Harbor Fullerton Concrete installs everything a wood floor stands on, footings, stem walls, piers and bolts, for a new house or a wing on an old one. Every estimate is measured and written on site.
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What holds the floor up
A foundation is a footing in the ground, a wall standing on it to floor height, and the piers between that carry the girders, with the floor framed over the space that leaves. That space is the point. A raised floor can be leveled, reached, re-plumbed and rewired from beneath for the life of the house, which is why the bungalows around downtown and the college still stand on theirs a century on, and why a wing joining one is built the same way rather than dropped onto a slab.
Harbor Fullerton Concrete has formed foundations since Grant Yoshida set it up in 2021, with 14 years on north Orange County crews before that, and he lays out every wall line himself. Most of what we install goes under one of three things. A new house where the old one came down, a wing on a raised house whose floor it must meet exactly, or a garage whose walls want a stem to keep the framing off the ground. Each starts from the floor height and is drawn down.
Every foundation is built to the engineer's drawings and the California Residential Code, under a CSLB C-8 concrete license with liability insurance on every job. Orange County sits in Seismic Design Category D, so a continuous footing here carries bars top and bottom, and the bolts and hold-downs tying the framing to it are set to the shear wall plan before the steel is signed off. It carries a written workmanship guarantee against defects in how it was built.
Not a slab job
Stand at the back door of a prewar house here and the yard is 18 to 30 inches below the sill. A wing on a slab at grade lands two steps below the kitchen, and the code will not floor it over without clearance beneath. A new stem wall carries the floor across at the house's height.
On the streets that climb toward the hills the back of a lot can drop 3 or 4 feet across the depth of a room. A slab there is a retaining wall with a floor on it. A footing that steps down the slope, with stem walls rising to one level, carries the floor flat across the fall.
A house put up before the war stands on an unreinforced perimeter with no bolts through the plate, and once it comes down nothing under it can be reused. A new house on that lot is a new foundation from the trench up, drawn from a soils report, with the old concrete broken out first.
A crawl space that holds water after rain has a stem wall too low to keep the ground out and no fall to carry it away. Vents alone do not dry it. A wing's foundation is built with the stem at the height the code asks, a drain at the footing and the grade sloped away, so it stays dry.
In every foundation
Eight things go into every foundation we install, in the order they happen, and each answers one thing a raised floor in this city has to get right, from a footing on sound ground to the bolts an inspector counts before the concrete arrives.
An existing foundation, slab or footing is broken out to the trench line and hauled, so the new footing bears on ground and not on rubble.
The trench goes at least 12 inches below undisturbed ground and wider for two stories, and the inspector sees it open before any steel.
Continuous footings in this seismic category carry a bar at the top and the bottom, tied to the wall dowels, and are photographed before the pour.
Formed and poured to the height the house floor sets, at least 6 inches thick, so the framing sits the clearance the code asks off the ground.
Half-inch anchor bolts embedded 7 inches, within 12 inches of every plate end, and hold-downs placed where the shear wall plan puts them.
Interior footings under every girder line, formed and poured with the perimeter so the floor is carried level across the whole crawl space.
Vent openings to the code's ratio, an access hatch a person fits through, and a footing drain where the ground falls toward the wall.
Wall heights and bolt positions are checked against the drawings with you, and the written guarantee is handed over before we leave.
Four systems
Four ways a foundation is put under a building here, set against the floor each one gives, what stands under it, the room it leaves beneath and the pours it takes. The engineer chooses from the floor height and the ground, the reader from what the house is.
| Option | Floor it gives | Footing | Room beneath | Pours |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Raised perimeter | Wood floor at the old house height | Continuous, 12 inches wide, bars top and bottom | 18 inches under joists, reachable | Two, footing then wall |
| Stepped stem wall | Level floor over a falling lot | Steps of 2 feet or less, lapped bars | Deepest at the low side | Two, stepped in one day |
| Slab on stem walls | Concrete floor kept above grade | Continuous, dowels up each wall | None, filled and compacted | Three, walls then slab |
| Grade beam on piers | Wood floor over fill or a steep bank | Drilled piers to firm ground, beam between | As the slope leaves it | Two, piers then beam |
The raised perimeter costs most to form and least to live with, because everything under the floor can be reached; the slab on stem walls sits between.
Floor height and shaking
Two facts set a foundation here, and neither is the size of the building. The height of the floor it has to meet, and a footing drawn for shaking as well as for weight.
The city has two kinds of house floor. The streets platted around downtown and the college before 1940 were built with wood floors over a crawl space, 18 to 30 inches up, on a perimeter wall with no steel and no bolts. The tracts that followed were poured as slabs at grade. So the first question at the visit is which one the new foundation joins, because a raised wing on a slab house means a step inside the room, and the framing plan is drawn from that answer before the footing is.
The second is the ground shaking. Orange County sits in Seismic Design Category D and the Whittier fault runs through the hills north of the city, so a footing here is not only holding the house up but holding it down. That is what the bars top and bottom, the hold-downs at every shear wall and the bolts counted along the plate are for, and it is what an inspector looks at longest. Where the old perimeter stays and only the floor is lifted, that is foundation raising, a different job.
Trench to plate
Five stages, two pours, and an inspection between the trench and the steel and again before the walls are formed. The person who shoots the floor height on the first visit is the one setting the wall forms to it.
Grant Yoshida takes the height of the existing floor, walks the footprint and digs at footing depth to see what it bears on. The figure is written.
The engineer draws the footing and walls to the floor height and the soils result, and the set is filed with Building and Safety.
