Building a TALL engineered retaining wall on a steep slope #2

[Applause] [Music] as promised guys we're back on our big wall project we're building an 11 foot tall wall on an extremely steep slope and we're going to show you all the ins and outs and all of the detail work that goes into a project like this [Music] [Applause] [Music] so we're also going to be talking about building a geogrid reinforced or fortified retaining wall and what goes into the design for a project like this and some of the misconceptions and things that can lead to problems alrighty so plan for today is we're going to be working on over there and i'm going to be working on over there and whatnot uh first so i gotta cut one last one for that course of corner and then this is gonna be be our next grid layer i got my baby working got her all fixed i ain't gonna tell you how i fixed it just the important thing is i got it working until the new belt gets here which is hopefully on tuesday so that's the only important part is that it's working so i get my water going here now on this project we've got two 90 degree corners that we're building and we're using the versalock standard units to build these corners we don't have to order special blocks we can create our own blocks out of just the regular units this is another one of the reasons why we use these out in the field [Applause] [Music] [Applause] i like i like doing these cuts i just sit up here all day and cut blocks if i could actually no i wouldn't i'd probably get real sick of that sooner than later i take that back [Music] sam makes cutting blocks look a lot easier than it actually is and inside of our company we have different jobs set to different guys and what we do is we look for guys that migrate towards certain skill sets sam is a natural at cutting blocks and you can see that he's doing all of the intricate work all of the intricate cuts on this very detailed very difficult corner let's take yep [Music] and you guys one thing i just want to jump in here whenever you see alex just watch him a little bit this is the job that got him kicked off you'll actually see him walk around with his little gimpy t-rex arm flopping all right what does that say alex five and a quarter so i know i've said this a lot but when you're measuring the cuts for the blocks [Music] so this front one five and a quarter right so the back then will be four and a quarter it's an inch it's an inch off on the back what the measurement is in the front if that makes sense five and a quarter four and a quarter and the reason that makes sense is because the blocks have a built-in taper and that taper is one inch so if you need to make that cut and have the front be the same as the back you've got to account for the taper and add that one inch or subtract that one inch into your equation [Music] and then um i like i like to cut i like to cut with scraps as much as i can so you don't have as much waste but with these uh you know when you're cutting kind of these smaller ones they can kind of try to get away from you a little bit so i'll take uh i'll show you [Music] and then that way you know it'll not try to kick to either side with you when it you hit it with the socks so we'll go get the water on and cut [Music] so this project that we're working on had a lot of change orders and one of those change orders was the customer actually wanted an additional two feet added on top of the retaining wall that we had built and here's one of those big red flags if the wall isn't designed to have the extra footage added onto it you can't do it without putting the wall into a state of technical engineering failure meaning that the walls not built to handle the extra weight the extra load the reason we were able to add the extra two feet down without any issue is because when we build these walls we always add a little bit of extra geo grid on we always over build them so when the customer came to us with the request to make it taller we went to our engineer showed him how we had built it and he said go for it right good morning guys so here's the plan these boys are gonna work on the next round of step ups over on the corner there we got landon out here today so alex got hurt himself his pack up uh i think it was end of last week maybe and now alex that kid's a tank but oh boy you could tell he was hurting well with alex he is not the type of person to not not be able to be working if that makes sense you know so he's out trying to shovel gravel shovel dirt stack blocks with a super bunk arm poor joey he's running back and forth all day yesterday between blaine because blaine hurt his shoulder a couple weeks a couple weeks ago out on this side it's just a nasty sight to be getting around on so he's running in between the two snatching blocks out of alex's hand and snatching shovels out of blaine's hands and stuff like that all the while i'm desperately trying to stay ahead of them on this corner yeah we got landon out here today uh but i'm gonna keep working on the corner over here while them boys are doing their thing over there on the step-ups i don't know if you guys have actually met him or not but this is landon [Music] and landon's back in college but if you guys have been keeping track of following along with our videos and you saw the one where alice got kicked off the job this was the day alex got kicked off and he came out and did the pool demo with me so kind of shows you how long this project took this project took us a few weeks to complete and basically what it involved is an 11 foot retaining wall we brought in 45 dump truck loads or more of dirt and then on top of that retaining wall we also built a patio and we're going to show you the entire project start to finish and the next in the next two series that we're doing first is the retaining wall series and then coming up next is the paper patio series [Music] so now what you're gonna see next is going to look a little bit awkward or off [Music] and he's actually using the asv to compression compact this retaining wall but this is by no means how we technically compact it really what he's doing at this point is he's just smoothing everything out so that we can then hit it in the next stages with