Conquering another sketchy hill.

work always begins before the job ever starts dude i think we need different tracks welcome to today's adventure today guys we got a pretty steep hill the customer just was having a lot of problems with it but we're going to walk you through one of the solutions that we came up with and the solution we came up with is also keeping in mind it's kind of a budget friendly solution right we're not trying to break the bank we're just trying to make an ugly hill a little less ugly by the time we're done with it so by the time we get to this point well i think we're a little ahead of the game in the video so what we're going to do is we're going to back this thing up to the start of the day and then work our way back to this point so we'll see you in about 15 minutes right back here morning you guys i got the word yesterday that blaine hurt his shoulder so we are short-handed so we're gonna go out today and help alex get a new project launched now alex doesn't need help but it's always nice to have a backup person that you can bounce ideas off from and just make sure that you're on the right path some of you guys like to know more details about stuff i do so i'm gonna be breaking in some new boots today but i don't like breaking in new boots without having my old shoes on standby so i'm going to be bringing these with just in case my feet don't agree with these we'll see how they go you wonder what i'm breaking in they are jim green sounds like the boys are busy 7 a.m they're hooking up looks like i got a low tire on that skid loader and we got the trailer all put back together look at the new planks on it yeah look at that oil that's about as clean as it comes all right we got a little bit of a few things in the way but that's not really in the way on a in an excavator oh that didn't want to start let's let her warm up before we uh crawl up crawl her out and wouldn't you know it every year she always goes flat ah lee all right guys i don't think i've done this one with you before let's drive the excavator up on the trailer we got our blade all the way up i like to get my machine centered as much as possible check my track with that axe ask for a second opinion how are we looking johnny good good both sides because i don't have good visual on that side when you got the help i just wanna might as well use it we're going up blade first some people are like why are you going up late first because i can't and it's not that big of a deal okay we're not all the way up but we're gonna put our center of gravity down really the most scary part about this is not the climb it's rolling off the side i've done it it's easy to do in minnesota when you get ice between your machine this is what i hate these freaking day or whatever the hell this thing is no track power you see guys see that how much space we got on that side a lot a lot all right i'm gonna back down and re-center that you're ever in a machine and it's starting to go for a ride stay in it see how we're just balancing i'm lifting up my boom arm at the same time that i'm driving forward and watching my fuel tank up front if you over tighten them they walk by and they they'll have a piece of metal and the dot will walk by and go and if it doesn't have just a little bit of slack it's not supposed to have over an inch but if it doesn't have a little bit of slack you can if you can get in trouble for it being too tight it's it's stressing the chain of course because that makes total sense i'm not saying you're wrong john but that's just one of those things where you can be got if you don't do it one way or you can be god if you do it the other way either way they got a way of getting you right there's a sweet zone there and when you're driving down the road they'll watch you and as you're driving down the road if you hit a bump and your chains move that's when you get pulled over okay hi how are you guys good to see you again oh you get to run you get to run did you see your video up i haven't but everybody's been calling me hey you're on tv nice ah when it rains it pours we got the truck coming in he's gonna back this around and while he's doing that we got the boulders getting dropped off over here quietly ahead we got alex pulling up with his trucking equipment this was like god we could work behind us we can work in front of us work work work work work which way do we go thanks johnny all right what are we doing out here good morning good how about you about four feet it will die into the hill there come around get built right along the front edge so that way when we back fill it with fill soil we'll bring it in we'll have kind of a flat spot up there for planting and everything level it out a little bit more exactly yep we'll come around here we got this little bit of a trail right there so we're going to kind of come in right about here and kind of try to give them a little bit of a trail there a little bit of a pathway oh to walk up yeah so we'll just come around the corner here and dive into the hill there okay and so we wanna as we're looking at this somebody started this god i love how they planted this wall wow now that's what i call a gorgeous wall and all of those all that vegetation stitches everything together and we and we need to mow that down mow it or scrape it all down i brought the weed up i'll see how that looks if that gets the job done