Rebuilding Retaining walls-Start to Finish

oh good morning you guys yesterday was a long one we got all the boulders delivered i got one of the walls tore apart and one of them rebuilt i ended up working till one in the morning cleaning up the site but it's a fresh new day and we've got the most challenging side to do today and i say it's the most challenging side because a where it's the longest side but b we've already used up the most choice boulders on the other side of course we did that of course you always pick the best boulders right onto the gate and use those and leave yourself the scraps for the biggest part of the wall that's just guilty every equipment operator is guilty of doing something like that so with less materials to choose from and more wall to build let's jump right off into today's project so one of the easier ways i i'm doing this i come up to my pile and i grab a boulder and then i put it out here and i drive all the way around it i flip it and rotate it and i get it imaginarily positioned into the wall the way i want it and then i pick it up from the opposite side up here so that i get it positioned so wherever i just drive in i can hopefully just set it down so let's check this boulder out and see which position we want it this is going to be a corner piece this is one of the larger boulders and it's got a slide right into the corner and this is our best choice for this so let's just take a peek at it what he got well i don't think i gave you before yet so there it is before and what we don't want is a wall we don't want this vertical straight up and down and before what we had was a wall that came out here and another wall that came out here and this is more of what we're trying to do kind of more of a settings more of a naturalistic want to try to incorporate the house right into the whole landscaping this side's not done yet and so let's get this side going and what we're going to do on this side is an s-curve come out and then snake in so i'm going to cut groot cut a groove in right through here so that's so that the tree now becomes its own separate island and this has a spot to go between we'll see in theory if that works [Applause] [Music] you guys aren't gonna believe it you're not gonna believe it i actually hit the air conditioning gun yes i did it's like 65 degrees out minnesota what the heck is going on and it's only me okay so next up we're gonna get our seat stone right here hopefully it fits i don't know if it will this door opens this way i want to have enough room for trim but i gotta pop this concrete out cause i don't want it resting up too high [Applause] one of the questions that came up on a past video was dirt monkey where's your filter fabric behind the retaining wall well that was a modular retaining wall made out of concrete blocks and i don't recommend ever using filter fabric vertically behind the face of a modular retaining wall they're designed to allow the water to weep equally through the face and by placing filter fabric vertically behind the face of a modular retaining wall you create hydrostatic hot spots which can create micro blowouts which will lead to problems but on a bolder wall like this fabric is optional i don't prefer fabric because i like to be able to have deeper planting bets but if you have especially sandy soils you may want to opt to have boulder fabric placed behind that retaining wall that will help keep the joint spaces from leaking soil and making a dirty retaining wall but if you don't use those that filter fabric behind the retaining wall you will need to plant those growing spaces to make sure that you retain the soil and nothing comes out between the boulders okay i'm not sure how often that's ever gonna happen we nailed it the first time that's pretty much how i wanted her let's see if it passes the butt test does it pass the blood test now i can walk up oh yeah passes the butt test sit stone one install one and you're done yeah i can do that every time no but i do got to backfill it bring it up i may put a character stone in there or i may just leave it dirt that might make a great spot to put some plants soften up all this stone work [Music] it might be a good spot let's do the other side the birds are making a nest up in my profit i can't even finish it all right well one of the things that i want to say that was told to me by a very wise man his name was brian from aquascape he told me don't get married to a stone give it two three flips if it doesn't fit don't get stubborn with it move on and it's easy to get married to a stone you look at one and you think this one i was married to i was a hundred percent sure that this stone was going to match up on the opposite side of the door with that seat stone right there so they would frame that door didn't work had to pick a different one didn't give it too much time you just don't give it too much time because you'll get stuck in us in a rut but we're stuck in a rut right now you guys we got a lot of the stuff put in place but now it's time to grade and clean up and just start working the site and then we're gonna find where the details come in we're gonna find where we gotta add an extra stone here or there but if i just stay in boulder placement mode right now i don't think i'm gonna do it i think i need to come in here and start working this and cleaning it up and then not being afraid to grab a stone here or there and add it if i see fit or don't touch it if i don't right this is a creative process this is just about letting