Teaching a NOOB how to read grade, Run a laser & change elevations on a jobsite- PT 1/2. 4k video

you ever read grade before no ok so perfect by the time we're done today you're gonna know how to reset and read grade we're just gonna go over the basics it's not gonna be anything complicated but it's gonna be enough to get you by on a job site so when somebody tells you that they need to cut grade or add you're gonna know exactly how to set up a laser and get everything done morning Sam all right let me show you the basics first before we get too far into this let me explain this job to you real quick ok so what we're doing is right here we're say I'm just walked in we're having water problems come into the garage and you can actually see where the grade where you're standing right now alex is just a little bit higher you know you can eagle-eye it but when we're on a jobsite we can't eagle-eye it because then we need to actually verify grades because once we leave if there's a problem it costs us money to come back and fix it so that's why we set all the grades ahead of time and then that way if a customer ever asks hey you know how hallowed the grade set we know exactly what we did and what the elevations and the measurements are so it's pretty important that we get this straight but today what we're gonna be doing is taking this area right here between you and me we're gonna cut this down because right now all the water flows down and right into the garage so here's the short and skinny of it some of you are not going to like this video at all and some of you are going to absolutely love this video and here's why because this is going to be a two-parter this first part today we're going to teach Alex how to read grade on a real job site all we're really going to be doing is sharing that knowledge with him but more importantly sharing it with you guys so if you have crew members that have never read grade before this is the video you're going to sit them down in front of and have them watch you know if you already know how to read great you're gonna probably get bored or maybe get a refresher course or better yet don't tell me what I missed in the comments down below the second part is all action this is where we stout everything that alex has learned to this point he's gonna hop in a skid loader he's gonna be running a four in one bucket he's never ran hand foot controls in the loader so we're gonna see how he does with that he's never ran a four on one bucket so we're gonna be throwing him right out of the right out of the frying pan and into the fire in the next one so if you like action you're gonna love part two if you like knowledge you're gonna love this part if you like action and knowledge and the dirt monkey you're gonna love everything that you see coming at you on you too let's get into today's video okay so let's actually talk about the three main components to a laser first one is the laser itself this is called a rotary laser because it spins and rotates there's line lasers and straight lasers that just they shoot just at one straight lamp line right and those are really designed just for interior work they keep you trying to set sheetrock or you want to get your railing when you're building it or whatever cabinets straight this is more of an outside laser but it can function as an inside laser as well it has that capability one of the things with these is through the lasers nowadays will self level to a certain extent so you know in the old days you may come across an older laser or even a transit which is an eyepiece you've got to level those right to the T before they'll even turn on okay so I don't want you to get confused where you go ahead and you hit the Go button and the laser actually won't fire up because if it doesn't fire up you're either too far out of level or you have a laser that doesn't self level and so you've got to get it dead-on up you have a laser that doesn't solve you'll have a little bubble somewhere on the laser and that will tell you here's a great indicator of just how far off we are you look at the top down right here you can see how that spinning part is not in the dead center middle right that means that the transit or the laser itself is kiddie Wampus this way an actual level is more this way and it's compensating for it that just helps you understand that now there's a lot of things that you can get into some pretty advanced functions on these we're just gonna go bases so we've got underneath the rotary laser is the tripod okay so if somebody says grab the laser you know you're gonna automatically think okay there's more than just the laser I'm not just gonna grab this unit I'm gonna probably make sure that I got the tripod and then you got your stick and you want to grab that and then you got a receiver all right so that's four components not three Alex but whatever and a Polish I don't have to count right so with that being said here's where understanding how to read a laser gets to be funky and slowed me down if I'm going too fast because I don't want to lose you on this when are your reading grade when you go down in grade the numbers on the stick go up it's bass ackwards and confusing as all get-out even for old timers if you haven't done it in a while you got to refresh that memory but let me just demonstrate let me show you we're actually going to read and show you exactly what it means and then we're gonna talk about Laser positioning because where you position it on a job site is huge and then we're gonna talk about some of the other basics that you need to understand like don't ever stand in front of the laser when you're trying to measure right because that I see that happening all the time guys put their back to it and then they're like why can't I get anything so let's turn the receiver on the big green Go button and you've got two measurements on