SkyVale Jurupa Valley Concrete builds drives, house slabs and retaining walls out on the 5 and 10 acre parcels around the reservoir, 14 miles south of our Limonite Avenue yard.
Lake Mathews is not a city. There is no city hall, no council and no municipal counter here: 15.9 square miles of Riverside County parcels, at about 155 people to the square mile.
The other half of it is what sits under the ground. This end of the Temescal Mountains is granite, the Cajalco pluton and the Gavilan ring complex, and the soil over it is thin and gritty. That turns the usual problem upside down. Most towns we pour in have too much give under a slab; here a footing trench meets sound rock and the day goes on breaking rather than digging out. What weathers off the top is decomposed granite, good base once compacted and gone off a slope in one winter.
So the test hole comes before the figure rather than after it. We dig at the estimate to find where the rock starts, price the breaking openly instead of meeting it on the day, and set footings into sound material rather than into the weathered skin above. A drive shared with a delivery truck goes 6 inches over compacted base, the steel a number 4 grid at 18 inch centres, and the granite out of the trench is crushed and put back under the slab.
There are about 1,673 homes spread over 15.9 square miles here, which comes out at roughly 155 people to the square mile. None of that is tract work, and what follows is shaped by the parcel rather than by the house.
A drive on a 5 acre parcel is a length of road, and the granite under it is both the obstacle and the answer: it stops a trencher, and once broken and crushed it makes first-rate base. We pour 6 inches where a water or propane truck shares the run with the family car.
Nothing out here predates 1940 and 3 in 10 houses went up in the 1980s, so a back yard is usually 40 years of added slabs sitting at 3 different levels. A new pour is set to the fall of the land, jointed at 10 feet and dowelled into what the last owner left.
A house on 5 acres is seen from its own gate rather than from the road, so pattern work belongs at the entry and the courtyard instead of the frontage. It goes into 4 inches, colour in the mix and a double coat of sealer, because road dust settles most of the year.
There is no public walk on most of Lake Mathews, and the county right of way along Cajalco Road is not somewhere to lay one privately. What we build are paths from the parking area to the door, 4 inches over compacted base with steel through them and stepped on the steeper runs.
Detached shops and barns are the rule out here rather than the exception, and many stand on a thin slab laid straight onto granitic soil with nothing beneath it. Damp comes up through that and rusts what is stored on it. We rebuild on 4 inches of base over a 10 mil barrier.
Colour is picked here to live with dust and glare rather than to be admired, because a parcel on a graded county road carries a film of it for most of the year. A mid tone through the mix, floated and lightly broomed, still looks the same at the end of a summer between washes.
Cutting a level pad out of granite leaves a face that stands on its own until a wet winter loosens the weathered skin off it. We foot into sound rock, lay gravel and a drain line behind the stem, and anything standing more than 4 feet, counting the footing, is drawn and filed.
A barn or a shop gets framed long before anyone thinks about its floor, and a slab poured onto granitic soil with no barrier telegraphs damp for years afterwards. The pour goes over 4 inches of base and a barrier, closed flat enough to take a coating whenever you get to it.
Our yard on Limonite Avenue is 14 miles north, and the run down La Sierra Avenue and across Cajalco Road has a crew on the parcel within half an hour. With no city, both approvals are Riverside County: the building permit from Building and Safety on the 9th floor of 4080 Lemon Street in Riverside, and anything inside a county road right of way from the Transportation Department, one floor below in the same building.
What can be built is set by the Lake Mathews and Woodcrest Area Plan, part of the county general plan and last revised in September 2021, which calls this area overwhelmingly rural with a strong equestrian presence. Behind it sit 5 acre minimums on rural residential land and 10 on rural mountainous, which is why parcels off Mockingbird Canyon Road and Gavilan Road are measured in acres. Cajalco Road runs the southern edge and carries a county widening project, so haul routes change.
The lake is why the map looks as it does. It is the western end of the Colorado River Aqueduct, a terminal reservoir whose dam was finished in 1939 and which first took water in 1941, holding 182,000 acre feet, and the land around it is a habitat reserve run jointly by the water district, the county habitat agency and the Bureau of Land Management. None of that will be built on, so the parcels stay large. We pour October to May by preference and start at first light in summer.