then we can just go and uh put the fabric right over the top of what i weed whipped okay but if the weed is not getting it good enough we'll have to scrape it down with the day woo okay oh that'd be easy enough to climb up there and scrape it down and we could use the top layer for some fill soil not in the structural zone of the retaining wall but closer to the top to help yeah that's that's good hey i think the excavator will be the best way just are you kidding me we could cut it we could do all that stuff but that excavator that's almost the perfect tool right there so alex makes a great point we were just talking about how i think the yard looks amazing and you said the bowlers were a little small it could be bigger right and the reason they use smaller boulders is because they stretch further so we just bought all these by the time and now we installed them by the square footage yeah oh and in some cases i mean a lot this is what a lot of guys i mean we we have different ways of doing it but what happens is when you use smaller boulders you get more square footage because you're not burying the mass right yeah cause you got the whole back side yeah you'll only see this much face but all this weight is in the hillside yeah cause that one's probably like a ton you're probably only getting five square feet off that is that right and what do they say for a ton eight square feet rough seven seven yeah just depends on the size of the stone yeah right i mean that's the rule i always use but when you use a bunch of i mean these still are bigger than the ones that are there but when you use a bunch of smaller ones you you can get more square footage out of them so all right well let's get it going huh i know a lot of you guys do landscaping and that's why you watch my channel last question for you guys when you first come into a project like this and you see everything's been done and you're just gonna go in and start tearing it apart you ever get nervous it's always like oh i gotta try to make that look better than it does it can be a little nerve-wracking also exciting that's the beautiful part of what we do so we spun the excavator around so we could use the back blade to prop ourselves down to give ourselves more stability on the actual slope what alex is going to find he's going to have problems with is that daewoo or whatever you call that piece of crap doesn't have any power to those tracks this is where the achilles heel of this machine is it's just weak so he may have to pull himself up now as he pulls himself up he's got to coordinate the move two different movements and it's gonna feel a little bit off see how he's jiggling joggling right now that's not a fun feeling and this is what this is the problem with this machine in particular i said i've had a love-hate relationship with this thing well this is the hate part there we go now he has to crawl his way up and then if he finds himself sliding in the in go between when he lets down like right there we can put the blade down let me help him he's looking at me for existence what's going on is you are now experiencing why i hate this machine there is no power to these tracks okay when you get up when you pull yourself up you're doing perfect just put your back blade down and that'll keep you from sliding if you do the only thing you really got to worry about is this fence right so uh just use the back blade and then you gotta lift it up you gotta [Music] work your step stair step up that's all you can do you're fine otherwise and just nice and slow there's no rush nobody's yelling at ya we're not on a commercial site we're in someone's backyard trying to make it more more so let's enjoy that process i know there's going to be a bunch of you guys oh i could have crawled out up there sideways with one hand tied behind my back eating the fresh cob accord i wish i wish you were because i'd videotape you doing that and showing us how to do our job so but we are going to go with plan b and that is uh favorite tool of all time i'll back this out you can back that out we'll switch positions and we'll just go to town welcome [Music] come on see it baby say it yes like my skin motor my skid loader my skid loader and this is why i like i skin loading because i can do just about anything i want but it looks pretty steep huh [Music] don't stand at the bottom people are like why don't you use your excavator more and i'm like because i can do everything with a skid loader that i can with an excavator maybe not holy [Music] so the danger being up here like this is not from driving straight down it's if i'm going down a track catches and i go sideways at all she's going to go the other way so i don't want to go i got to stay straight up and down which is a little hairy at times especially when you're trying to scrape we've got too many too many changes and too much stuff going on up here to do it the right way so alex is going to grab his weed whip we're going to just i got it figured out um what we're gonna do is we're gonna bring the fill soil in and we're gonna put it right here and build a ramp up so that you can easily drive the excavator up to get your boulder settings in place we'll trim this down just like you're doing okay then you put your your fill soil in you got your ramp which will get you about to there you can just gently drive up get your boulder settings in place and then when