The Ugliest retaining wall we've ever built -in 4k!

what you're about to see is going to end up being the ugliest retaining wall that we've ever built in the history of our company period hands down and I can't make this story up we got a phone call from a prior customer of ours from two decades past that had hired another contractor to come in and start a deck and retaining wall and seat wall project forum unfortunately this other contractor completely abandoned the project after he had already started all of the materials were there and he actually started to build the different projects out on this customer site and then just left him high and dry the customer in sheer frustration attempted to begin building and finishing his own project and got overwhelmed with it and then called us to come in so we're gonna step into this project and we're going to finish off this thing and I don't know what to say this one let's just dive into this job all right so this job is gonna be a little wild so apparently what we're doing is assisting the homeowner in all this so he's helping with everything he's got some of his own equipment he's got all the materials for us already we're essentially just another set of hands this is I've never been on a job like this before so it'd be be an interesting one guys I'd like to introduce you to Al I love the smell of grease in the morning he's going to be helping us with this project there you go that should be good l had already used his excavator to dig out the base but it's a bit too high it needs to go down yeah right there's good [Music] you packed it under this man so if you didn't hear him all this class five that he had installed before we got here along here so foot deep he packed every inch and a half that's all this stuff is like although class 5 can be used for base material there's no forgiveness in it which means it's a lot harder to base off from which Sam is going to find out in just a few minutes and while Sam is prepping the base for the second tier of the retaining wall Blaine is starting to lay out the area for the proposed fire pit we're getting a lot of leeway with a lot of stuff on this job it's nice this is going to be a fun one I like this guy so far I haven't worked it I haven't ever worked a job like this where the dudes like actually helping and like actually helping you know I mean not just not just helping the original contractor built the lower Terrace then the customer started to build this second Terrace that the guys are working on right now but didn't have the elevation right so that has to come down before the next terrace or the next wall can be built on top of it this is not our normal base material this is class five and you're gonna see how that impacts things in just a minute we're just squaring that up put the wall then and that's gonna set the pieces let's see how it no square this one is to the wall class 5 is not just harder to base off from because there's no forgiveness and the material itself but if for some reason you do have a soft spot in the base it tends to allow the blocks to deflect more or shift and settle down the rope yeah these are so we're stepping down going couple more blocks this way then we're taking this top course off of here just to make it look more gooder and buildup down there and kind of try to fix this radius a bit yeah could be in business let's dive in here and talk about the materials on this jobsite this lower retaining wall is made out of diamond blocks it's your typical big box store retaining wall block that you'll see for sale and a lot of contractors gravitate toward this block for two reasons one cheapest block you can possibly purchase number two it's light it's actually hollow from the bottom side meaning you can't cor fill it you weighs next to nothing and so when a contractor is working with this block it's easy for him to pick up a block put it in place versus using heavier materials that require more labour I don't recommend using this block for anything other than outlining a garden bed now the second block on this jobsite in the upper wall that the contractor or the customer actually brought in is keystone compact units it's also a hollow block but fortunately at least you can fill it from the top and it does have pins it's not my chosen block but it's what's on this site and it's what we've got to use so let's give back to the project step now somewhere you just fill that up as a level it with class five and base one on top of it one more project yeah we've got a lot going on back here that's for fear these are the Keystone compact units which are actually a better block but the problem with these particular units is they're no longer manufactured so finding this block to match up to is going to be a challenge that we're going to run into a little bit later on in this video now these blocks unlike the ones we typically use need to be core field and backfilled as well what you're seeing these guys doing it this step is the back filling they will core fill later on Sam calls this wall his baby and with a brand new block it can be a little bit more difficult to figure out and he wants to get it right yeah question yeah so this is this is straight across right that's good but this low the level is saying it needs to come a little bit that way but if we bring that up then it's gonna be high on the corner now one of the things I think is interesting is nothing is going on top of this block that's the end of the retaining wall something I will never