Four stages. Both the test hole and the truck route get decided while we are out for the measure, since on a property this size the rock underneath and the distance from the gate set the schedule between them.
Daniel Reyes measures the work, digs to find where the rock starts, and walks the route a mixer or a pump would have to take in.
Weathered material is stripped to sound ground, breaking done where the trench needs it, then 4 inches of base under the plate.
The building permit goes to the 9th floor at 4080 Lemon Street and any road work to the 8th. Neither counter is your errand.
Joints go in inside 12 hours of the pour. Nobody walks on it for a day, nothing with wheels for a week, and we walk it with you.
Send the parcel address through the form, or telephone. Somebody answers within 1 business day and the visit follows. The measure costs nothing, and the hole we dig while we are out there is what stops the rock becoming a surprise.
Reviews
Left by customers on the platforms where reviews live, from across the run this yard makes. A good share of them follow jobs out on parcels much like the ones described here.
“They measured our driveway on a Tuesday and handed me the written estimate before they left. The crew was on site four days, poured 540 square feet at 5 inches in one morning, cut the joints that afternoon, and after its first summer over 100 degrees there is not a crack in it.”
“A tree root had lifted the same sidewalk slab three winters running. They cut the root back, set a root barrier, poured the new section 4 inches on compacted base and pulled the right-of-way permit themselves. Ten months on it is still flat.”
“Our patio was original to the house, 1980s and crumbling. Daniel walked the base prep with me before they started: they dug out the clay, packed gravel in layers, poured 300 square feet in ashlar slate and sealed it at 28 days. It looks like cut stone.”
Six things owners ask before booking out here: what moves a figure, who permits work where there is no city, what happens when a trench meets rock, and whether the reserve next door changes anything.
Rock first, haul second. A trench that meets sound granite is broken rather than dug, and that is hours of labour rather than extra materials. After it comes the distance from the gate to the forms, because concrete that cannot arrive by chute is either pumped or barrowed. Thickness, steel and finish shift it after those two. Every estimate is measured and written on site, off a tape and a test hole.
Riverside County does both halves. A wall over 4 feet, a structural slab or a footing carrying a cover is a building permit from Building and Safety at 4080 Lemon Street in Riverside, and work inside a county road right of way is an encroachment permit issued by the Transportation Department, one floor below in the same building. Flatwork poured at grade within your own lines usually needs no permit at all.
It gets broken out, and the figure says so before anyone starts. Sound rock will not give way to a trencher, so a footing here is cut with a breaker and the spoil is crushed and put back as base instead of being hauled off. The gain is that a footing set into rock does not settle, which is why walls out here stay where they were put. All of it is read off the test hole.
They change the day rather than the slab. At roughly 155 people to the square mile there is no neighbour to work around and no street to close, so we can set out at full size and leave plant on site overnight. What it costs is travel inside the property: a gate 300 feet from the forms means a pump or a long chute run, and any leach field between the two is located before a digger moves.
A week between the first saw cut and the first car. Work out here occupies 2 or 3 days, and a whole drive runs to 5 because it is laid in sections. The slab then holds nobody for a day and nothing on wheels for a week. Where the drive is the only way off the parcel we leave a running lane and pour the second half after the first has set.
For ordinary flatwork on ground already cleared, no. The Lake Mathews and Estelle Mountain reserve is run jointly by the water district, the county habitat agency and the Bureau of Land Management, and it is the reason the parcels beside it stay large. Where it shows up is in county review of work that grades new ground or sends drainage toward it, which is a question to put at the estimate.
El Sobrante sits 6 miles north of here, Temescal Valley 7 to the west and Perris 9 to the southeast, and one crew reaches all of them. With no city line to go by, the parcel address is what tells you which of these pages to read.
Open the Jurupa Valley Office in Google Maps Give us the parcel address and say what you want built. A reply reaches you within 1 business day. The visit and the test hole are free of any charge, and what we build is covered by a written workmanship guarantee against defects in how it was built.