Harbor Fullerton Concrete replaces 1970s tract flatwork in Cerritos, 9 miles down the 91 from our Fullerton yard. Every estimate is measured and written on site, tract map beside the tape.
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Cerritos was dairy pasture into the 1960s, graded flat for tracts in one decade. The silt under it holds water for weeks after rain, and the builders' slabs sat straight on it, no base and no steel.
Silt is the ground in between. It does not drain like the sand toward the river and it does not swell like the clay of the foothills, but it goes soft when it is wet and it stays wet, because Cerritos is flat and the water has nowhere to go but the storm drain at the corner. A builder's slab of 4 inches or less with no bar in it rides on that silt for 40 years, then a parkway tree, a broken sprinkler line or a truck on the apron tips a panel, and the crack follows the low spot.
The replacement is not the same slab again. We take out the old panels and the root that lifted them, scarify and compact the silt, then lay 4 inches of Class 2 base and compact that, because base is what keeps a slab flat on ground that softens every winter. The new drive is 4 inches thick, 5 at the apron and where a truck or a trailer parks, with number 3 bar on an 18-inch grid, and the joints are sawn the same afternoon so any crack that comes runs where we put it.
Four in five Cerritos homes are owned rather than rented, many by the people who bought them new. The work is the second round of everything the builder poured, the drive widened for a third car, the patio pushed out, the walk the tree lifted.
A Cerritos drive is usually a 1970s two-car slab being widened for a third car, so we draw the new width for the city first. Then the old slab and its roots come out, 4 inches of base goes in, and the drive is poured 4 inches thick with a 5 inch apron and sawn joints.
Cerritos yards are big enough that the patio is often a full outdoor room off the builder's 10 foot slab. We break the old slab out rather than pour over it, lay base, and pour 4 inches jointed on a 10 foot grid, doweled to the house slab and falling a quarter inch a foot.
Stamped concrete in Cerritos is mostly the front entry, where owners want the walk and the porch to match the brick or stone the tract came with. We cast an ashlar or a slate pattern into a 4 inch slab, color it integrally rather than on top, and seal it in two coats.
The walks in Cerritos are in the parkway, and the trees planted along them in the 1970s have lifted many of them. We pull the encroachment permit, remove the panel, prune the root with the tree kept, and pour the new panel doweled to its neighbors at the city's 4 inch section.
A 1970s Cerritos garage floor is thin and cracked where the water heater and the car have sat for 50 years. We break it out, lay base and a 10 mil vapor barrier, and pour 5 inches with steel, troweled flat so an epoxy or a tile floor can go on it once it has dried.
Exposed aggregate is the finish we are asked for on Cerritos patios and pool surrounds, because it is cooler underfoot than a broom finish and does not show dirt. We seed the stone into a 4 inch slab, wash the matrix at the right hour, and border it with a smooth troweled band.
Cerritos lots are flat, so a wall here holds a raised bed or the step between a yard and a neighbor's, not a hill. We pour it on a footing 18 inches into compacted ground with the bar tied into the stem, drain rock and a pipe behind, and a cap to match the tract's block walls.
Room additions and garage conversions in Cerritos need an interior slab level with the 1970s house slab. We match the height to a sixteenth, pour on 4 inches of base over a 10 mil barrier, and dowel into the original so the two do not step at the doorway once the floor goes on.
Cerritos runs from the San Gabriel River and the 605 on its west edge to Coyote Creek on its east, which is also the Orange County line and the one we cross to get here. The city incorporated as Dairy Valley in 1956, took the name Cerritos in 1967 and built out through the 1970s, so nearly every house we work on is a tract house of that decade, many with a second story added since. Permits are the City of Cerritos, at the Building Division in City Hall on Bloomfield Avenue.
The tracts are laid out on the old dairy grid, so the blocks off Carmenita Road, Studebaker Road and Norwalk Boulevard are straight, the lots are rectangular and the side yards are wide enough for a barrow and often for a mixer. That is why a Cerritos pour goes quicker than one on a narrow Artesia lot. Cerritos also cares about what is seen from the street, so a drive widening or a new approach is drawn and submitted before it is cut, and the parkway is put back to the city's standard.
