Harbor Fullerton Concrete pours patios, driveways and pool decks in Diamond Bar, up the 57 Freeway from our yard. Every estimate is measured and written on site, and the visit is free.
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A Diamond Bar lot is a graded pad with a slope above it, below it or both, and the pad was built to drain one way, to the street. Concrete that ignores that direction sends the water to the slope.
The tract engineers gave each lot its devices. The pad falls a few inches from the slope to the street, a concrete ditch runs along the top or the toe of the slope to catch what comes off it, and area drains take the low corners under a pipe to the curb. The failure we are called to is a patio poured flat over the swale at the back of the pad, so the water that used to cross the yard pools against the slab, soaks the toe of the slope and slumps it, or crosses into the lot below.
So the first thing we do on a Diamond Bar lot is find where the water was meant to go, and the slab is designed to keep it going there. The patio is pitched at the same fall as the pad, an area drain is set in its low corner and piped to the existing outlet, and nothing is poured on the slope or over the ditch, which the city and the association both require. The slab is 4 inches on 4 inches of compacted base, with number 3 steel on an 18 inch grid and joints cut within 12 hours.
Diamond Bar was drawn as one planned community before it was a city, and every lot came with its drainage already designed. The work here is adding concrete to a pad without undoing what the tract engineer built into it.
A Diamond Bar driveway climbs from the street to a garage on the pad, and on the hillside streets it does so at a grade. We pour it 4 inches on compacted base, broom it across the fall for grip, and set a drain across the garage door where the drive falls toward the house.
The patio is the job we do most in Diamond Bar, and the one most often done wrong, poured flat over the swale at the back of the pad. Ours is pitched at the pad's own fall, carries an area drain in its low corner piped to the outlet, and stops short of the slope and its ditch.
Stamped work in Diamond Bar goes on the patio and the pool surround, in an ashlar or a flagstone that suits a 1970s pad. We cast the pattern into a 4 inch slab set to the pad's fall, so the texture never holds a puddle, and seal it twice, since a south slope bleaches a stamp.
Walks in Diamond Bar are the steps and the path from a sloping drive to a door above it, and they are built as much for water as for feet. We pour them in short panels stepped with the ground, pitch each one to the side rather than down the run, and broom them coarse.
A Diamond Bar garage sits at the bottom of a drive on many hillside lots, and its floor takes what the drive sends down. We break out a cracked floor, set a trench drain across the door, and pour 4 inches pitched to it and troweled flat enough to coat, so the garage stays dry.
Exposed aggregate suits a Diamond Bar pool deck and a sloping drive alike, because the stone gives grip on a grade and stays cooler in August than a smooth slab. We wash the pebble proud the same afternoon, keep the pad's fall under it, and seal it once it has cured.
A wall at the toe of the slope is how a Diamond Bar pad gains room, and it is the one job here that always needs a city permit. We foot it into firm ground below the slope's loose skin, drain it behind the stem, rebuild the ditch behind it, and hold the height the city approves.
Interior slabs in Diamond Bar are for the guest unit or the pool house a hillside pad has room for once a wall has leveled it. We pour over a 10 mil vapor barrier on compacted base, trowel the floor flat enough for tile, and cut the joints on a grid the finished walls will hide.
Our yard is in Fullerton, and the crew takes the 57 Freeway up through Brea Canyon to reach Diamond Bar, which puts most of the city about 25 minutes from the gate when the freeway is moving. Plans go to the City of Diamond Bar Building and Safety Division at City Hall on Copley Drive. The city incorporated in 1989 and inherited its tracts from Los Angeles County, so the grading plan for an older lot is a county record, and we pull it before we design a slab on a pad with a slope.
The name is the brand a ranch registered in 1918, a diamond over a bar, and Transamerica laid the ranch out as a planned community from 1960. The tracts either side of Diamond Bar Boulevard and along Golden Springs Drive are that first generation, single story on pads cut into the hills. The Country, behind its gate off Diamond Bar Boulevard, is the other Diamond Bar, with lots of an acre and more, and its association reviews every slab that shows from the road before the city does.
