Harbor Fullerton Concrete pours driveways, motor courts, patios and walks in Villa Park, where a drive runs 100 feet past a tree older than the house. The estimate is written at your gate.
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The ground under Villa Park is the sand and gravel Santiago Creek dropped on its way out of the canyon, and it drains and carries a slab well. What breaks concrete here is roots and length.
Nearly every Villa Park house went up between 1960 and 1980 on a lot of 20,000 square feet or more, and the landscaping went in with it. Sixty years on, the camphors, pines and liquidambars along the drives have roots the size of a forearm running 2 feet down, and a slab poured over one lifts at that spot within a few winters. A drive 80 to 120 feet long has 8 to 12 panels, and the panels nearest the trees are the ones we are called to. The slab did not fail. The root under it did.
So the first hour on a Villa Park job is spent with a probe and a spade along the tree side of the pour. Roots under 2 inches are cut back and a root barrier goes in at the slab edge, 24 inches deep. Larger roots stay, because cutting them risks the tree, and the slab is thickened to 6 inches over them with number 4 steel so it bridges rather than sits. The rest is 5 inches on compacted base, jointed every 10 feet, because a motorhome or a horse trailer is a normal load here.
Villa Park lots are half an acre by ordinance, so nothing here is small. The drive is long, the patio wraps a pool, the walk crosses a lawn the width of a tract house, and the trees planted in the 1960s now decide where the joints go.
A Villa Park drive runs 80 to 120 feet from a street with no curb to a 3 car garage, so we pour it 5 inches thick on compacted base and thicken the apron to 6 where it meets the asphalt. Joints go every 10 feet, and the panel over each large root is bridged with steel.
Patios in Villa Park wrap a pool or sit under a cover, and the original 1960s slab is usually cracked at the tree side. We take it out to the house, cut the roots back behind a barrier, pour 4 inches on base with the fall away from the pool, and dowel into the house slab.
A stamped motor court in front of a Villa Park house is 1,000 square feet or more, so the pattern has to hold across it. We stamp ashlar slate or running bond into a 5 inch slab with a plain border, joint it on the pattern lines, and put 2 coats of sealer on it before the summer.
Villa Park has almost no public sidewalk, so the walk here is the private path from the drive to the front door across a lawn 60 feet deep. We pour it 4 inches thick and 4 feet wide, broom finished, jointed in squares, and bend it around the trees rather than through their roots.
A Villa Park garage holds 3 or 4 cars on a slab from the 1960s or 1970s. When it has cracked through we replace it rather than coat it, poured 5 inches thick over a vapor barrier and troweled flat enough to coat later. A slab that is only dusting gets ground and sealed instead.
Exposed aggregate suits Villa Park because the lots are planted heavily and a plain gray court looks bare among them. We pour a pea gravel or river stone mix, wash the stone out at the right hour, saw the joints into a border band and seal, so a big court reads as panels.
On the north side of Villa Park the lots step toward Santiago Canyon, and a yard is held level by a wall at the fence. We keep them under 4 feet where the grade allows, so no engineer is needed, footed 18 inches into firm ground, with gravel and a pipe drawing water off behind.
A Villa Park lot has room for a casita or a pool house, and both need an interior slab that will take tile or polish. We pour it on a vapor barrier over compacted base, float it flat, and saw the joints on a grid that suits the room. A converted garage gets the same floor.
Our yard is in Fullerton, and a crew reaches Villa Park down the 57, the 91 and the 55, off at Katella Avenue, which turns into Villa Park Road at the city line. It is a 25 minute run, so we plan a Villa Park week rather than a Villa Park day. The city was incorporated in 1962 to stay a town of big single family lots, and it did. Permits for a footing, a wall over 4 feet or a covered patio go to the City of Villa Park building division at City Hall on Santiago Boulevard.
