Our Road is GONE (major mudslide)

Tyler is the perfect addition of the team, he's calm, funny and has another big smile! Have fun guys!!! :)

ok. So we are building an MSE (Mechanically Stabilized Earth) Wall along a roadway starting next week. And we've done a few retaining walls over the years, and I did designs during school for them. My thoughts are this. The way this is built, you basically could have sloped it off and put the french drain at the bottom, it would be almost as effective. Because the blocks are just sitting on the ground (which isn't very good as you show!), they really can't do anything to stop rotation or movement of the slope, other than what their shear weight can handle. What you've done will do a fantastic job of draining water that gets to the wall. However, the soil above it can still get saturated and liquify if too much water comes through. If that happens the grass really can't do much to stop the underlying material from moving.

Just me or when they said "just don't get the excavator stuck", I was expecting the next cut scene to go to the excavator being stuck? lol

Great job folks! You might consider adding a wildflower seed mix to that grass seed mix, there is a multitude of benifits and reasons why, also might consider once the grass takes off good, add in some native ferns as well. All these things together really helped me with a far worse and steeper hillside problem before.

As an engineer, I think the wall should've been 3 or 4 blocks high. I'm afraid the mud is just going to pour right over it next year. I'm sorry.

You said more road work and you delivered. Impressive that you did all this work over months and still found time to make content for weekly videos. Yes good friends are special. They qualify for free boat use for a getaway weekend.

As a non-engineer and someone who knows nothing about the ultimate solution ( because you don’t own the land uphill) and watching your channel , can’t wait for the next mudslide, video and temporary fix!!!

When this video first started, I was thinking "snow"! I live in Idaho, and we've been experiencing triple digit temps. Then it gets to the "a few months later." ohh yeah.😂 good video guys, enjoyed it.👍

With all your natural rock and Riley's penchant for welding, I'm kind of surprised you didn't build gabion baskets for your retaining walls and stack them a couple layers high.

You guys and the crews you assembly are so fun to see how you come up with solutions to issues and deploy the ideas. Just incredible what your 2 have built together!! True love for you and your family, and these video's. Thanx for sharing!

Thar was great. Glad to see the hydroseeder again. Thank yall for what you do.

What an exciting video. Lot and lots of work by all of you! Tyler is a Beast of help doing any job. Hi Oliver

i have mentioned this before you need to make a skid that the skid steer can lift with hand rails and a place for the welder that you can move around easily and stand on with your welder or other tools.

If you were to do this again, here are some tips (I build these walls for roadworks, not by myself but my crew does the work). - Base of angular crushed rocks or crushed concrete (cheaper sometimes). - first block should be partially buried. - drainage pipe with crushed rock, all about the same size. It not only drains the water but also slows it down and works as a buffer. - the heigth of the wall should follow the land with some steps if needed. - let the blocks have a little step in to the hill. What you did wil still work, but I predict that it will shift. Good effort!

That will work, I think it should be backed up with perf pipe too but hydroseeding will help a lot. A normal winter with a slow spring thaw will pack that slope in tight. next spring the vegetation should be really thick which will hold the embankment in place way better.

i've lived off grid part time for 50 years. 50 years ago, my 4 mile dirt and rock driveway was a problem often. Over the years, with culverts, more rock, etc, now it is that 4 miles that is fine, where the county blacktop is not. Being aware and making sure that water is allowed to drain well, is the key. Yeah, personally, I would have excavated and filled in the trench with rock, and had a drain away from that, either a culvert or a trench that had a good place for the water to escape. Your ground there is saturated. Unless it is rock, it is going to turn to mud. Putting a barrier there looks good, but unless you have a way for the water to run off BEFORE it saturates the dirt, you are potentially even making it worse... With a good way to let the water escape, i'm not sure you needed all that concrete retaining wall. I get a lot of rain too, (60" a year average in No Cal on the coast) and I have no such problems anymore.

Your ingenuity is amazing project after project. Your road fix is another great achievement. I love how you have bought and built the tools needed for your homestead

Buddy of mine up in northern Idaho owns a 79 acre homestead up in the mountains and he built Gabon walls along his roads and he grew some kind of tree (looks like a willow type tree but i am not sure how it survives up in the cold) that has a massive root structure to hold up the banks with some kind of drainage system using 24 inch culvert pipes. He has told me that his road/driveway was the most expensive part of his property

Not usually the sort of thing I'd watch but it came up in my suggestions. I started with yr septic build and thoroughly enjoyed it so I watched this. Great work guys, I've really enjoyed yr posts. Hey from North Queensland Australia 🙂👍

The retaining wall can be built using Rock Gabions. Gabions are cages which can be filled with small interlocking rocks, medium size rocks and then these cages are placed like bricks to form retaining wall. There are many mountaineers regions around Maharashtra and around Kerala where we have contracts building roads and we regularly used the KBS. This is a very efficient and reliable technique to be retaining walls in do we get a try. Give me an wall has the Gabion wall has much bigger advantage in the long run as it can also drain water slowly and retail the dirt. Amazing content.