Now that the asbestos is completely clear from the tech house, which unfortunately was in the
caulking for the electrical wiring, meaning that we had to pull all the drywall off,
there is a ton of work to do in here. But unfortunately, this is a thing. But that
doesn't mean we can't work on the backyard. The plan today is to tear down that ramshackle shed,
fill the pond, do some leveling, figure out a better plan. We've got a whole team of wonderful
loans here to help us today. But first, we're going to segue to our sponsor.
First thing we need to do is take out this shed so we have a way to get the escalator into the
back to do the rest of the work. Watch your head.
With the shed out of here, surprise surprise, you're helping us come up with a plan for the
rest of the backyard. There's some stuff that we figured out already, like that we don't want to
deal with this water feature in the longer term. But what we don't know is how to deal with this
tiered setup that we have going on here, as well as if you have any brilliant ideas for
this random shed. Can you tell me what the objective is for the backyard before we make up a plan?
We feel that Yi is going to want to spend time back here with his family and friends,
but is going to be the kind of guy who wants a relatively low maintenance backyard. Okay.
With that in mind, we'd love to optimize the space for something like a robot lawnmower,
which obviously is not going to be a thing with this two tiered setup.
However, we're not going to be able to completely get rid of the two tiered setup because you can
see the land is not flat here and that fence bordering the neighbors at the back is elevated
compared to where we're standing right now. Okay. Do you know if there's anything in here? Like if
we wanted to rip that out and just make a little area in the back that slopes and put shrubs and
stuff in there, could we do that? We can rip cut slash whatever you want. It's going to be a lot
of work if you do that. That's why we got this wonderful high morale team of people to help us.
What we're hoping is that we can rip the ties out, use a lot of the dirt to fill the pond,
and then use the bricks to maybe make like a fire pity hanging outie spot and then get
rid of the rest of it. I think a deck area there would be really nice. Maybe put like a little
love seed or sectional, maybe a little patio table. Yeah, I'll deal with that another time though.
Today we're in the yard. Yeah, I know, but you said come up with a plan. You can't get started without
having a plan. You can. We have. Here's the plan. We are going to move this retaining wall pretty much
back to that back fence so that we can maximize the amount of flat level on that we have back here.
We're going to figure out exactly how far off the fence it has to come in order to have, you know,
good structural stability. But regardless of that, pretty much all of the existing plants
are going to have to go because this is an extensive enough redo that we're probably going to end up
damaging them anyway. Sorry, buddy. There is one exception. We want to keep kind of a raised seating
slash fire pit area up here, which would hopefully allow us to keep this and this, some of these like
bigger plants that'll make it so we don't have to just be hanging out here and just
staring at the fence that's in such good condition. The only thing though is that tree takes up a
lot of space. Do you want, because you can get shrubs and things like that that are skinnier,
that will give you that green effect without taking up so much space. I think I'm okay with
it. It's kind of a feature tree. No. This one's nice. This one's nice. It's really big and it's
kind of in the middle. Okay, well let's see if we can keep it. With that in mind, we've got to start
somewhere and I'm going to assign myself lifting up and stacking all these bricks. Actually, why don't
we start with the plants? Those little things? They're probably going to take more effort than you
think. They usually fight for life. Okay, I'm going to do it then. I'll do this. All right, start punching.
No, I'll go get a shovel. Jordan, there's one problem with the pond. Okay. We cut a bunch of holes
with the shovel and the liner. Yep. As you can see, it's not draining at all. If it doesn't drain
though, that is a problem because then you'll get like soggy grass and stuff after. It'll
turn into a big mud mess. Yep, we could remove all the rocks and then pull the liner out and see
what happens and see what happens. Okay. If we get most of them from at least this side and then
pull. We could maybe like cut around that side if we have to from the top or something.
Okay. Other than that, we've got to get like a sump pump or something to pump out all the water.
Yeah, we don't have that. Do you got a hose? I have a saw saw. Actually, a hose would work if you
start a siphon. Yeah. I'm not sucking on that. That's why I didn't suggest it.
What? I'm definitely going to need more tools. I'll need like a hatchet or something to cut some
of these roots. This thing's in there, buddy. Now that looks pretty loose, but it's not because
these roots are strong little buggers. All right. See you later, buddy. All right. What else you want
out, sir? Well, these two probably. Oh, those ones are big dull. Maybe those two in the corner. Okay.
You know what I'm kind of thinking, Jordan, is we might be better off pairing this back affair
bit before we try to get at the roots because right now I can't even, I can't even get in here.
All right. Let me go see what we have for tools. We basically just grabbed whatever people had
lying around and a bunch of tech geeks didn't have a lot. You like that rust on rust action there?
Can I make a request? Yeah, you can request anything you want. Can I have this plant?
