Harbor Fullerton Concrete works in Placentia most weeks, because it is the town next door. We drive in on Chapman Avenue, not a freeway, and the estimate is measured and written at your house.
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Placentia is flat where it was citrus and sloped where it was not. South of Yorba Linda Boulevard the tracts sit on the old grove grid, north of it the lots climb, and the work changes with them.
On the flat, the job is age. The city grew from a citrus town to a suburb in the 1960s and 1970s, so the drives, walks and patios across the middle of Placentia are the builder's originals and have carried 50 years of cars and sprinklers on 2 inches of sand. On the slope, the job is load. A drive that climbs from the street is pushed downhill by every car that brakes on it, a patio cut into a bank has soil behind it, and a block wall stacked on no footing in 1975 now leans downhill.
So we specify by the street and not by the job name. A flat replacement gets its subgrade compacted, 4 inches of base and steel through a 4 inch slab. A sloped drive is poured 5 inches, steel at 18 inches both ways, with a broom finish run across the fall. A wall gets a footing below the fill and a drain behind the stem to daylight. Every one is jointed the day it is poured on a 10 foot grid, and every estimate is measured on the lot, since a slope cannot be judged from a photograph.
Placentia has an old town on the railroad, a grid of postwar tracts across the middle, and lots that begin to climb toward Yorba Linda on the north side. Each asks for a different job, and a crew from next door knows which street is which.
Placentia drives on the flat tracts off Kraemer Boulevard are replacements of 1960s slabs, and the ones north of Yorba Linda Boulevard often climb from the street. A sloped drive is poured 5 inches with steel and a heavier broom, so a tire grips it wet and it does not creep.
The postwar lots in Placentia are deep, and the patio a family wants now is 3 times the builder's slab. We take out the old piece rather than pour around it, set the new slab on 4 inches of compacted base with a quarter inch per foot of fall, and joint it every 10 feet.
Stamped concrete in Placentia is asked for on the drives and entry walks of the 1970s houses near Alta Vista Country Club, where a plain gray apron sits under a remodelled house. We stamp a stone or slate pattern into the full slab and seal it, so the finish is the concrete.
Front walks in Old Town Placentia are narrow and often step down to the street, because the lots along Santa Fe Avenue and Bradford Avenue were laid out for 1920s houses. We rebuild the run with the steps formed into it, poured flush to the public walk, which stays the city's.
A Placentia garage floor from the 1960s is sound more often than not, and what fails is the apron at the door and the slab under a water heater that has leaked. We saw out the bad piece, dowel the new pour into the old floor, and grind the whole thing flat and ready for a coat.
Color in Placentia is mostly a matter of making a patio sit with a house of brick and stucco, so the integral tints we use most are buff and terracotta under a salt or light broom finish. An exposed aggregate walk to the door is the other regular request, as it hides dust.
The north side of Placentia is where the walls are. Lots above Yorba Linda Boulevard and toward Rose Drive step up from the street, and a wall there holds a real load. We footing it below the fill line, drain it behind the stem to daylight, and engineer anything over 4 feet.
New interior slabs in Placentia go under room additions on the deep postwar lots and under the garage conversions the state ADU rules have made simple. We pour over a 10 mil barrier on compacted base, level to a tile finish, and dowel the new slab into the house foundation.
Our yard is on South Harbor Boulevard, and the drive to Placentia is Chapman Avenue east for about 5 miles, past Cal State Fullerton and across the line at the 57, to a city hall that is also on Chapman. Permits go to the Building Division at Placentia City Hall on East Chapman Avenue. A drive approach, a wall over 4 feet or a slab carrying a cover needs one, a patio or a drive replaced inside the lot does not, and we file whatever is needed and meet the inspector ourselves.
Old Town Placentia, along Santa Fe Avenue and Bradford Avenue by the railroad, is small lots and 1920s houses, and a job there is a front walk with steps or a drive beside the house that a mixer cannot reach. Atwood, in the south-east corner by Orangethorpe Avenue, is older still and the lots there were built for a different century. The wide middle of the city, either side of Kraemer Boulevard and Chapman Avenue, is the 1960s and 1970s grid where nearly all of our tear-outs are.
