Harbor Fullerton Concrete pours drives, patios and walks in Artesia, 9 miles west of our Fullerton yard across Coyote Creek. Every estimate is measured and written on site, shared drive or not.
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Artesia is named for the artesian wells that once flowed here on their own. The water is pumped below any footing we dig, but the ground it left is fine sand and silt, and that sets the base.
Fine sand carries a slab evenly as long as it stays where it is, and in Artesia it does not stay on its own. The plain is flat, so water off a roof or a sprinkler line pools against the edge of a slab instead of running away, and each wet season carries a little sand out from under that edge. A drive poured straight onto the yard rocks at the street end within a few winters. That is the failure we see most between 183rd Street and South Street, where drives are 60 years old.
So every slab we pour in Artesia sits on 4 inches of Class 2 base over a subgrade that is wetted and plate-compacted first, because loose sand compacts damp and not dry. The slab is 4 inches thick, 5 where a truck or a trailer parks on it, with number 3 bar on an 18-inch grid. The edge nearest the street is thickened to 8 inches, so the panel that takes the most water is the one with the most concrete under it.
Artesia is 1.6 square miles with 16,900 people in it, so lots are narrow and half the homes are rented. The work is the drive a front house shares with a back unit, the walk to a rear door, and the slab a landlord needs cured before a tenant.
A drive in Artesia is often shared between a front house and a back unit, so we set the line with both owners before we cut. The old slab comes out, the sand is compacted damp, and 4 inches of base goes under a 4 inch broom-finished slab with the street edge thickened to 8.
Artesia back yards are short, so a patio here usually runs the full width of the lot from fence to fence. We pour it as one 4 inch slab jointed into panels no bigger than 10 feet, tie it to the house slab with dowels, and fall it a quarter inch a foot away from the door.
Stamped work in Artesia is asked for on front paths and entry aprons that face the street, where a lot is too narrow for planting to do the job. We cast a flagstone or ashlar pattern into a 4 inch slab with a plain broom border, then seal it in two coats so the color holds.
Most Artesia walks are in the city right of way, so a lifted panel is a claim as well as a trip. We pull the encroachment permit, saw the panel out at its joints, dowel the new pour into the old on both sides, and match the city's 4 inch section and broom finish.
Artesia garage floors from the 1950s are thin and were poured on bare sand, and many have a step at the door where the apron dropped. We replace them at 5 inches over compacted base with a vapor barrier under, level with the driveway, and trowel them flat for a coating later.
Exposed aggregate suits the older Artesia streets, where a plain gray drive reads too new beside a 1950s cottage. We seed river stone into a 4 inch slab, wash the matrix off at the right hour of the afternoon, and cut the joints on the line of the panels the house already has.
Artesia is flat, so a wall here is not holding a hillside. It holds a raised planter, or a lot filled a foot higher than its neighbor, and it fails when the sand behind it washes through. We pour a footing 18 inches into compacted ground with drain rock and a pipe behind it.
Back units and garage conversions are common in Artesia, and both need an interior slab that stays dry. We pour on 4 inches of base over a 10 mil barrier lapped and taped at the seams, because the wells are gone but the sand still wicks, and trowel it ready for tile.
Artesia incorporated in 1959, three years after the dairy farmers around it formed Dairy Valley, which became Cerritos and now nearly surrounds it. What was left inside the line was the old town, the blocks either side of Pioneer Boulevard, 1950s cottages on lots split as the dairies sold, and the apartment courts that filled the gaps after. Permits go to the City of Artesia Building and Safety counter at City Hall on Clarkdale Avenue, and a walk at the curb needs Public Works too.
Pioneer Boulevard between 183rd Street and 187th Street is the Little India shopping strip, and the streets behind it are where most of our Artesia work is. Lots there are narrow, with one drive down the side that a front house and a back unit both use, so the mixer stays at the curb and the concrete goes in by chute and barrow. Two households often share one slab, and the first thing we settle is which owner is paying for which panel, on paper, before the saw comes out.
The drive from our yard is the 91 west from Harbor Boulevard to the Pioneer Boulevard exit, about 20 minutes early in the day, so an Artesia pour is booked for the first slot of the morning and the truck is never sat in freeway traffic with a load going off in the drum. Artesia is in Los Angeles County, so the inspector is the city's rather than Orange County's, and the code is the same California Residential Code we work to at home.