you come down you just cut the backfill portion of the ramp out flip it up use it for backfill and then you can just drag that back down behind the wall yep does that make sense okay perfect that that works well so we got this ridge so this is the ridge it goes drink and down that's to keep their water from going to their pool if we take that out we gotta put it back we don't take that out we just got to get the vegetation taken off this hill so we can put fabric down we going all the way over to the pine trees then alex all the way around okay yeah that makes sense i could have never scraped over there anyway and even if i did i don't know how consistent it would have been so yeah we've got a couple holes to fill and some stuff we've got to level out now but from our attempt not the end of the world though we'll just put a boulder setting right here actually probably complement nicely the the oak tree right behind me bring that in we got a couple a couple really nice boulders to do boulder settings with alex is cleaning up the hill johnny grabbed a load of bra we call it rodeo clay i'll show you what it is that's good looking material we've had a few days of rain so nice nice combo of sand and some clay in there and damn a little more expensive for this stuff but oh that looks nice that looks nice you guys think of our new box we rebuilt the bottom put a whole new bed in four thousand dollars just for the bed um [Music] good to know here's some smaller red ones which you may be able to use because they use smaller stones on there so you could maybe use something like that to tie in yeah i think now one of the things that you got to be careful of but we should do is ask the customer what their character stones are i ask you first because you're the one that has to work with them but they're the ones that got to look at it for the next 20 years so let's go find out let's take about 15 minutes and set all the boulders that we think are gonna be the setting boulders to the side we'll let these guys just come out and do a check on them and then that way i can use the skitty to run them back to you you can plant yourself on the hill and not get out i'll just feed them to you so let's do that right now hey when you're grabbing when you're grabbing he said i'm right over the lines and the lines are only that far below the ground so you gotta i was trying i saw i'm just letting you know and letting these guys know you know one of the best things about what we do is basically we're artists you know we get something like this all these materials and our customers have a vision and we have a vision and the coolest thing is we get to try to make those two things marry together and that can be a really fun exciting challenge that's already looking nice so that rolls down that'll hit him knock him right out of the saddle yeah he's got to protect himself that's the danger about working downhill when you're placing boulders he's he's getting that first hand right now you better grab that right there grab it yes perfect perfect and drive your machine right up to where it's got to go so the machine doesn't have enough power to literally lift it the rest of the way in at this point i can just tell so he's going to have to push it in or use the machine drive the machine closer but he can't extend his boom arms out this is that remember that love hate relationship with these machines this is it right here [Music] that's perfect [Music] i like it i like it you're optimizing the view from the pool in the kitchen not from where you're sitting so you just got to kind of put yourself in that mind frame it's easy let's just show these guys as we sit here this is the way it looks for alex but if we go down here this is the way this is the way it's gonna look for the customers you nee you need to look at it from both angles to make sure you're happy i like it but we just need to point out the obvious that where you're seeing it from is not going to be the same that they're seeing it from nah it looks pretty good doesn't it it looks even better if you take a couple steps back yeah nest plunge [Music] lucky wears brown pants today a guy named brian from aquascape been installing ponds for 20 some years and he told me don't get married to a stone you give two maybe three turns and if you haven't got it dialed in move on move on that's tim right there oh he'll marry him he'll marry him he'll divorce him he'll he'll he'll take this stone right here yep no matter what like we gotta get it in there no you don't man no you don't sometimes less is more sometimes when you intentionally don't put something there you now put the bring the focal point where you want it and if you put something there it might just get too busy yeah right yeah because it's busy this is busy that wall is pretty close to right there anyways yeah yeah i i like that and they can soften that up with plants that's yeah less is more [Applause] [Music] yup so close so close perfect set it in and forget it yup nailed it that's perfect give it a love tip love tap just just make all that does is they just make sure that she's in she's just yep [Music] so [Music] so it was dead yesterday well yeah what kind of excuse do you got i've always got a camera in one hand i mean it's not much different than what you're doing drive drive drive drive drive drive drive drive i'll put my seat belt down in a minute