Harbor Fullerton Concrete replaces the driveways, patios and pool decks La Palma was built with in the late 1960s and early 1970s, from a yard a few exits east on the 91. The measure is free.
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La Palma was dairy pasture until the tracts arrived, 1.8 square miles of houses laid down in a few years. A slab poured in 1970 has carried cars for 50 years, past what a plain drive is built for.
The original tract drives were poured thin and without steel, because that was the standard of the day and the builder was pouring hundreds at once. On flat ground they lasted, but 50 winters of irrigation and 50 summers of drying have opened the joints, and the panels nearest the garage carry two cars turning in and out every day. A crack there is not a defect in the concrete so much as the end of its service life, and the drive three doors down is usually a year or two behind it.
So a replacement in La Palma is built to the current standard rather than the 1970 one. The old slab is broken out and hauled, the subgrade is compacted, 4 inches of Class 2 base goes down, and the new drive is poured 4 inches thick with steel through it, 5 inches where a truck or an RV will sit. Joints are cut the day of the pour on a grid no wider than 10 feet, which is what keeps the next 30 years of cracking in straight lines you will never notice.
Nearly every house in La Palma went up inside one decade, so the concrete on a block reaches the end of its life together. Our work here is replacement more than anything new, one drive or one patio at a time, on ground that was pasture first.
A La Palma driveway is usually the builder's original, poured thin and without steel when the tract went in, and it has carried cars for 50 years. We break it out, compact what is under it, and pour 4 inches with steel through it, 5 where a work truck will stand overnight.
The patios here started as a 10 foot builder's slab off the sliding door, and most were extended at least once by a previous owner in a different mix. We take the patchwork out and pour one slab on compacted base, jointed on a 10 foot grid, so it moves as a whole.
Stamped work in La Palma is mostly asked for at the front, where a plain gray drive sits under a house that has had a new roof and windows since 1972. We cast a flagstone or ashlar pattern into the full 4 inch slab and seal it twice, so the drive matches the house, not the tract.
The public walk along a La Palma street belongs to the city, and panels lifted by parkway trees are the city's call as well as yours. Where a private path or front walk is failing we pour it flush to the old panels and dowel the joint, so no lifted edge waits for a foot.
La Palma garage floors were poured on the same day as the house slab and to the same standard, so most are sound and cracked only at the door. We saw out the broken apron, re-pour it doweled into the old floor, and grind the whole floor flat and ready for an epoxy coat.
Color and finish are the difference between a slab that looks like a repair and one that looks like a choice. In La Palma we tint most patios and pool decks an integral sand or buff and finish them salt or light broom, which stays cooler underfoot in August.
La Palma is flat, so a retaining wall here is rarely holding a hill. It holds a raised bed, a planter along the drive or the step at the back fence where two tracts met at different pad heights. We footing it 18 inches into firm ground and drain it behind the stem.
Interior floors in La Palma come up when a garage is converted or a room is added over the old patio, and the new slab has to meet the 1970 one without a step. We pour over a 10 mil vapor barrier, trowel it flat enough for tile and cut the joints under the walls.
We reach La Palma along the 91, which runs the length of the city's north edge, and leave it at Valley View Street or Walker Street depending on the block. Our yard on South Harbor Boulevard is under 10 miles east, so a crew is on site in about 20 minutes and a forgotten tool is not a lost morning. Permits go to the building counter at La Palma City Hall on Walker Street, and because the city is small, the drive from the job to the counter is under 5 minutes.
The tracts either side of La Palma Avenue between Valley View Street and Moody Street are the earliest, and their lots are tight enough that a side yard takes a barrow and not a chute. That fixes the day rate before anything else, since a 300 square foot patio behind a 4 foot gate is a morning of wheeling. The streets around Central Park and Kennedy High School were platted a little later and wider, and there a mixer can often back up the drive and pour straight into the forms.
Coyote Creek runs down the west edge of the city as the county line, in a concrete channel, and the whole city falls gently toward it. That matters because a flat lot does not drain itself, so every slab we pour is graded a quarter inch per foot away from the house toward wherever the water can leave. The channel also tells you about the ground, since the same creek deposit sits under every lot, sandy, deep and even, which is easy to compact and easy to trust once it has been.
A tear-out and a re-pour on a La Palma lot is a 3 day job for one crew, measured the week before and written up at your curb, with the old slab off the street before your neighbors come home from work.
Grant Yoshida walks the drive, sounds the old slab for hollows, checks the fall toward the street and writes the figure on the spot.
The old slab is sawn at the apron, broken and off the property the same day. The subgrade under it is compacted before anything new goes down.
We file at La Palma City Hall on Walker Street where the work touches the public apron, then set the forms and lay 4 inches of base.
Poured in a morning, joints cut before dark. Walk on it after 24 hours, park on it after 7 days, and the street is swept behind us.
Send the form or call, and we will ring back within 1 business day with a time for the visit. Every estimate is measured and written on site, and the visit costs nothing whether or not you go ahead with the work.
Reviews
Reviews left on Google and Facebook by people we have poured for across north Orange County, La Palma among them. The drives and patios they describe are built the way 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.”
Cost, permits, the drive from our yard, what the ground is like under a 1970 tract lot, how long a drive is out of use, and which of the towns next door we cover with the same crew.
The tear-out, before the pour. Most La Palma drives are replacements, and breaking out and hauling 50 year old concrete is a day of labor and a load of debris before a yard of new mix arrives. After that it is area, thickness and finish, in that order. We measure all of it at your curb and write the figure there, so nothing is estimated from a photograph.
Not for a patio or a drive replaced like for like inside your own lot. A new or widened approach across the public walk does, because the apron belongs to the city, and so does a wall over 4 feet or a slab carrying a roof. We take those applications to La Palma City Hall on Walker Street ourselves and meet the inspector on the day, so you never visit the counter.
Under 10 miles, and nearly all of it on the 91. We leave South Harbor Boulevard, join the freeway and come off at Valley View Street or Walker Street, which puts a crew on a La Palma drive in about 20 minutes on a weekday morning. That is close enough that a second trip for a tool or a bag of mix costs the job an hour rather than a day.
Flat, sandy and even, because the whole city sits on the deposit Coyote Creek laid down before it was channeled. That is good ground for concrete, since it compacts well and drains, and the one thing it does not do is drain itself on a flat lot. So we grade every slab a quarter inch per foot away from the house and give the water a place to go before we set a form.
About 10 days from the first saw cut. The tear-out and the base take a day, the pour takes a morning, and then the concrete needs 24 hours before you walk on it and 7 days before a car goes on it. Park on the street for that week. We cut the joints within 12 hours of the pour, which is what stops the new drive cracking anywhere but along those lines.
Yes, and Cerritos across the creek. All three share a boundary with La Palma and the same crew covers all of them from our yard in Fullerton. If your street runs across a city line, which several do around Orangethorpe Avenue and Crescent Avenue, the permit follows the address on the lot, and we check which counter before we file.
La Palma touches Buena Park to the north and east, Cypress to the south and Cerritos across Coyote Creek to the west, and one crew covers all four from the same yard. If your lot sits near a line, the page for the town next door says how the work differs.
Open the Fullerton Office in Google Maps Call or send the form and we will reply within 1 business day to book the visit. The estimate is free and written at your curb, and every job carries a written guarantee.