Harbor Fullerton Concrete pours driveways, pool decks and walls in La Habra Heights, up Harbor Boulevard from our yard. Every estimate is measured and written on site, and the visit is free.
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On an acre lot the house sits well back from the road, so the driveway is the longest slab on the property and often the only flat concrete on it. Everything about a job here follows from that.
A drive that runs 150 feet up a slope carries the rain of the whole hillside above it, and it carries it toward the garage. Poured flat and smooth it becomes a channel in January and a skid in any month, which is why the old drives here are cracked along their length and worn slick at the steep end. The concrete has to be cut into panels that can move with the hill, crowned or pitched to shed water to one side, and finished coarse enough to hold a tire on the grade.
So a driveway in La Habra Heights is built as a road rather than an apron. We lay 4 inches of Class 2 base and pour 5 inches of concrete with number 3 steel on an 18 inch grid, cut the joints every 10 feet within 12 hours, and run a heavy broom across the fall on any grade steeper than 1 in 8. Where the drive meets the garage, a trench drain across the door takes the water the slope sends down, because on a hill the garage is the low point of the drive.
La Habra Heights zones its lots at an acre and up, keeps no sidewalks and no streetlights, and sits on the south slope of the Puente Hills. Every pour here is longer, steeper and further from the road than the same job in the flat towns below.
Driveways in La Habra Heights run 100 feet and more up a grade to a house set back on an acre. We pour them 5 inches thick on compacted base with steel on an 18 inch grid, joint them every 10 feet so the panels ride the hill, and broom them across the fall for grip in rain.
A patio in La Habra Heights is cut into a slope more often than set on a lawn, because the flat ground on an acre lot is where the house went. We terrace the pad, hold the cut with a short wall where the drop is over 2 feet, and pitch the slab so the hill's water goes around it.
Stamped concrete on the hill goes on the motor court in front of the house, where a plain drive would look like a road. We cast a flagstone or slate pattern into a 4 inch slab with a broomed band at the edge for grip, and seal it twice, since a south slope fades a bare stamp.
La Habra Heights has no public sidewalks, so a walk here is the path from the parking pad to the front door, and it usually has a grade in it. We pour it 4 inches thick in short panels that step with the ground and broom it coarse for footing on a street the city keeps dark.
Garage floors on the hill take the water the drive delivers, and the old ones are cracked along the door line where the slope meets the slab. We break the floor out, set a trench drain across the opening, and pour 4 inches pitched to that drain, so the garage is dry in January.
Exposed aggregate suits the drives and courts of La Habra Heights, because the stone gives a tire grip on a slope that a smooth finish cannot, and it hides the leaf litter an avocado grove drops all year. We wash the stone proud the same afternoon and seal it after it has cured.
Walls are how a hillside acre in La Habra Heights gains a flat yard, a pool pad or a level parking court. We dig the footing into firm shale rather than the topsoil over it, drain the wall behind its stem with gravel and pipe, and permit anything over 4 feet with the city.
Interior slabs here are for the guest house, the barn conversion or the workshop an acre has room for. We pour over a 10 mil vapor barrier on compacted base, because the hillside clay pushes water up through a bare slab in winter, and trowel the floor flat enough for tile.
Harbor Boulevard leaves our yard in Fullerton, crosses La Habra, and climbs into La Habra Heights, where it becomes Fullerton Road at the top of the hill. That is the one road a mixer takes to reach most of the city. Plans go to the City of La Habra Heights building counter at City Hall on Hacienda Road, and because the city has no public sidewalks or curbs, there is no encroachment permit to chase. The permit is for the lot and the lot alone.
The lots along Hacienda Road, East Road and West Road were avocado groves before they were homes, and many still carry the trees. A pour is planned around the grove and the septic field, since most houses here are on their own system rather than a sewer, and a slab over a leach line is a slab that comes out again. Below Powder Canyon the hillsides are the steepest in the city, and a driveway there can climb 40 feet from the road to the door.
The ground is the Puente Hills themselves, weathered shale under a shallow topsoil that holds water in winter and cracks open by August. A footing is dug to firm shale and not stopped in the topsoil above it, and every slab is set to shed water downhill and away from the house. The year here runs by the brush. From May to October we keep a water truck on any job where a saw throws sparks, and in winter a pour waits for the road to be dry enough for a full truck.
One crew, four stages, and a written figure before anything is agreed. On a hillside acre the first visit decides the method, since whether a truck can reach the pour or a pump has to is settled at the gate.
Grant Yoshida walks the drive from the road to the door, reads the grade, finds the septic lines, and writes the figure before leaving the lot.
We file the plan with the City of La Habra Heights at City Hall on Hacienda Road, and meet the inspector for the footing and the steel.
The old slab is sawn and hauled down the hill, 4 inches of base is laid and compacted on the grade, and the steel is tied and chaired.
A pump reaches what a mixer cannot. The joints are cut the same day, you walk on it after 24 hours and drive up it after 7 days.
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 a drive that runs 150 feet is measured with a wheel, never guessed from the road.
Reviews
Our reviews are left on Google and Facebook by homeowners across north Orange County and the hills above it, and the driveways and walls behind them are the jobs 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 owners in La Habra Heights ask before they book, on what a long drive costs to build, whose permit it is, how a mixer reaches a hillside, the shale under the lot and how long the work takes.
Length, then grade, then reach. A drive here is often 100 to 150 feet, so its area is what a whole yard would be elsewhere. A grade over 1 in 8 adds thickness, steel and a coarser finish. And if the pour is further from the road than a chute reaches, a pump truck is on the job for the day. Every estimate is measured and written on site, with a wheel run down the full length of the drive.
The City of La Habra Heights, from its counter at City Hall on Hacienda Road. It is an incorporated city, so the permit does not go to Los Angeles County even though the county is the address on the mail. A retaining wall over 4 feet, a footing under a cover and any slab a structure sits on need one. A drive or a patio at grade on your own lot does not, and there is no public walk or curb to permit.
Usually not, and we plan for that at the first visit. A loaded mixer will not take a tight bend on a steep private drive, so the truck parks on the road and a line pump carries the concrete up the hill to the forms. That adds a machine to the job and takes nothing away from the pour. On the flatter lots off Hacienda Road a mixer backs to the forms and chutes it straight in.
Shale, and it is close. The Puente Hills are marine shale that weathers into a clay topsoil a foot or two deep, wet and soft in winter and shrunk hard by late summer. A footing that stops in the topsoil moves with it, so we dig to the firm shale under it and set the footing there. Under a slab the topsoil is cut out and 4 inches of compacted base goes in its place.
Three days on site for most drives, and a full week before you drive on it. Sawing and hauling the old slab down the hill takes a day, base and steel a day, and the pour a morning with a pump. Then the concrete needs 24 hours before foot traffic and 7 days before a car, so you park at the road for that week. A pool deck or a wall runs about the same on site.
Yes. La Habra, Whittier and Brea sit against the city on three sides and each has a page on this site, worked from the same yard in Fullerton. The difference is the ground and the paperwork. Down the hill the lots are flat and a walk in the parkway needs a city encroachment permit. Up here the permit is for the lot, and the job is planned around the grade.
La Habra Heights shares a boundary with La Habra to the south, Whittier to the west and Brea to the east, and each has its own page on this site. If your road crosses a city line, the page for your side is the one that names the permit desk you will use.
Open the Fullerton Office in Google Maps Send the form and you hear back within 1 business day. The estimate is written at your gate, and the work carries a written workmanship guarantee against defects in how it was built.