Most Villa Park streets have no curb, no gutter and no public sidewalk, so a driveway meets the asphalt edge directly and the apron has to be built to take the drop. We form it 6 inches thick with a thickened edge at the street and slope it so the winter run-off crosses the drive and carries on down the road as it always has. Where the street does have a curb, on the newer cul-de-sacs, the approach is a Public Works matter and we file for the encroachment before we cut.
The north of the city rises toward Santiago Canyon and the lots there step, so a pool deck or a patio on the hill side often needs a low wall to hold the yard flat first. Water comes from the Serrano Water District, and the old citrus irrigation lines still cross some of these lots, so we locate them before we trench. Summers here run past 95 degrees for weeks, and from June to September we batch for a 6 in the morning pour and finish before the sun is on the slab.
The trees are walked before anything is measured, because where the roots are decides the joints, the thickness and the price. After that a Villa Park job runs like any other, only longer, because the drive is.
Grant Yoshida probes along every tree within 10 feet of the pour, marks the roots, measures the drive to the garage and writes the figure.
The old slab is broken out, roots are cut back or bridged, a root barrier goes in 24 inches deep, and 4 inches of Class 2 base is compacted.
A drive, a patio or a walk at grade is yours to pour. A wall, a footing or a curb cut is filed by us at City Hall on Santiago Boulevard.
A 100 foot drive is poured in one morning from 2 trucks and jointed every 10 feet. Feet at 24 hours, a car after a week, a motorhome after two.
Ring us or use the form, and Grant Yoshida returns the call within 1 business day with a morning for the walk along the trees. The measure costs nothing, and the figure is written before he leaves the drive.
Reviews
Left on Google and Facebook by the people whose drives and courts we have poured across north Orange County, Villa Park among them, and they describe the long drives and motor courts on this page.
“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 we are asked at the gate in Villa Park, on cost, on who issues the permit, on the trees, on how long the drive is out of use and on which side of the city we are working from.
Length first, then the trees. A Villa Park drive runs 80 to 120 feet where a tract drive runs 20, so the same specification is 4 or 5 times the concrete and a full day of finishing. Every large root we bridge adds thickness and steel over that panel, and a root barrier adds a trench along the edge. Every estimate is measured and written on site, measured from the street to the garage door, not from the road.
The City of Villa Park building division, at City Hall on Santiago Boulevard. A drive, a patio or a walk at grade on your own lot needs no permit. A retaining wall over 4 feet, a footing that carries a patio cover, and any apron that meets a curbed street do, and we file for them and meet the inspector. There is no homeowners association across most of the city, which saves a second submission.
About 8 miles in a straight line and 25 minutes by the 57, the 91 and the 55. We book Villa Park jobs in a run, so a crew that starts a drive on Monday is on the same street until it is finished rather than driving back and forth from Fullerton. The call comes back within 1 business day, and the visit goes into that week.
Not where it is built for them. The root that lifted the old drive is either cut back and held off by a barrier set 24 inches deep, or, if it is too large to cut without harming the tree, the slab is thickened to 6 inches over it with number 4 steel so it spans the root instead of resting on it. Roots grow toward water, and a drive graded to shed away from the tree line gives them less reason to return.
About 10 days from the first cut to the first car. The old drive comes out in a day, the base and the barrier take another, and the pour is one morning. After that, feet at 24 hours, a car after 7 days, and a motorhome after 14. Through that week you park on the street, which on a Villa Park lane is wide enough for it.
Yorba Linda and Placentia to the north, on the same run from Fullerton. Villa Park is the south-eastern corner of our patch, and we do not cover Orange or Anaheim Hills, so if your lot is on the Villa Park side of the line the page you are reading is the right one. The work on the Yorba Linda page is on bigger hillside lots and reads differently for that reason.
Villa Park sits between Orange and Anaheim Hills, and neither of those is ours. Yorba Linda and Placentia to the north are, on the same run down from Fullerton, and each has a page of its own if your address is over that line.
Open the Fullerton Office in Google Maps Use the form and the call comes back within 1 business day. The figure is written at your gate, and the work carries a written workmanship guarantee against defects in how it was built.