Regrading to Fix a Wet Basement. 4k start to finish landscape project

[Music] [Applause] [Music] I'm just seeing things maybe I'm just seeing things nothing on the bottom little wobble in it okay [Music] yes we find out what's going on today hi Blaine what's your job we're gonna get the water to flow around the house and send it through the house what I think having a flooded basement really rainy at about 6 inches backed up is so we're not doing a French drain nothing like that okay he come show us what's going on a lot of times just so you guys know we have three solutions when a person's having praat water problems in their basement the first one we try to always do is look at the grades we always look at downspouts and gutters too though that's gonna be one of the first things I see none of that here well we look at the grades first then a French drain is the second option and then third option is full-fledged foundation waterproofing and then the last options into your drain tile whoo so everything flows right down to there everything from this whole yard comes this way this comes this way so under the vent okay so we kick everything this way so we'll get all this water to go this way to the side nice that sounds good the grading should be a great first step but if this continues to be a problem then we could install a French drain to get it right out to the property line just come come in right through here so there's the second option all right yeah but this is still higher than that approach yeah the hole and then you'll probably shave at each of the hill off just to blend everything so you're gonna borrow everything on-site no importation except for that's going to be Saudi turfy yeah yeah but that's gonna be tough to work with sand just down the road all right so before we can really begin to do anything on this jobsite you'll see red flags on the ground those are buried utilities and so we've got a hand locate where all of those utilities are and then we found out during the hand locate part of it that one of them runs right directly beneath where the retaining wall is gonna go so we've got to take it out of the ground and then move it over and then Ribery it after we get the wall put in place so we can't just put the wall on top of that line because if anything ever happened to that line it would damage the customer's retaining wall because whatever contractor came in after us would probably just start yanking on it and undermine the footings for the retaining wall so that's got to get moved over and set far enough away from the wall that if they ever needed to work on it they could do that [Music] now one of the tricks we learned a long time ago to make our lives easier when we get on retaining wall projects is to use the same material beneath the wall as we do in the drainage zone and that's 3/4 clear if you use the right material this angular stone 3/4 inches in size it locks in place enough that it makes actually a really good base material and it saves you from ordering 2 separate trips down to the gravel pit to pick up one type of material for base and a totally different type of material for drainage [Music] [Applause] [Music] so one of our go-to blocks is a versa lock standard unit it is the only solid block that is actually still pinned and how this works is Blaine's got to line up these pin holes with the slot below it and drive that pin in place it doesn't give them a large margin for error but when you do it right you've got a good strong block and a good connection method there's a lot of other blocks that have lips in the back and those lips tend to break off over the course of time a little bit of ground movement and you get issues with those lips so that's why we go with these there's good and bad to every one of these systems but this is the one we prefer now you can make radiuses with these blocks there's a dirt on the backside of that block plane I'm just seeing things maybe I'm just seeing things nothing on the bottom okay so that could be a number of factors could be the basis off or it could be a defect in the block but it also means that there's a bridge so when the base is wobbly like that I want to show these things right where the problem is gonna potentially lie right there because that's gonna be your pivot pivot point now in a wall this size we don't have to worry about it but if this wall was a bigger wall so a defect in the block would mean that during the manufacturing a lot of times what you'll see is the back end will be I think that made it worse yep instantly made it worse there you go a little better now isn't it okay so there we go so on a big wall we got to get rid of those on a small wall it's not gonna affect it it's not gonna impact you got it you got a larger margin for error on a small wall so liz's that's why there's so many good reasons why this is the perfect place to practice these little ones get it all right right here and then when you just translate that to a bigger wall you won't have any problems so what you'll see is Todd will carry them down and then Blaine is actually setting them and lining them up on longer runs where we'll do a super long run will actually run a string line around on the back not the front because this front has this rough face right here and the back has a nice smooth face and so if we run a string line down the back of the block that gives us a better better control over the block instead of having these weird ridges in the front impacting the string line and throwing it off [Music] so we're supposed to have a minimum of 12 inches of drainage aggregate behind the retaining wall but I always tell the guys don't be afraid to go 18 or even double at 24 inches it's just cheap insurance and probably one of the easiest ways to extend the life of your retaining wall when it comes to drainage aggregate it's one of those cases where more is actually better [Music] music creeps into now regrading this entire backyard was to correct the water problem and the reason we go to so much work is I'm a firm believer in keeping the water out no interior drink tile is an option but I've always tried to keep the water from penetrating and getting inside in the first place once you do that you don't need interior drink time well with the retaining wall completed and the ability to raise the grade at the back of the house we now need to borrow the dirt from the side of the house and try to get all of the water to flow from the back all the way down the side and to the street so as we're cutting the grade Todd's gonna be using the laser to make sure that we got all of the elevation and pitch running the right way so it is to lay the flea [Music] you [Applause] [Music] [Applause] so no matter how careful we are you can still have problems which you're actually going to see in just a few minutes because this soil is semi loose we haven't done any compaction on because we do want to re-establish vegetation on it and then what happens to us is before the vegetation actually gets established we get a pretty big rain come down well it was a couple day gusher and it kind of messed up our grades so you'll see that in a minute all right you guys when we wrap this job up for the most part we're actually on down the road but we were just doing a little check-in and discovered a couple problem areas that need to be addressed now first off when we say we wrap this job up you'll be looking at going well there's dirt there's not grass here well a lot of times we actually like to leave a little bit of what we call sweat equity in the job now we could have seeded this we could have soldered this for the customer or we can let them do that themselves and save some money and a lot of times we just give them a sense of direction how to do it themselves and these guys don't mind tackling it on their own in fact this customer actually wanted us to leave some extra dirt behind so that they could do some other stuff around their house and we're glad we did because we do have to come back and touch up a few spots that I want to show you in a minute but before I show you those problem areas let's take a look at how the wall turned out here now this is a downspout so all the water is designed to come out in a way before it used to go right into the house big problem so now you can actually see from the rain how everything is flowing a good amount away from the house going down that way and now they have a dry basement that's because we were able to get this retaining wall in and that helped change enough of the grades to kick everything the right way but even with that being said we're not perfect yet you guys right I want to show you a few spots that we do need to come and fix before we can feel comfortable leaving this in their hands right here this is a bit of a low area we're going to take a little bit of that dirt bring it over and put that into that spot and then right through here we got just a little bit it's just a little bit of hand shoveling it doesn't require machine work and we don't want to use up all of that dirt because they want some of that dirt so then what we're gonna do we've got a good aggressive pitch going down to the street but we got a bit of a high area right in here and you can see where if we could just shave a little bit of that off then we're gonna be able to get all of this water to flow pretty good clip right down to the street so that's all I got free for today guys you guys tell me do you like videos like this these job site videos because if you do just say more job site videos and I will start pumping them out for you left and right I'll do the best I can for you guys and while you're here do me a favor tell your friends about my channel hit the subscribe button check out these two videos I'm going to put up right here god bless you guys and go get them