Carbon Canyon Creek runs through the city in a concrete channel on its way into Fullerton, and the lots near it are the flattest and the sandiest we see. North of Yorba Linda Boulevard the ground rises toward Rose Drive and Alta Vista, the lots step, and the retaining walls begin. Tri-City Park, where Placentia meets Fullerton and Brea, is the corner we know most closely, because a job on one side of it is a job on the other, and only the counter the permit goes to changes.
Placentia is the one town where a second trip costs us nothing, so the sequence is relaxed about the visit and strict about the pour. Four stages, one crew, and the figure written at the house on the first day.
Grant Yoshida measures, reads the slope with a level, sounds the old slab and writes the figure there. The visit is booked within days.
The old slab is broken, hauled and gone in a day. The subgrade is compacted and 4 inches of base laid, more where the ground is soft.
Where the work needs it, the permit goes to Placentia City Hall on East Chapman Avenue, filed by us on the way to the job.
A morning to pour, joints cut the same day. Walk on it after 24 hours and drive on it after 7 days, and we take the debris back to Fullerton.
Call or send the form and we will answer within 1 business day with a time. Because Placentia is next door, the visit is usually inside the week, and it costs nothing. Every estimate is measured and written on site.
Reviews
Reviews left on Google and Facebook by homeowners across north Orange County, Placentia among them, for drives, patios and walls poured 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.”
What people in Placentia want settled before they book. What decides the cost on a slope against the flat, which permits the city wants, how close we are, what the ground does and how long a drive is closed.
Whether it slopes. A flat Placentia drive is a tear-out and a 4 inch pour on base, and the cost follows its area. A drive that climbs from the street is poured 5 inches with more steel and needs a heavier broom and a longer cure, so the same square footage costs more on the north side than on the grid. We read the slope with a level at the visit and write the figure there.
Not for a patio at grade in your own yard. You do for a drive approach across the public walk, a wall over 4 feet, and any slab that carries a patio cover or a room, and we file those at the Building Division at Placentia City Hall on East Chapman Avenue and meet the inspector. A cover over an existing patio is the one that surprises people, because the slab under it has to be checked for footings.
The same morning, most weeks. Our yard on South Harbor Boulevard is about 5 miles from Placentia City Hall along Chapman Avenue, with no freeway between them, so a crew that finishes early in Fullerton can start a tear-out in Placentia after lunch. It also means a second trip for a tool or a bag of mix is 15 minutes, which is why we do not pad a Placentia job for it.
On the flat, yes, since the line between the two cities is a street and not a change in the ground. What changes is the north side of Placentia, where the lots rise toward Rose Drive and Alta Vista and the soil is fill placed when the tracts were cut into the slope. We probe that fill before we pour on it, and a wall or a sloped drive there is footed into firm ground below it, not into the fill.
Ten days from the first saw cut, on the flat. The tear-out and base take a day, the pour a morning, and then 24 hours before foot traffic and 7 days before a car. A sloped drive is closed a little longer because we cure it under a cover for the first 3 days so the surface does not dry faster than the slab. Park on the street for the week and we sweep it when we leave.
Yes, both. Placentia shares a boundary with Brea to the north, Yorba Linda to the east and Fullerton to the west, and one crew covers the lot from our yard. The work changes at the Yorba Linda line, where the slopes get longer and the lots larger, and again in Brea, where the hills start in earnest, so each town has its own page describing what the ground does there.
Placentia touches Fullerton, Brea and Yorba Linda, and the same crew covers every one of them from the same yard. If your street sits near a line, the page for the town next door says how the ground and the permits differ there.
Open the Fullerton Office in Google Maps Send the form or call and we will reply within 1 business day to book the visit. The figure is written at your house, and every job carries a written guarantee.