our bigger packers he's getting all the rough bumps out of it so that we can get actually better adhesion to the soil below it all right if any of you guys are you know ever wondered this is my little greasing kit grease gun penetrating oil for that and then a little pick for closing up the zerks all right we'll get this all changed so as part of sam's greasing kit he actually has an ejector kit and he's going to show you that in a minute and what that does is it clean clears up clogged grease zerks when i'm switching the grease and this thing i kind of like to go through and kind of clean her cleaner up a little bit so i'm not getting all covered in grease and stuff what an ejector kit does is anytime you have a plugged grease zerk you can use this ejector kit and it'll slam the plug right out the plugged up grease right out of it allowing you to get grease to flow back into it and we got that actually mcfarland's sent us that that's where we got our kubota skid loader yeah this baby girl's going to get a degreaser bath this weekend i think [Music] good to go [Music] i seriously cannot recommend one of these battery-powered grease guns it doesn't matter what brand it is you know you got makita batteries get a makita you got the walt get the waltz or you know there's there's a ton of other companies i think heart and a bunch of other ones you know have a version too can't recommend it enough doesn't have to be a milwaukee one this is just the one that we have and i love it so get one of these you will not go back let me tell you what so all right that's good to go get those tracks see if we can't get those desserts to take some grease i think i'm almost out of my penetrating oil we'll see hey this is the ejector kit for plugged grease zerks and again mcfarland's i'd say that these are a staple tool to have okay let's go shoot it in the hole that's what she said ha ha and you're sticking it oh hey the reason we're showing you that we got that from mcfarland's is it's the only place we've ever found it oh he's really going for it so if you guys need one i guess you're gonna have to call up corey rockman mcfarland's located out of wisconsin and order yours because i don't know where else you can get them from you see him mixing that dirt up what he's doing is he's searching for the right consistency as he lays each lift out and you see that dimpled track that's because we use a dual drum 33 inch sheep's foot compactor and what that does that's kind of a trench compactor but it allows us to hit the ground really hard but also to be able to get it up into tighter areas we do have a ride on compactor but we find that we're always migrating toward that trench compactor because instead of sitting on a packer and if you're going a little bit sideways getting that itchy feeling in your butt you can stand alongside of it and use a remote control and get the same level of compaction with a smaller piece of equipment that's it in operation right there all right you guys so one of the things that i want to point out that i may not have made overly clear earlier in the video is you can't just add on to any retaining wall that you find you've got to make sure that it's engineered from the ground up to not only for the ultimate height of the retaining wall but for the surcharge or the load that you're going to place onto that retaining wall so now on this project we initially went in we were going to build a nine foot retaining wall and then the customer requested that we put an additional two uh linear feed or two two feet onto the top of that retaining wall turning it into an 11 foot retaining wall but what we had been doing all along with the geogrid is lengthening the lower layers of grid because we were looking at that grade going it's not going to cost us a whole lot to add extra grit into it and if the customer ever does change their mind or they want to in two years or five years they want to be able to add more grid on and level their yard out even more well they have that opportunity they have that capability otherwise you'd have to tear the entire wall down and we've actually had to do that on new walls we did a retaining wall in a development that was i think it was 14 feet tall and they came back two years later and wanted it 20 feet tall well it wasn't engineered to be a 20 foot tall wall and then they wanted to add a garage on top of it and this is when we had that aha moment instead of forcing our customers to do a complete teardown and rebuild if we just add a little bit of grid which doesn't cost us a whole lot right out of the gate we have the flexibility to accommodate change orders immediately so as a company it's a wise financial decision for us to a overbuild the wall because we're not worried about it failing and b it gives us the opportunity in case those change orders come up to react immediately and that's precisely what happened on this project so that's a little inside scoop how we operate but one of the cautions that i want to tell you guys is it's always okay to over engineer a retaining wall but it's never okay to un under engineer a retaining wall meaning if you have seven foot grid links it's not okay to put six or six and a half foot grid links in even though in your mind you may be thinking oh it's close and nobody's ever gonna know that's completely false and wrong because if that wall ever fails and they look at the engineering and then they measure the grid lengths then and they find out that those two things didn't match you are automatically liable as a contractor for any deficiencies that you've put into that retaining wall so air on the side of over building them instead of airing on the side of underbuilding them every day of the week that's all i can say about that and that's all i got for you on today's video but we're not done with this job there's a lot lot more coming and you're going to be able to watch it progress from video to video to video so hit that subscribe button hit that like button and you know what tell your friends if you enjoy these videos share them that's all i got for you on this one god bless you guys go get them and we'll see you on the next one today's drink is grapefruit spin drift catch you guys later