Harbor Fullerton Concrete pours driveways, slabs and walks in Hawaiian Gardens, down the 605 from our Fullerton yard. Every estimate is measured and written on site, and the visit is free.
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A Hawaiian Gardens house has its garage at the back of the lot and a drive running 60 feet down one side to reach it. That strip is the busiest concrete on the property and the only way to the back.
The strip was poured in the 1950s as two ribbons or one thin slab, 8 feet wide between the house wall and the fence, and it has carried every car on the lot in and out twice a day since. Now a second unit stands where the garage was on many lots, so the drive serves two households and the delivery van too. It cracks along its length, because a slab that narrow has no room for a panel to work as a panel, and sinks at the house side, where the roof has dropped its water for 70 winters.
So the drive is built as the spine of the lot. We take the old strip out in a day, cut the house side back to firm ground where the downspouts have softened it, and lay 4 inches of compacted base the full width. The new slab is 5 inches thick with number 3 steel on an 18 inch grid, because it is a road and not a path, jointed every 8 feet so each panel is square, and pitched to the street so the back of the lot drains along it. The patio, the walk and the unit's slab are doweled to it.
Hawaiian Gardens fits nearly 6,000 people into each of its square miles, and it has about one of them. The lots are small, the garage is at the back, and the drive that runs between them is the slab every other job on the lot has to work around.
A Hawaiian Gardens driveway runs down the side of the house to a garage or a second unit at the back, so it is long, narrow and the busiest slab on the lot. We pour it 5 inches thick on compacted base, joint it every 8 feet so the panels are square, and pump it past the house.
A patio in Hawaiian Gardens is the last open ground on the lot, so it is poured to carry water as much as chairs. We set it to fall away from the house, join it to the drive with a doweled joint at the same level, and pour 4 inches jointed on the grid of the slab beside it.
Stamped concrete on a small lot goes at the front, where the drive and the walk are the whole yard the street sees. We cast a flagstone or tile pattern into a 4 inch slab, keep the fall to the curb under it, and seal it in 2 coats, so the front reads as a courtyard, not parking.
The walk in front of a Hawaiian Gardens house is often the city's and often lifted, and the strip from it to the door is yours. We replace your side in panels doweled to the public walk so the joint stays flush, and where the city's panel is the problem we permit and do both.
A garage at the back of a Hawaiian Gardens lot has a floor that is wet from the low side every winter, cracked and dusting. We break it out, lay 4 inches of base, cut a channel drain across the door where the drive meets it, and pour a 4 inch floor pitched to the drain.
Exposed aggregate suits the front of a Hawaiian Gardens lot, because the stone stays cool under bare feet in August and does not go slick when winter rain runs across it to the street. We wash the pebble proud the same afternoon and seal it once cured, so the drive is the yard.
Walls in Hawaiian Gardens are short and mostly hold a raised bed or a step between a lot and the neighbor's grade, since the city is flat to the creek. We pour the footing into firm ground below the topsoil, drain behind the stem, and permit anything over 4 feet with the city.
The second unit at the back of a Hawaiian Gardens lot is where the interior slabs go, and it sits on the lowest ground on the lot. We pour over a 10 mil vapor barrier on base raised above the yard, trowel the floor flat enough for tile, and cut the joints under the unit's walls.
Our yard is in Fullerton and the crew comes down the 605 to Carson Street, so the run is about half an hour with the mixer following. Plans go to the City of Hawaiian Gardens permit counter at City Hall on Pioneer Boulevard, which is a short walk from most of the city. Work in the parkway, the approach or the public walk needs an encroachment permit as well, and we file that with the same city. Both are filed before the saw comes off the truck.
The city is the streets between Carson Street and the county line at Coyote Creek, with Norwalk Boulevard and Pioneer Boulevard running through it, and a refreshment stand roofed in palm fronds on Carson Street gave it the name in the 1920s. The houses came in the 1950s and 1960s on lots of 5,000 square feet and less, most with the drive running down one side to a garage at the back, and the second unit many now have back there is why the drive is the busiest concrete on the lot.
