Case Study: Consequences of Improper Construction

CL which ex oh the you could actually see the wall moving as Bruce was loosening it up anyway that's not the worst case scenario I've ever seen I'd say one of the worst ret painting walls that I've ever seen I got bid I got beat out on a bid on a job in St Paul Minnesota it was just a residential project and I happened to be in the neighborhood and I was doing other work other development work and so I stopped by the project to see what the company was doing that beat me on this retaining wall Bid And what I found out so I bid the wall to put in versalock standard units 6 in of Base 12 plus in of drainage a get behind it pinning the blocks together putting a cap unit on gluing it in place and doing that whole riger roll Excavating demolition the whole nine yards what it came out and found out that the other contractor that beat me was doing was they were using a CMU unit concrete masonry unit they were dry stacking it so these are hollow blocks and they were just sticking one h no mortar just sticking one hollow block on top of the other but they had no drainage aggregate behind the wall and nothing below the wall they were just slapping it on pure dirt this was retaining wall that was meant to last at best that summer because the first free free St cycle that Frost heave is going to move those blocks and they're going to pop off and since there was nothing adhering one block to the next block that wall was going to be in a mess Down Below in fact I even filmed it and in fact I got threatened to be sued if I didn't take that video down so if you one of my longtime subscribers and you remember way back in the day I showed verbatim step by step everything that this other company was doing I even blurred out their faces well that video I had to remove or I was going to get sued over it but let's get back to this project