Four stages and one crew. On a shared drive the first stage takes longer than on most jobs, because two owners have to agree the line before we measure, and the written figure is built from that measure and nothing else.
Grant Yoshida measures the slab, probes the sand for soft spots, checks where roof water lands and marks the shared line with both owners.
Old concrete and topsoil come out, the sand is wetted and plate-compacted, and 4 inches of Class 2 base goes down and is compacted again.
We file with Building and Safety on Clarkdale Avenue where the job needs it, and pull the encroachment permit for a walk at the curb.
Poured from the curb by chute and barrow, joints cut the same day, walkable at 24 hours and driveable at 7 days, with the drive swept behind us.
Call or send the form and we will ring back within 1 business day to book the visit. We measure the lot, probe the ground and write the figure there, with both owners of a shared drive present if that is what the job is.
Reviews
Reviews left on Google and Facebook by homeowners in the towns we cover, Artesia among them. The slabs they describe were built the way this page says, on base, with the joints cut the same day.
“Our drive had dropped at the apron and split right across. Grant dug a hole before he wrote anything and showed me the clay sitting eight inches down. They took out 740 square feet, cut that clay back and poured five inches. He was here at half six on pour day.”
“The bank behind our garden had been creeping toward the house for years. They set a 34 foot wall four feet high, drained the back of it properly and got the encroachment paperwork through Engineering themselves. Two wet winters later and nothing has moved an inch.”
“Our 1958 garage floor was powdering every time the car came in and it was damp along the back wall. Out it came, a sheet went down over the base, and 420 square feet went back at five inches. It has stayed dry through two winters and I hose it off.”
The six things people in Artesia ask before they book, from what moves the price on a narrow lot to who signs off a walk on a city street and how long a shared drive is out of use.
Access before area. A narrow Artesia lot with a shared drive means the mixer stays at the curb and every yard of concrete goes in by barrow, which is crew hours rather than material. After that it is the state of the sand under the old slab, how much has to come out, and the thickness the use calls for. Every estimate is measured and written on site, so nothing in it is an allowance.
The City of Artesia. Building and Safety at City Hall on Clarkdale Avenue takes the flatwork that needs a permit, which is a wall over 4 feet, a footing for a cover, and any interior slab. A walk, an approach or a curb cut in the public right of way is an encroachment permit through the city's Public Works. A drive or a patio at grade on your own lot needs neither, and we say so in writing on the estimate.
Good when it is held. The fine sand under Artesia carries a slab evenly, and it drains, which is more than clay does. What it does not do is stay under an edge that water runs along, so the slab needs a compacted base and a thickened edge on the street side, and the downspouts need to land on a splash block rather than on the corner of the new drive.
About 9 miles, and around 20 minutes on the 91. Our yard is on Harbor Boulevard in Fullerton and Artesia is the far side of Coyote Creek in Los Angeles County, so we book Artesia pours for the first slot of the morning, before the freeway fills, and the crew is on the lot by 7 with the truck behind it. We are in Artesia or Cerritos most weeks.
Three days for the work and seven before a car goes on it. We cut and remove on day one, base and form on day two and pour on day three, then the slab is walkable after 24 hours and takes a car after 7 days. On a shared drive we can pour in two halves a week apart so one household always has a way in, and that is agreed at the estimate.
Yes. Cerritos surrounds Artesia on nearly every side, and La Palma, Hawaiian Gardens and Buena Park are all within a few miles back toward Fullerton, so we cover them from the same yard. If your street is on the Cerritos line, and in Artesia most streets near the edge are, the Cerritos page describes the same crew and the same base under a different set of houses.
Artesia has Cerritos on nearly every side and is a short run from La Palma, Hawaiian Gardens and Buena Park, and one yard covers them all. Each town has its own page, because the ground and the housing change at the city line even when the crew does not.
Open the Fullerton Office in Google Maps Send the form and we ring back within 1 business day to book the measure. It is free, written on the lot, and the work carries a written workmanship guarantee against defects in how it was built.