Harbor Fullerton Concrete pours drives, patios and garage floors in Cypress, 20 minutes from our Fullerton yard. Every estimate is measured and written on site, pasture soil probed first.
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Cypress was grazed and milked before it was built on, and dairy pasture leaves a dark top foot of soil full of organic matter. That layer never compacts, and the builders poured straight onto it.
The low plain between Coyote Creek and Carbon Creek is fine silt that stays wet, and under the tract lawns of Cypress it is capped by the old pasture soil, which shrinks as its organic content rots away. A slab poured on that in 1965 has settled a fraction every year since, faster at the edge where the sprinklers run than in the middle where the ground stays dry. That is the tilted apron and the patio falling toward the house we see off Moody Street and Denni Street.
So the first thing our crew does on a Cypress lot is dig. The old slab comes out, then the dark soil under it down to the pale silt, which is the ground that will hold. That silt is plate-compacted, 4 inches of Class 2 base goes on it and is compacted again, and only then are the forms set. The slab is 4 inches with number 3 bar on an 18-inch grid, 5 inches where a vehicle stands, and its joints are sawn the same day so it cracks where we chose and nowhere else.
Cypress incorporated as Dairy City in 1956 and became a town of tract houses inside fifteen years, so its concrete all reached the end of its life at once. These are the eight jobs that call us to Cypress, each shaped by the pasture under it.
A Cypress drive from the 1960s has settled into the pasture soil under it, usually most at the apron. We break it out, dig the dark soil down to firm silt, compact 4 inches of base and pour a 4 inch broom-finished drive with a 5 inch apron, falling to the street.
The Cypress patio we are called to most falls toward the house, because the builder's slab settled into the old pasture at its outer edge. We remove it, dig to firm ground, lay base, and pour 4 inches jointed at 10 feet with the fall set away from the door, doweled to the house.
Stamped concrete in Cypress goes on the entry walk and the front porch more than the back yard, where owners want a 1960s ranch front to read as stone. We cast a slate or flagstone pattern into a 4 inch slab, color it through the mix, and seal it in two coats.
Cypress walks are in the city parkway and have lifted where the trees planted with the tracts grew into them. We pull the encroachment permit, saw out the bad panels, cut the root back, and pour new panels at the city's 4 inch section doweled to the old ones so no lip forms.
A Cypress garage floor poured in the 1960s is thin and has often dropped a step below the apron as the pasture soil under it shrank. We break it out, dig to firm silt, lay base and a 10 mil vapor barrier, and pour 5 inches with steel, level with the drive and troweled flat.
Exposed aggregate is what we pour around Cypress pools and on the patios that see afternoon sun, because it stays cooler than a plain slab and hides the dust off the yard. We seed river stone into a 4 inch slab, wash the matrix at the right hour, and border it in a smooth band.
Cypress is flat, so a wall here holds a raised planter or the difference between two lots graded at different heights, not a slope. We footing it 18 inches into the firm silt below the pasture soil, tie the bar into the stem, and put drain rock and a pipe behind it.
Garage conversions and additions in Cypress need an interior slab on ground that stays damp, so the barrier matters more than the finish. We pour on 4 inches of base over a 10 mil membrane lapped and taped at the seams, match the house slab height, and trowel it flat for tile.
Cypress is bounded by the 605 and Coyote Creek on the west and reaches east to Knott Avenue, with Lincoln Avenue, Ball Road and Katella Avenue running across it. The dairies that gave the city its first name were gone by the 1970s, replaced by tracts of single-story houses on the same flat pasture, two in three of them owner-occupied. Permits go to the City of Cypress Building Division at City Hall on Orange Avenue, and work at the curb is an encroachment permit from Public Works.
The tracts around Cypress College and along Valley View Street are the bulk of our Cypress work, cul-de-sacs of 1960s ranch houses whose original drives and patios have settled into the pasture soil. Lots are level and side yards are wide, so a mixer usually reaches the back of the lot and a patio pour that would take a day of barrowing in Artesia takes a morning here. The race course on Katella Avenue and the business park around it are where we pour the larger commercial slabs.