Old concrete out, the wall lines staked to the survey, the trench dug to bearing and stepped where the lot falls. The inspector sees it open.
Cages tied and inspected, the footing poured, then the wall forms set to the floor line with bolts and hold-downs fixed before the second pour.
Forms off after a day, walls kept damp a week, and the heights and bolt positions checked against the drawings with you on the walk-through.
Behind the figure
The wall length starts the figure and the height of the floor finishes it, because every inch a stem wall rises is form, steel and concrete along the whole perimeter. Two houses of one footprint can differ by a day of forming.
The new wall has to land at the old floor to the inch and tie into a perimeter with no steel in it, so the joint and the height set the work.
The whole perimeter and every interior pier from a soils report, with the old concrete out first, so the report and the removal move the figure.
A footing stepped down a slope is more trench, more lapped steel and taller walls on the low side, and each step is measured on its own.
A second floor or a tile roof widens the footing and adds hold-downs, so the framing plan is read before the trench width is written.
The visit and the written figure cost nothing, and the call that fixes a time for it comes within 1 business day. (657) 500-3759 or send us a message.
Send the form or call, and you hear back within 1 business day to fix a time. Grant Yoshida shoots the floor height, walks the footprint, opens the ground and writes the figure at your house, and the visit costs nothing either way.
Foundations we installed
Three reviews from Google, Facebook and the BBB, each about a foundation under a house or a wing rather than a slab in a yard, and each naming the floor height or the fall the crew had to build to.
“Our 1920s place near the college has its floor 26 inches off the ground and every other contractor wanted to put the new bedroom on a slab with a step down. Grant built a stem wall to the exact height and the floor runs straight through. Two winters on and the door still swings clean.”
“We took the old house down and rebuilt. The old perimeter had no rebar at all and they broke every foot of it out before digging. The footing inspection and the steel inspection both passed first time and the framer said the bolts were exactly where his plan put them.”
“The back of our lot drops almost 4 feet and we had been told the family room would need a slab on a retaining wall. Harbor stepped the footing down the slope in three drops and brought the walls up level. The crawl space underneath is dry and you can walk it stooped.”
Before you book
What moves the figure, how long the trench is open, what the permit set has to carry, what the shaking asks of the steel and what is guaranteed once the forms are off, answered for a foundation here.
Because of the height of the wall and what is under the footing. A stem wall 30 inches tall to meet a prewar floor is twice the forming and the concrete of one at 12, along every foot of the perimeter, and a footing stepped down a falling lot adds trench and lapped steel at each drop. Then the soils result decides the width and the bars. All three are measured at the visit and printed on the figure you sign.
Around three weeks for a house, two for a wing. The break-out and the trench take two to three days, the footing steel a day and its pour a morning, the wall forms and bolts two days and the second pour another morning, with an inspection waited on between each. The forms come off after a day and the walls are kept damp for seven before plates are bolted down, so the framer starts in the third week.
Yes, along with the interior piers and the vents. Breaking out an old perimeter or slab, hauling it and digging the trench where it was are written into the figure, and so are the pier pads under every girder line, the access hatch and the vent openings. What sits outside it is named at the visit rather than added later, which is the engineer's fee, the soils report and the permit paid to the city at cost.
Engineered drawings and, for a new house, a soils report. The set shows the footing width and depth, the wall height, the bar sizes and the bolt and hold-down layout, and it goes in through the city's portal with the framing plans. The inspector then sees the open trench, the tied steel before the footing pour and the bolts before the walls are poured. We file it, book each inspection and stand on site for them.
Almost never. Settlement, ground movement and the slow tilt of an unreinforced perimeter are excluded as earth movement on the policies written here, so a prewar house that has dropped at one corner is the owner's to put right. A broken supply line that washed out the ground under a footing is the kind of sudden event that is covered. Photograph the damage and ask your carrier before anything is broken out.
The build against the drawings. The trench depth, the bars in the footing, the wall thickness and height, the bolt spacing and the hold-down placement are printed on the estimate, and the work is a written workmanship guarantee against defects in how it was built. What the framer bolts to it, and ground movement beyond what the engineer designed for, are not. A fault in the concrete or the steel brings us back.
Number 4 bars top and bottom in the footing, number 4 dowels up into the wall and horizontal bars in it at the spacing the engineer draws, in a ready-mix of at least 2,500 psi placed the morning it leaves the plant. Anchor bolts are half-inch, embedded 7 inches into the wall, and the hold-downs are the make and size named on the framing plan. All of it is listed on the estimate so the delivery can be checked.
Yes, for a wing, and the house stays closed up until the framer opens the wall. The trench runs outside the existing perimeter, the crew comes and goes along the side yard, and the two pours each take a morning with a pump truck at the curb. What you lose is the back yard for about two weeks and a parking space on pour days. For a new house the lot is cleared, so the question does not arise.
Towns we build in
The eight nearest of the towns we build in, with the straight-line distance from the yard on Harbor Boulevard beside each. Every foundation is set out at the property before a figure is written.
Four jobs that share a trench, a permit or a crew with a new foundation, each measured on the same visit and itemized on the one written estimate.
The footing alone, where a mason is laying the block stem walls above it.
The one-pour slab for a detached unit or a wing on a house that already sits at grade.
Lifting a house that keeps its floor and gets a new perimeter beneath it.
The wall that holds a bank back from a foundation cut into a rising lot.
Call or send the form and you hear back within 1 business day. Say whether the floor is raised or on a slab and whether the lot falls, and the visit can be booked for a day inside the same week, with the figure written before we go.