We drive in on the 91 and come off at Bloomfield Avenue or Carmenita Road, 20 minutes from the yard on Harbor Boulevard. Most of our Cerritos calls come from the streets around the Civic Center and Cerritos Towne Center on Bloomfield Avenue, and from the blocks toward the Auto Square where the 1970s drives now carry three cars and an RV. The city inspector looks at the base before we pour, which we welcome, because that is where the job is won or lost.
Four stages, one crew, and one figure written on the lot. In Cerritos the drawing stage matters more than elsewhere, because anything that changes the front of the house goes past the city before a saw is started.
Grant Yoshida measures the slabs, checks the fall to the street, notes the tree and its roots and draws the new outline for the city.
The builder's slab and the roots under it come out, the silt is compacted, and 4 inches of base is laid and plate-compacted before forms go up.
The Building Division on Bloomfield Avenue reviews the drawing, Public Works signs the approach, and the base is inspected before the pour.
One morning pour, joints sawn by the afternoon, walk on it after 24 hours, park on it after 7 days, and the parkway put back as it was.
Call or send the form and we will get back to you within 1 business day to book a visit. We measure every slab you want replaced, probe the ground under the worst one, and write the figure at your kitchen table before we leave.
Reviews
Our reviews, left on Google, Facebook and the BBB by homeowners in the towns we cover. Cerritos is one of them, and the slabs behind these reviews went in on base with steel, as described above.
“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.”
Six things Cerritos owners ask before booking, from what the city wants to see to why a 1970s slab failed, how long the drive is out of use, and which towns next door we cover from the same yard.
Removal, then square footage. A Cerritos job almost always starts with a builder's slab to break out and haul, and a tree root or two under it, so the demolition day is a bigger share of the job than on a bare lot. After that it is area, thickness at the apron, and whether the parkway has to be put back. We probe under the old slab at the visit, so the figure written that day already includes what is there.
The City of Cerritos, through its Building Division at City Hall on Bloomfield Avenue. A drive or patio at grade in your own yard needs no building permit, but a new or widened approach at the curb is an encroachment permit through Public Works, and a wall over 4 feet or a footing for a patio cover needs plans. Cerritos looks closely at what faces the street, so we submit the drawing first and cut second.
Because it was poured thin on silt with nothing under it and nothing in it. The tract builders laid slabs straight on the graded pasture, 4 inches or less, with no base and no bar, and the silt under Cerritos goes soft every wet winter. Forty years of that, plus a parkway tree whose roots run under the apron, and the panel tips. The replacement goes on 4 inches of compacted base with steel on an 18-inch grid.
We are 20 minutes away on the 91 and in Cerritos most weeks. Our yard is on Harbor Boulevard in Fullerton, the route is the 91 west to Bloomfield Avenue or Carmenita Road, and we call you back within 1 business day to book the visit. The pour itself is booked for the first slot of the morning so the truck beats the freeway and the concrete is in the forms before the day warms up.
Ten days from the first cut to the first car. Removal takes a day, base and forms a day, the pour a morning, and then the concrete needs 24 hours before feet and 7 days before wheels. We plan the demolition so you can park on the street for that stretch, and on a lot with a second drive or a side gate we can often keep one way in open throughout.
Artesia, which Cerritos nearly surrounds, and Hawaiian Gardens to the south, then La Palma and Buena Park back across Coyote Creek in Orange County. We cover all of them from the same yard, and each has its own page because the housing changes at the line. A Cerritos house and an Artesia house a street apart were built 20 years and one city apart.
Cerritos touches Artesia, Hawaiian Gardens and La Palma, and Buena Park is one bridge over Coyote Creek. One yard on Harbor Boulevard covers them all. If your street is on a city line, the page next door describes the same crew on the other side of it.
Open the Fullerton Office in Google Maps Send the form and we call back within 1 business day to book the measure. It is written at your house, free, and the job carries a written workmanship guarantee against defects in how it was built.