guys uh hey let me know what you think of me just kind of sharing this part of it like me hanging out with you guys i actually kind of enjoyed it i don't know if you did though some of you probably are like yeah get off my screen dirt monkey and others are like yeah that was cool so whatever i had i enjoyed it uh hope you did too god bless you guys go get em and we will see you on blaine's job site which is coming out next we call it the scooby project