We come in from Fullerton on the 91 to Valley View Street, or straight down Beach Boulevard to Lincoln Avenue, about 20 minutes either way with the mixer booked to follow us. Cypress is low ground, so a pour here is watched for one thing more than elsewhere, which is where the water on the lot goes once the slab is in. We set every drive and patio to fall away from the house, and where the yard has no outlet we cut a swale or run a drain before the concrete goes down.
Four stages, one crew. In Cypress the second stage is the long one, because the pasture soil under the old slab has to come out before anything can be compacted, and how deep it goes is found on the day the slab is lifted.
Grant Yoshida measures the slabs, checks the fall, and pushes a probe through the lawn to find how deep the pasture soil runs.
The old slab comes out, then the dark soil under it down to the pale silt, which is compacted before 4 inches of Class 2 base goes on.
Where the job needs one we file at City Hall on Orange Avenue, pull the encroachment permit for the curb, and book the base inspection.
The mixer is on your street first thing, the joints are sawn by afternoon, and the slab takes feet at 24 hours and a car at 7 days.
Call or use the form and we ring you back within 1 business day to set a time. We measure the slabs, push a probe through the lawn to find the depth of the soft soil, and write the figure at the house before we leave.
Reviews
Reviews left on Google and Facebook by customers across the towns we cover, Cypress among them. The slabs they describe were poured over compacted silt with the pasture soil taken out first.
“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 questions from Cypress owners, on what moves the figure on former pasture, which city counter takes the permit, why a 1960s patio now leans toward the house, and how long the drive is out of use.
How deep the pasture soil goes, then the area. On some Cypress lots the dark soil under the old slab is a few inches and on others more than a foot, and every inch of it has to be dug, hauled and replaced with compacted base before a form is set. After that it is square footage, thickness where a vehicle stands, and finish. We probe the depth at the visit, so the figure written that day has the digging in it.
The City of Cypress, at City Hall on Orange Avenue. A drive or a patio at grade on your own lot needs no building permit, but a wall over 4 feet, a footing for a patio cover and any slab someone will live on go to the Building Division, and a new approach, curb cut or public walk is an encroachment permit through Public Works. We file whichever the job needs and meet the inspector on site.
Because the ground under its far edge was pasture soil, and pasture soil shrinks. The builders poured the patio on the dark layer the dairies left, and as the organic matter in it rotted away the outer edge settled while the edge against the house, on the building's own pad, did not. The slab and the soft soil come out, and the new patio goes on compacted base, falling from the door.
About 9 miles and 20 minutes. We take the 91 to Valley View Street or Beach Boulevard down to Lincoln Avenue, and we are in Cypress or the towns beside it most weeks. When you call we ring back within 1 business day to book the visit, and the pour itself is set for the first slot of the morning so the mixer is on your street before the traffic on Katella Avenue builds.
Ten days, and most of that is curing. The old drive and the soil under it come out on day one, base and forms go in on day two, and the pour is the morning of day three. The slab takes foot traffic after 24 hours and a car after 7 days. On a Cypress lot the digging can run into a second day if the pasture soil is deep, and we say so at the estimate rather than on the day.
Yes, and Buena Park, Stanton, Hawaiian Gardens and Cerritos too, all from the same yard on Harbor Boulevard in Fullerton. Every one of them has its own page, because a house in Los Alamitos was built on different ground from a house in Cypress a mile away, and the specification follows the ground. The crew, the base and the written figure are the same on every one of them.
Cypress touches La Palma and Buena Park to the north, Stanton to the east and Los Alamitos to the south, with Hawaiian Gardens and Cerritos over the 605. One yard covers all of them, and each town has its own page because the ground changes at the line.
Open the Fullerton Office in Google Maps Send the form and we ring back within 1 business day to book the visit. It is free and written at the house, and the job carries a written workmanship guarantee against defects in how it was built.