How to Build a Retaining Wall and 6 Reasons they Fail

Today we're going to cover six big mistakes when you're building a retaining wall and how to avoid them so let's get started. I predicted this wall would fail over a year ago in this exact spot, in this exact way. You can see where the grades behind this wall have dipped down. It's going to blow that wall out and in fact, we had one catastrophic wall failure on this project last year and we had to repair it. We got another one coming up; it's not because I have a crystal ball it's because the writing was on the wall. It's just completely shot right there, that's from drainage, from not maintaining it. You can see where all the grades have dropped down in here and now we've got big sinkholes behind this retaining wall. I can literally stick my leg down in here, up to my knees. You can see this distinct angle, it’s all bowed out.

Avoid Problems

This problem could have easily been avoided had the property owner, the...

Interviewer: I'm with Matt Dardening and he started cut short landscaping when he was eleven years old he's nineteen years old and he just purchased out East Ridge Landscaping and he's grossing over one point two million dollars a year, we're going to find out how Matt got started, we're going to look at the journey they got into where he's at right now we're going to share some of that, some of the Matt's best, best things that he's learned over these years.   Matt: We up sale everything Edges exoneration, tree fork, landscape fork . Everything you can think of, we know what our clients will pay, we know what our clients will allow us to do, how far we can push them. I was trading all that money I had  saved up into actual equipment. I was going on a spending spree to the point where my parents actually said if you’re going to live in our house...   Interviewer: Matt, how you doing today buddy?   Matt:`Pretty good, how are you. Interviewer:  I'm good...

Instagram

My 12-year-old daughter introduced me to this thing called Instagram, and I absolutely love it because I get to do some of the craziest things you would ever think of. it or not. This is the actual swimming pool the frogs you and. I have let it Believe it or not, this is an actual swimming pool. Look at the frogs jumping. I have never. Oh the smell of this thing. It's like a cesspool. It just reeks. We found a couple dead squirrels at the bottom of this thing. Maybe I've come across a Chicago hammer and I absolutely hate it. And I want to share that with you guys.  We are going to fix this hammer.  It's never worked right Step one: Find the wheel very carefully. Step two: add gasoline.  Step three: get a match. Follow me if you want to see me burn, build and break stuff for free. Maybe there's something like this Milwaukee coat that I'm like, "I absolutely love this coat." But I want you guys to know that if you're looking at buying some winter wear,...

Behind me, is a little house that’s been condemned and foreclose. I’ve never been in this house and we’re going to open those doors and we’re going to walk in and i don’t know what we’re going to find. I don’t know what this is, but this looks like diapers. That’s those are diapers. I don’t know what I’m sitting on but it doesn’t look pretty. Okay, the first thing I’m going to point on is some of you guys are getting into demolition.  You must always do a walk through on a house because, you will be surprised and what a house like this may hold. So let’s go, check it out. That is literally that’s a pile of bones. At the end of this video I’m going to teach you how to price cleaning out a structure like this and then I’m going to share with you an insider’s technique that will allow you to be able to do it in half the time and half the cost typical clean out crew. That’s...

So I'm here at the Snow Wolf manufacturing facility and what I want to show you is called the Quattro Plow. Stan: I want you to put it in the back drag position. Colten: What’s that? Stan: All the way over, fold the wings backward.

Containment to Back Drag

Stan: We call this the "dumbest snowplow in the world" because it doesn't get any simpler than this.  You can take the snowplow from a containment unit to a back dragging unit with no special connections. Stan: Now I want you to pull the wings forward, that is called the containment position. Alright now fold them back. That's back dragging!  This would have to be on the front of a caterpillar you could put it on a Bobcat you can take this off this machine put it on any single skid loader without any wiring without any connections. Stan: Sonny is going to show us how easy it is to hook up... Stan: One hydraulic hose, two hydraulic hoses, not even high flown as necessary to operate this, simply unplug this one, you...

  Today we're giving you some professional tips and techniques to help you build an amazing backyard patio of your own and it's all about the base and nothing to do with the bricks.  This means we're building a cutlass paver patio and we're going to show you how to do the same. So, let's get into it.

Base Material

We're going to divide the base into three distinct categories, the first category is what we call the sub base and that is the raw soil.  How to prepare that? What to look for? And what you're going to need to know to make sure that when you lay your patio now, it looks the same ten years from now. The second category is what we call the imported base material.  That's what you use to separate the sub base from your pavers.  The third category of base material is your sand base or your screed rail, and there may be a little bit of controversy on this last point.

Sub-base: Soil

Let's look at the sub base material or the raw soil. This is the most...

So we've been called out to take a look at a commercial drainage project and I want to walk you through what the solution is. So, I'm going to start kind of at the end of this line. On this building, we've got a large commercial building, we have four points on this building which really technically isn't enough, so a lot of water is coming out at two points on the left side of the building, two points on the right side of the building through what's called a scupper, which is basically a roof drain that will discharge towards the top and this water will rush out of the top of the building onto the ground like a waterfall. Once that water flows down this way by gravity on top of the surface there is a large drain basin existing in the ground during basin is re about here about 10ft behind me and that during Basin discharges with a 6inch corrugated pipe that only comes partially way down the hill and there still it has to run over all of this dirt and gravel area before it hits a...

An Indestructible Level

A level is a tool of trust. What do you got in the gun Uncle Tom? Number five and number four ball gauge. You get the control point; you make sure your level is in good shape. What happens if you drop it? You have to trust that it's strong enough to withstand a few bumps and bruises along the way. So we're having some Sunday fun. And Empire claims to have the strongest level ever. We are going to put that to the test. Okay, you ready for this one? Here boys, catch. Here it goes. That was a good hit. That's about everything I've got! That farm cat has fast legs. Colten: It follows us, I like it. Tom: Still right on. Stan: Still right on? Stan: Turn it around; let's see how many damages this thing got so far. Stan: Boys stay behind that wall.

Uncle Tom Shoots the Level

Stan: What do you got in the gun Uncle Tom? Tom: Number five and number four. Stan:  Number five and number four, what gauge? Tom: Twelve gauge. Stan: Twelve gauge five, twelve gauge four....

.Drainage Swale

I was called out to address a problem in drainage and erosion. Years ago, we did a drainage erosion project for a property you can’t see right now, but it sits behind this fence in a very nice neighborhood. It was to address water that was coming from this adjacent trailer park area.  I want to go through a problem that we recently had. Last night, there were some horrendous rain storms that came through this area, and as a result, they flooded over a large drainage swale that we had installed using rip-rap rock.  We had excavated out of very nice swale going down the hillside with the intent of capturing this water.  That drainage system has been in place for probably close to 2years now and it's worked with good results and until now.

Heavy Rains

Recently, we had this heavy rain and it crested over the drainage system. I came back here to this trailer park behind the property to identify the cause of this problem, and here's what I found. There...