The ground is the flat floodplain of the San Gabriel River and Coyote Creek, sand and silt that drains well in most yards and stays wet in the low ones after a storm. It is not ground that heaves, so a slab that has failed here failed for its water or its thinness, and the cure is the fall and the base, not a thicker section. The calendar is the wettest weeks of winter and the parking, since a curing drive puts your cars on a street where the spaces are already taken.
One crew, four stages, one written figure. On a lot where the drive is the only way to the back, the pour is planned so the house is never cut off for longer than the concrete needs.
Grant Yoshida measures the piece you asked for, then shoots the fall of the whole lot to the street, so the new slab sits on a grade that works.
We file with the City of Hawaiian Gardens at City Hall on Pioneer Boulevard, and add the encroachment permit for the approach. You do nothing.
The old slab is sawn out and hauled, the low spots are cut to grade, and 4 inches of base is laid and compacted before the steel is tied.
The mixer chutes from the curb, or a pump reaches the back. Joints are cut that day, walk on it after 24 hours and 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 covers the fall of the whole lot, not just the square feet you pointed at.
Reviews
Our reviews are left on Google and Facebook by homeowners across north Orange County and over the county line, Hawaiian Gardens among them, about the drives and slabs 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 Hawaiian Gardens ask before they book, on what moves the estimate on a small lot, which permits the city wants, how a truck reaches the back, where the water goes, and the week without the drive.
Reach, before area. A drive that runs 60 feet down the side of a house to a back garage is beyond a mixer's chute, so the concrete is pumped or barrowed, a machine or a day of labor a front apron never needs. Then it is how many old pieces come out, since a lot paved in stages has more seams to cut than one poured at once. Every estimate is measured and written on site, with the fall of the lot on the sheet.
For the apron, yes, and for the drive on your own lot, no. The approach across the parkway is public right of way, so the City of Hawaiian Gardens issues an encroachment permit for it from City Hall on Pioneer Boulevard. A building permit covers a retaining wall over 4 feet, a footing that carries a roof, and any slab a second unit sits on, the common case on these lots. We file whichever the job needs.
No, and the job is planned around that. The side of a Hawaiian Gardens house leaves 3 or 4 feet between the wall and the fence, which no mixer passes, so the truck stands at the curb and a line pump carries the concrete to the back, or for a small slab the crew barrows it down the side. Either way the pour still finishes in a morning, and the street is closed for only the hours the truck is on it.
The downspouts. A side drive sits tight against the house, and every roof drain on that side has dropped its water onto the same 2 feet of slab edge for 70 winters, washing the sand out from under it a little each year. The house side settles, the slab tilts toward the wall, and the water it now holds finishes the job. The replacement takes that edge back to firm ground and pipes the downspouts under it.
Seven days for a car, 24 hours for feet. Break out and base take a day, the pour takes a morning, and then the slab cures. On a lot where the drive is the only way to the back garage, we plan that week with you before the saw starts, so the cars are on the street with a permit if the block needs one and the back unit is reached on foot down the other side.
Cypress and Los Alamitos on the Orange County side of Coyote Creek, and Cerritos and Artesia to the north, each with a page on this site and each served from the same yard in Fullerton. The creek is the county line, so a job across it is permitted by a different city, and the page for that side names its counter. The ground is the same floodplain sand on both banks.
Hawaiian Gardens sits against Coyote Creek, with Cypress and Los Alamitos across the water in Orange County and Cerritos and Artesia up Norwalk Boulevard, and each has a page on this site. Whichever side of the creek you are on, the crew is the same.
Open the Fullerton Office in Google Maps Send the form and you hear back within 1 business day. The estimate is written at your curb, and the work carries a written workmanship guarantee against defects in how it was built.