here do you see that so you got a volume adjustment and then you've got a fine-tune and then you've got a bigger tool right so this is your compensation this is the bigger setting right now this gives you a larger receiving area and this here alex is where you actually receive your signal from the laser itself so go ahead and point it on top of the box we're just going to use this as a demonstration now adjust your receiver up and down until you hear a beep so I just want you to get familiar with the basics of how these numbers read there you go so so now your receiver is telling you to go up just a little bit you can actually see in the Green Line you let's shut off some lasers well actually not just shut off but it will give you a solid tone when you hit that line and that's important to know because it's an audible signal this one might do it I don't know why it didn't do it what's our number read on the stick Alex so our number is to look and then we're underneath the nine so we're at about two foot eight and three-quarters so this stick reads in three-quarters so we've got that's nine nine and a quarter nine and a half nine three-quarters ten but we're under the nine here's our defined line so we're two foot eight and three-quarters and one of the things to make sure is you always hold the stick straight up and down because if you're if you put that receiver on up at the 14 foot mark or the 12 foot mark and you just hold that stick just a little bit off your numbers will be off by a quarter to a half an inch right because it's just like way up in the air and then your angling it and it's just gonna throw everything off you still with me yeah okay so now what do you think is gonna happen when you read the grade on the ground rather than know which way or the numbers gonna go yes you're right it took me a minute to think even see I've been doing this for 20-some years and they still go so put put the stick on the ground now we have our benchmark just in this example was 2 foot 8 and 3/4 right so now we're gonna find out how much lower you are from transit box and that the difference is the change in elevation [Music] so I'm just a little bit on this laser you can actually see the green line which is kind of nice none of other lasers you won't all right so we're right there and let's let's pull that laser up one let's pull the stick up one and lock it into place that'll help us read all right so what's our new number all right so what's the difference between those two we're at two foot eight and three-quarters and now we're at three foot eight and a quarter so we've got eleven and a half inches yep so we are eleven and a half inches lower our number went up but our grade went down see how confusing that can be so as we're looking at this we've got to make sure that we just understand these basics when you're out reading it off a long distances it's easy to forget these numbers so a handy thing is a piece of paper you write down your benchmark because we're gonna set up a real benchmark because we're shooting a real job site now and we're gonna make sure that all of our elevations stay the same because well actually if some jobs where we have to go from day to day and we can't leave a laser set up we'll actually put a dot in the ground and then we have to reestablish off from that same point a new elevation every single day here's a don't once you set this laser up don't move it because you then have to start all your numbers back over again anytime this laser gets moved bumped altered or changed you have to start all fresh over again you can't even if you bump it you can't just go grab it and put it back you know it's been because now you could be off by a quarter of an inch an eighth of an inch and it may not be a big deal at a short distance like this but when we're shooting out a thousand feet across a field it's gonna be it's gonna make a huge difference because now you're gonna be off by feet wait for our goal is to make cut the grade below that pad over there let's talk about laser positioning on a jobsite we just talked about how you can never move a laser bounce it around from spot to spot unless you're ready to recalibrate all your numbers so if you want to set it up and what you try to pick the spot on a jobsite that captures your total jobsite but stays out of the way okay now on this jobsite we're going to be cutting this grate down and we've got to capture the grate from here and one of the other things that we haven't discussed yet alex is the this building here in this building here okay part of that is we've got to be able to get the grades to flow away from all structures so we're trying to get it to flow away from that but we're also trying to get it to flow away from this building right here okay and so that means that the smart move would be to cut some of this down to split the difference in the water flow so we don't want to just direct it all in one spot because then that creates a washout the more avenues areas that we can get water to flow away so when we talk about laser positioning we want to be able to set the laser up in one spot right there is probably going to be the best spot because it allows us to capture all of the grades from all of the different directions without ever moving the laser if we put the laser anywhere else we would be obstructed by buildings or we just wouldn't be able to capture all of the grates so we want to pick that very careful laser for the first time in his own he's using the legs the extension on the legs to level it out just to eyeball it to get it as close as possible go ahead and hit the Go button and let's see if she if you're tight enough in I know she will she's slowly moving there you go all right we got it you got we got the laser on so we know we're lovable enough let's go get our benchmark read and then let's figure out where once we read our