Can we try to save it? You want to have it? Yeah, I want to plant it in my place. You know how much
more work it is to get it out in one piece, Alex? We got an excavator. You saw the size of it,
right? It was a line of size excavator. Yeah. I don't think the excavator will be that useful,
but I'll tell you what, you want to grab a shovel, we can try. Like I'm used to people being like,
hey, that motherboard from that video, you know, could I have it? I'm not used to,
can I have that plant? That doesn't come up very often for us. These looked like they were done
not that long ago and that is very much a thing. Oh, okay. And Alex with a sledgehammer might see
to that. I'm going to clear my, uh, yep. Boy, I'm fine.
I have literally, I'm starting to get a bit of wiggle here. So basically we're going to here,
if you grab that one, yeah, we're going to time it back, forward, back, forward,
back, forward.
Okay. So we got, I'd say a solid 10% of the root system. Good job team.
All right. Where do you want it, sir?
All right. And we only damaged the side of the house a little.
Hey, the little shed's clear. We're good to go. I'm bringing in the backhoe.
Not to be confused with my wife. She's just hoe, not backhoe.
It's her last name. Now remember the basic controls, but it's been a while since I've
tried to actually do anything useful. Oh, this is interesting. Okay.
All right. Well, this is progress boys. Well, I feel like I'm on a real construction crew.
I got five people watching me operate the thing. Whoops. They're supervising.
Okay. Am I, so what, are we stacking?
There's a lot of bricks. I don't know. You could reuse them.
Yeah. Well, I was thinking we could reuse at least some of them for like, uh, no, actually,
that's already brick. It's already brick for the whole side there. I think bricks are worth
anything. Unless they say supreme on them. I mean, we'll have to stack them one way or
another, whether we're disposing or okay. All right. So we're stacking. So short answer. Yes.
Look who's arrived and she brought the suck.
That's what it does. It's a pump. It's a pump for sucking water. We're gonna, we're gonna put it
in there. Question for you guys. Is there like a firm plan for this or what? Nope. Cool. Good chat.
Anyone got a knife? Uh, sure. Hit me.
Maybe try not turning it on and just use the blade. Solid.
Okay. Here's the plan. We're going to put this hose on the inlet. Then we're going to put this
filtered thing on the inlet thing. All right. That way we're going to avoid sucking up any
pieces that are so big they're going to clog up our hose. Hey, no one's falling in. All right.
Okay. Here we go.
All right. Strong flow. Yeah. I just want to ideally get a little bit of this out before the pump
grabs it. I think it's okay right now because it was still going. It was still pumping real good.
Just wanted to grab a little bit of this out of here.
Well, there's why you guys couldn't bend it out. Wow. That was deep.
Cool. Times however many more. You guys might have actually dug this out enough. Hold on. Give
me a sec. Oh yeah. We just need one person on either side and we'll push and pull. Okay. So,
yep. And then push and then your way and now my way and now your way and now my way.
Okay. Now you can just cut what's left of the roots there.
It's a good Tuesday when you've wrestled a bush. Hey, Jordan, how's the pump doing? Good.
That's the everything's okay alarm. All right. I think realistically this is probably about as
far as we're going to be able to go before it's sucking up more sludge than water. So the question
is what do we do with it? Obviously we can't have it just completely stay here. It's going to
pool there and it's going to be a swamp forever. How removable is this? Yeah. What if we suction
underneath the membrane? Oh, yeah. Okay. All right. Ready? Jack, go for it.
Well, you can see it going. That's great. How much of this do we think we need out of here?
Like, I mean, this isn't very much moisture in the grand scheme of things.
What I'm worried about is just like always being like a swamp under here. Yeah. I think only if
the water ends up running into here, which I don't think it will if we remove all the stuff.
Because this amount of water is the dirt's going to soak it all up. Okay.
Okay.
Not too much left. Are you not going to help? Spittin' time. You know what? That's fair enough.
We're obviously not done back here, but I am, I gotta be honest with you, I'm kind of blown away
by how much progress we made. We got all of the brick torn up and neatly stacked. So whether we
decide to use it or whether we don't, it's there. I feel like it might end up being a freebie item
on Facebook Marketplace, but hey, let's see. We got the liner pulled out of that pond. So now
it's ready to get some gravel and sand put in there so we get good drainage and then we can
spread some of that topsoil from the second tier down onto it. We got a bunch of the big plants
removed that we don't want and some that we did want that Alex took away. So I'm guarding that
road away. I wish him luck. I don't think it's going to live. And we have a plan. Sure. And,
we have this segue to our sponsor. It doesn't look like much, but we did make a ton of progress
today. If you liked this video, check out other Tech House videos. This series, kind of a pain so far,
but it's something different and I'm actually really enjoying it.