pick up what the level is telling Sam but he's still putting the attention to detail into it this makes it the perfect place to practice with that this is probably this area the retaining wall is going to be entirely covered up by a deck which is a good thing because you're gonna see why in just a minute now structurally nothing has been compromised as we build this upper tier of this retaining wall aesthetically even though nothing matches up because we've got anchor diamond units and tan on the bottom we've got Keystone retaining wall units in gray on the top and we're gonna be adding a third completely different look coming up in just a minute structurally everything should still hold together so although the customer saving money on materials that savings comes at its own price we are making the wall and a little fire pit for this guy I would have blocked that he had on site he wants to reuse these blocks that he had and we cannot find anymore we need some more fur over at the fire pit to get it how he wants to get it cannot find these things same thing with the caps we need caps to finish off our wall up here cannot find a place that has them we are having a good time finding caps at the time so we are gonna hunt hopefully tracks them down this weekend it is a kind of goofy blocks when Sam says we I do the blacks dude went and got and they are not the same I don't like these blacks not a fit not if then what was on the website and then maybe just picked up so these are flat faced and the other ones are not you messed up bad I think you got a drive back off just kidding I'll just get up here okay cuz you're not really gonna see him don't care right okay then all these go down there yeah you're so easy to work for it's function so to solve the problem with Blaine proposes to do is to use the new blocks which don't match anything and put it on to our retaining wall where they'll be covered underneath the deck and then to take the blocks that we've installed on that retaining wall and use them to build the fire pit where they can be seen you've got different to see your flat face these are all try faced so hopefully these pins line up our cap situation got kind of goofy so the ones that the cap set they show it on line for having we're single-phase eighteen inches we get them here and they are A's and B's we measured out for them to just be the one eighteen inch one so yeah kind of had a conundrum here it'll be alright with not working with this stuff again it definitely looks a little a little goofy but it's the homeowner doesn't care and if it's good enough for him it's good enough for us alright so we figured out our cap debacle we're just gonna get this all nice and looking good and then whatever we got left is left over and the homeowner is gonna just core fill that wall up there so this is gonna be a lot of cuts though there are gonna be lots of cuts Sam has replaced our steel chop saw with the Husqvarna K 770 and I think he likes it ooh I like that [Music] time to glue [Music] I always forget always forget now unlike the other retaining wall that we just wrapped up this one you can actually see so to help tie everything together we use the same eggshell shape on this lower seat wall that we found on the upper retaining wall when we first came in to the site but let's jump back and take a look at how that other retaining wall turned out [Music] our wall over here I already know it's ugly as hell not not how we would normally do it but like I said the homeowners over function over form and he just said you did not care here's what we got it here now according to the homeowner they no longer are making these tri-split face blocks and he didn't care what this wall looked like so he bought straight face to put on top of it he's got kind of uh three different looks going on over here he's got we got this wall here forces these blocks like that and we got these tri-phase Keystone's and then the flat faced key stones oh so we actually have a rule that we won't reuse retaining wall blocks the reason is is by the time you pull the wall apart clean the block up reinstall it and then if you have to have new blocks added on to it they will never match even if they still manufacture the blocks the colors will never match up because the aggregate mined from the pit to manufacture the blocks last year will typically very enough from the aggregate that they mined from the pit this year or whenever the blocks were originally installed and then on top of that you also have the effects of weathering discoloring the blocks and you can never get everything to match up and look good and what we found as a company it's not worth it it's just better off to do it but we broke our own rule on this one occasion and kind of regretted it because now you guys see why but the reason we broke our own rule is because this was one of our customers from years past and you do what you got to do to make sure that the people you've worked for before are happy and that's all we've got for right now I hope whatever you guys are working on turns out looking better than this wall because this one was literally the ugliest wall we've ever built in our life but structurally it sound god bless go get them and we will see you guys hopefully on a better looking retaining wall than this one catch you guys later Wow yes sorry yeah I know you watch my videos but like I said not normally how're you do it homeowner doesn't care he's happy we're happy so that's that we're on to the next one [Music] you