The ground is the Puente Hills, and a hillside pad in a wet winter holds water at its low edge for a week after the storm. The 57 and the 60 meet inside the city, and the tracts nearest the interchange, along Golden Springs Drive and Brea Canyon Road, are on flatter ground where a mixer backs onto the lot. On the hillside streets off Grand Avenue and Pathfinder Road the pour is pumped from the street and booked for a dry week, because a pad still draining takes no truck.
One crew, four stages, and the grading plan read before the figure is written. On a hillside pad the drainage is designed first and the concrete around it, so the finished slab keeps the lot doing what it was built to do.
Grant Yoshida measures the slab, finds the pad's fall, the slope ditch and the area drains, and writes the figure before he leaves the driveway.
We file the plan with Diamond Bar Building and Safety on Copley Drive and with your association where it applies, and meet the inspector.
The old slab comes out, the area drain and its pipe are set to the existing outlet, and 4 inches of base is laid and compacted on the fall.
The pour takes a morning, pumped from the street on a hillside lot. Joints are cut that day, walk on it after 24 hours, drive on it after 7.
Call or send the form and you hear back within 1 business day with a time for the visit. The measure and the written figure cost nothing, and the figure includes the drain the slab needs, because a patio that floods the slope is not a finished patio.
Reviews
Our reviews are left on Google and Facebook by homeowners across north Orange County and the hills over the line, Diamond Bar among them, about the patios and drives this page describes.
“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.”
What people in Diamond Bar ask before they book, on what a slab on a hillside pad costs to build, whose approvals it needs, how we get here, the slope behind the house, timing, and where we go from here.
The drainage, then the pump. A patio on a pad with a slope behind it needs an area drain and a pipe to the outlet, which a patio on a flat valley lot does not, and a hillside street usually means the concrete is pumped from the road rather than chuted from the drive. After those two it is area and the finish. Every estimate is measured and written on site, and the drain is a line on the sheet, not a surprise.
Not for a slab at grade on your own pad, but yes for anything on the slope, any wall over 4 feet, and a footing that carries a cover, all of which go to the City of Diamond Bar Building and Safety Division at City Hall on Copley Drive. Slope setbacks are enforced, so a slab stays off the slope and the ditch. If your tract has an association, its review comes first, and in The Country it covers what the road sees.
Up the 57. The freeway runs from the north edge of Fullerton through Brea Canyon and into Diamond Bar, so the crew is on site in about 25 minutes and the mixer, which loads in Orange County, follows on the same road. The interchange with the 60 sits inside the city, so the streets nearest it are quickest to reach and the hillside tracts off Grand Avenue take the last ten minutes on surface roads.
No, and it is the city's rule as well as ours. The slope is part of the tract's drainage and its stability, and a slab on it adds weight where the ground is weakest and blocks the ditch that keeps it dry. What you can do is build at the toe, a wall footed into firm ground that holds a level pad, with the ditch rebuilt behind it. That is a permitted job and one we do often on the hillside streets.
Three days on site, then a week of cure. Break out and drains take a day, base and steel a day, and the pour a morning, and then the slab needs 24 hours before feet and 7 days before anything with wheels. The calendar depends on the weather more here than in the flat towns, since a hillside pad after a storm is still draining and a pump truck on wet ground marks the lawn. We book a dry week.
Brea, at the bottom of the canyon on the 57, and Yorba Linda beyond it, and each has its own page on this site with its own permit desk named. The ground changes on the way. Brea's lots are flat and its drives are the ones being widened, and Diamond Bar's are the hillside pads this page describes, so the same crew reads a different plan on each side of the county line.
Diamond Bar sits at the top of the 57, and Brea and Yorba Linda are the towns on our list along it, each with a page of its own. The county line between them changes the permit desk and the ground, and the page for your side of it says which.
Open the Fullerton Office in Google Maps Send the form and you hear back within 1 business day. The estimate is written on your pad, and the work carries a written workmanship guarantee against defects in how it was built.