the juices flow and letting it go that's what we're gonna do now so sometimes when i get stuck in a rut i'll just switch gears for a little bit and then come back to whatever i was stuck on later on do you know what time it is hmm it's time for a fuel run time for a fuel run you want to go with come on let's go get some fuel we're out sure would be nice if i took the time to get a transfer tank in the back i'll probably do it after all the work out here is all done and i don't need it anymore come on lucy hop in you going to stay here with frankie what do you want to do you staying or are you going i don't care you don't know do you some of you guys may have watched the saw milling video you have it matt from custom reuben's custom sawmill and i that's all the law exciting we cut that now we're drying it so we gotta dry it rotate it flip it smack its butt and lay it upside down look who decided to join me after all listen to her she whines as soon as i walk away that's what she does and it gets worse so some of you guys asked me about my gas cans they're just shirt cans and i do think they're the best gas can out there absolutely love them some of you guys want to know where you get them at i don't know i think i've seen them at fleet farm and hardware stores i know they're expensive but it's one of those cans that are worth it now can you behave i'll go in and get you a sandwich if you can behave i'll get you a sandwich huh can be a good girl that's not gonna happen okay i'm going to get you a sandwich you're gonna have half you don't deserve it you are noisy here all right let's get back to work [Music] so some of you may be asking dirt monkey why are you taking out boulder walls to replace them with other boulder walls what the heck is going on with that well here's the deal these actual stones that i'm using in the new boulder walls are indigenous to the area and there's a park down in sandstone or over in sandstone minnesota called robbins park and it's just one of my favorite places on planet earth and i use it as inspiration for this wall and it uses a lot of the native sandstone from the area and so i'm trying to duplicate some of the settings some of the environment that i found there trying to make more of a naturalistic setting style of a feel to this all right you guys the next phase is to finish the grade we've got everything cleaned up now i don't have any obstructions most of the wall is built i've got one extra stone left over right here that i plan on moving and getting out of the way but now let's get all the contours to blend the idea with this tree thing right here is i don't like that whole ring around the tree of boulders i just don't think it looks right so i created a little walkway between the two and now i'll blend and make that flow down so it's almost like its own little island that's just an artistic touch who knows if it'll turn out or not let's pop you guys up on the top and let's get to grading and just see what [Music] happens so this is just the initial grading which does not address any of the problems with water around the site the entire site has a lot of issues that still need to be corrected but by doing this initial grading in my work zone it allows me to get a better perspective of what the potential finished product on this retaining wall will look like good bad and in between it just helps me to clear things up so i can see what i've got to do in the next phases of this landscaping project [Music] all of these retaining walls are far from finished they still have to be towed in then all of the joint spaces where i plan on putting plants have to be filled in with organic material so that everything balances out plus the backfill on these retaining walls all has to be evened out and re-contoured to direct water away from the retaining walls lucy what do you think does it look good are we graded out hey enough enough enough quiet quiet now yo gray mare okay you guys well we still got touch-up work to do you know we gotta we gotta grade we gotta get in between all the crevices and level everything out and then we gotta plant and landscape and mulch when you give a mouse a cookie it always goes to the next step i've gotta see this thing but uh i think our walls are done they look pretty decent i got my grades established i'm not a hundred percent set on this if i want to change this up i got extra stones up top i can grab some of them i do like how this came out of course after i get all the sand cleaned off from it it'll look a lot better and some of those scuff marks you see those bright white marks those disappear over time believe it or not they do that's called weathering those just go away after a little while and there she is lots more work to do at shangri-la lots more work what'd we find an old schmidt beer can the brew they grew with the great northwest everybody knows that one there you go and that's our video for today you guys hope you had fun i did i had fun it was a fun day so with that being said we've got more to do we got more out here more shangri-la we're going to be going over to shangri-la douche and we are going to be going to town over there i went over there yesterday there's a lot of work to do trust me but one thing at a time you guys and that means hit that subscribe button because there's gonna be a lot more action here and we're gonna go check in with my crew back in the cities and see how they're doing and take it away that's it for today god bless go get em you guys hopefully we'll see on another one