benchmark let's actually come up with a number that we're gonna shoot for out in the middle to be lower then and then we'll get started actually doing that your benchmark is the is gonna be right here so this benchmark is the number that we're aiming for that we're gonna use so we're gonna use the actual concrete pad because the if it rains or some or somebody kicks some dirt that that can change the concrete pad won't isn't as likely to change so do we got a beat yeah let's bring her down so we can hear that beat once all right so right about there we're good all right so what is that number right now Alex two and two quarters of an inch six two and three quarters so this is where you probably would take some notes on this thing right six foot two three quarters because you're not going to remember that all day long because we're gonna be throwing a lot of numbers at you so you got your phone you can take a note on it yeah so your benchmark is six foot two and three quarters because we got more numbers coming at you in just a moment so I told you we got more numbers coming at you here's the next set of numbers you need for just general water and pitch to control runoff it's one inch of drop for eight foot of run okay that's a good number to remember just in Grain that one permanently in your mind one inch a drop for every eight feet of runs week so extend your rod all the way up as high as you can get her to go because we want to see where we're at this should be a 16 foot rod I believe yep all right so we got a 16 foot rod perfect now we're gonna go yep just set it set the rod out and lay it down gently because you got the receiver on there from your benchmark out to your work zone okay so now you know that's 16 feet right the end of that rod so anywhere in that neck of the woods how much lower are you gonna have to be we're 16 feet away from our benchmark how much how many inches lower would we be 16 feet out exactly so now set your let's go see what we're reading cuz now we're gonna see how far off we are but we know the next note that you're going to take in your phone is where we've got to go to okay so if we need to go 2 inches lower than our benchmark what's the number going to be on our stick yeah yep because we're now dropping the stick down actually no we're bass-ackwards remember we're going yes right because we were at six foot two and three quarters right so we added two inches to six foot two and three quarters and that gives us six foot four and three quarters so that's the elevation that we want to hit over there so you better break that down you see how complicated all these numbers can get when you don't take notes on them and that way you've got a a record of it and then that's something that you can easily transfer to somebody else if you ever working on a site if you are gone or you get called off you can just send them the notes on everything just a nice little thing so let's see where we're actually at out there on this right out there go ahead and pull your stick up and let's read the grade now we're gonna find out how high we are so that'll tell us how much we've got to actually cut down how are we looking okay so we are 1/2 inch higher from this point to that point right so how much grade do we got to cut down to achieve our desired grade we're a half inch high and we got to cut two inches below this mark yep so that kind of gives you an indicator when you're actually running the loader and you're looking and all of a sudden you cut out five inches of material you'll be like wow that's way too much yeah right so you literally got a cut this much out but you've got to cut it and blend it over this whole area here and match it all the way up around there and match it over to there so as it kind of getting a little clearer how to read these grade rods okay good because that was the goal was just to help you understand how to do it but let's get on to the next part of this job you got the basics down to this but now we've got more to do you can leave the grade rod set right up because you're gonna need it right just keep it keep it out of the way and a nice tucked away spot alright so here's the gist of it you guys some of you have asked me to put together training videos for your crews something that you could sit down and put a newb in front of and by the time they're done watching it they'd have a vague idea of what to do out on the job site and this was my attempt today to pull that off if this videos helped you out let me know in the comments down below but also tell me what's the next training video you would like to see now remember there's a part two to this where we actually test Alex out and we see how he does but that doesn't mean I can't make more training videos down the road so you tell me is there something that you would like me to make so that you could just literally set brand new guys down in front of and by the time they're done would have a better understanding of us so you don't have to waste your time trying to figure out how to teach them to do it comment down below and I'll start working on some of that for you guys god bless you guys go get them and whatever you do I hope you have an awesome day and make sure you stick around because part two is coming down the pipeline see you on the next one oh hey and you do me a favor I don't know why but for some reason my videos have not been getting played to my audience so if you could hit the share button maybe this will get YouTube to start playing my videos to more people I don't know you tell me why if you've been able to see my videos or not because a lot of people are saying they're not finding them so let me know about that in the comments down below and check out these other two videos right here and here hit the subscribe button and the Bell notification now we'll see you on the next one god bless and go you know