Harbor Fullerton Concrete pours driveways, patios, walks and garage floors in Westminster, where a flat yard drains nowhere unless the slab is built to send it. The figure is written on site.
5.0 Stars How customers score us · Google, Facebook and the BBB
Westminster is flat. The whole city sits on the plain the Santa Ana River laid down, a few dozen feet above sea level, and the only sure low point on any lot is the gutter at the street.
On a hillside a yard tells you which way water goes. On a Westminster lot it does not, and a patio poured to what looks level holds a puddle against the house wall for a week after a January storm, because the plain has no fall and the fine river sand under the topsoil drains slowly once wet through. The lots are 6,000 square feet with the house across the middle, so the back yard is boxed in by the house and two neighbors, and the gutter is 60 feet away on the far side of the house.
So every slab we pour here is set with a laser rather than by eye, falling an eighth of an inch to the foot away from the house, and where that fall has nowhere to go we build it somewhere. A back patio gets a channel drain along its low edge and a 3 inch line down the side yard to the curb, through a core the city permits. A drive falls to the street, with the apron checked against the gutter so it neither dams it nor ponds at the door. The base under it drains as well as carries.
Westminster was built out in one push between 1955 and 1970 on lots of 6,000 square feet, and the same three things come up on every street. The drive is too narrow for the household, the patio holds water, the garage slab is becoming a room.
The Westminster drive we are asked for most is a 20 foot tract drive widened to take 3 cars, because the household has outgrown it. We check the paving limit with Planning, file the curb cut with Public Works, and pour 4 inches on compacted base with a 5 inch apron at the gutter.
A Westminster patio is the whole back yard on a 6,000 square foot lot, and it has to drain on ground with no fall. We set it with a laser, drop it an eighth of an inch a foot from the house, run a channel drain along the low edge to a line down the side yard, and dowel it in.
Stamped tile and flagstone patterns are asked for on Westminster front courts, where a paved yard is doing the work of a garden. We stamp into a 4 inch slab with a plain border, color it light so it stays walkable in August, and seal it twice against sun and sprinklers.
The public walk at the front of a Westminster lot is lifted by the parkway trees the tract planted in the 1960s, and it is replaced under a Public Works permit we file. We cut the roots back, dowel the new panel into the old so the joint stays flush, and match the broom.
Westminster garage slabs are 1960s pours on damp ground, and the plain under them holds water after a wet week. Before any coating we test the slab for moisture. A slab that fails it, or is cracked through, is replaced 4 inches thick over a 10 mil barrier so a coating stays down.
Exposed aggregate suits a Westminster lot because a small yard that is mostly slab reads hard in plain gray. The pea gravel is washed out of the surface at the right hour, the joints sawn into a border and the slab sealed. A light color with a salt finish is the other choice.
There are no hillsides in Westminster, so a wall here is a planter, a raised bed or the wall around a pool, rarely over 3 feet. We build it on a footing 12 inches into firm ground with drain rock behind, cap it level, and waterproof the back where it holds a bed at the house.
A garage converted to a room or an ADU on a Westminster lot needs an interior slab that stays dry, and the old garage slab usually will not. A new 4 inch floor goes down on a vapor barrier over compacted base, floated for tile or polish and leveled to the house floor.
Beach Boulevard runs south from our yard in Fullerton through Buena Park and Stanton into Westminster, so a crew is at your curb in about 30 minutes without touching a freeway. The city incorporated in 1957 and its permits come from the City of Westminster Building Division at City Hall on Westminster Boulevard. A patio or a drive at grade needs none. A curb cut, a curb core for a drain and work on the public walk go to Public Works for an encroachment permit.
One thing catches people out. Midway City, the pocket around Bolsa Avenue and Beach Boulevard, is not in the city at all but an unincorporated island, and a job there is permitted by the County of Orange and not at City Hall. We check the address before we draw anything. On the streets off Bolsa Avenue through Little Saigon the household is often three generations and four or five cars, and the 20 foot drive the tract came with is the first thing we are asked to widen.
A wider drive is a zoning question before it is a concrete one, because the city limits how much of a front yard may be paved and how wide an approach may be at the curb, so we draw it and check it with Planning before the saw comes out. Water comes up as well as down here. The East Garden Grove-Wintersburg Channel takes the run-off from the low streets on the south side, and after a wet week the ground under a slab there stays damp, so a garage floor is tested before coating.
The level comes out before the tape, because on this plain the fall is the job. After that the sequence is the drain, the base, the permit if one is needed and the pour, most of it inside a week.
Grant Yoshida shoots the yard with a laser, finds where the water can go, checks the address against the Midway City line and writes the figure.
The old slab is broken out, the drain line is trenched down the side yard to the curb where one is needed, and 4 inches of base is compacted.
Flatwork in your own yard needs no paperwork. A curb cut, a core or a wall over 4 feet does, at City Hall, or with the county in Midway City.
Most Westminster jobs are 2 days on site. The slab is sawn the same day, takes feet after 24 hours and a car after 7, then the gutter is hosed.
Call, or send the form, and we ring back within 1 business day with a morning for the visit. The laser, the tape and the written figure are free, and Westminster is a run we make most weeks.
Reviews
Our reviews sit on Google and Facebook, written by homeowners across north Orange County. The Westminster ones are about the widened drives and the patios that finally drain, the work set out above.
“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 hear at the curb in Westminster, on cost, on which office issues the permit, on how far we drive, on why a patio holds water, on how long the drive is out of use and on the towns around.
Width and drainage. A drive widened from 2 cars to 3 is half again the area, and a curb cut with it. A back patio on this plain often needs a drain line run 60 feet down the side yard to the curb, which is trenching and pipe on top of the slab. Thickness and finish move it after that, and access rarely does, because a tract lot has a side gate a barrow fits through. Every estimate is measured and written on site.
The City of Westminster Building Division at City Hall on Westminster Boulevard for a wall over 4 feet, a footing under a cover or a slab for a habitable room, and Public Works for a curb cut, a curb core or work on the public walk. Flatwork at grade in your own yard needs neither. If your address is in Midway City, the unincorporated pocket inside the city, the County of Orange issues it instead.
About 30 minutes, straight down Beach Boulevard from Fullerton with no freeway on the way. We ring back within 1 business day and fix a morning that week for the visit. Once a job starts the same crew is on your street each day until it is finished, which for most Westminster jobs is 2 days.
Because it was poured level on ground with no fall, and the plain under Westminster gives water nowhere to go once the sand is wet through. The fix is fall and a way out. A new slab is set with a laser to drop an eighth of an inch a foot away from the house, and a channel drain at the low edge takes the water down a line in the side yard to the curb. Without the line the fall only moves the puddle to the fence.
About 9 days from the first cut to the first car. The old drive comes out in a morning, the base goes in the same day, and the pour is the next morning. Feet can go on it after 24 hours and a car after 7 days. The cars sit on the street for that week, and we time the curb cut so the parkway is not open for longer than a day.
Stanton to the north, on the same Beach Boulevard run, and Cypress and Los Alamitos to the west. We do not cover Garden Grove, Fountain Valley or Huntington Beach, so Westminster is the southern edge of our patch and a job on the far side of the 405 or the 22 is over the line. Each covered town has its own page, written for its own ground.
Westminster sits where the 405 meets the 22, and it is the far end of our run from Fullerton. Stanton, Cypress and Los Alamitos beside it are ours as well, each with a page of its own. If your street is on a city line, read the page next door.
Open the Fullerton Office in Google Maps Send the form and we ring back within 1 business day. The figure is written at your curb, and the work carries a written workmanship guarantee against defects in how it was built.