SkyVale Jurupa Valley Concrete replaces driveways, walks and garage floors in Montclair, 14 miles west. More than half the housing predates 1970, and it sits on coarse wash off San Antonio Canyon.
The ground under Montclair is about 80 percent sand and roughly 2 percent clay. Nothing here swells and nothing shrinks. What happens is that the sand moves, and it moves at the edge of a slab.
The USDA maps the middle and south of the city as Tujunga loamy sand and the north as Soboba gravelly loamy sand, both running coarse to nearly 6 feet down. Water passes through that about ten times faster than through the loams the rest of our coverage sits on, and it holds almost nothing once it has passed. That is good news and bad news in one sentence: no slab here is being lifted by clay in February, and no slab here has cohesive ground holding its perimeter in place either.
That changes what a base course is for. On clay a compacted base is there to spread the load and to break the link between a slab and something that swells. On this sand it is there to give the slab a graded, confined layer that will not migrate, and the way to get it is water and vibration rather than weight - clean sand that is rolled dry simply moves aside and comes back later. So we compact damp, in layers, and we key the slab edge down where the perimeter is exposed to irrigation.
Most of what we do here is replacement rather than addition, because the original concrete has reached the end of the 30 to 40 years a well-poured slab lasts. What follows is what that actually means job by job.
The drives that came with the postwar tracts were poured thin, on sand, without steel, and are now 65 to 70 years old. Replacing beats patching here. We dig to firm material, compact base in layers because clean sand will not compact in one pass, and pour 4 inches with steel.
A patio here loses its edge before its middle. With about 2 percent clay in the ground nothing binds the sand under the perimeter, so irrigation and roof runoff carry fines out from under the outer 18 inches and the edge drops. We thicken and key that edge down.
Stamped work suits the older streets because it gives a wide postwar frontage something to look at without changing the footprint. We cast the pattern into a 4 inch slab and seal it in 2 coats. On sand the important part is underneath: base compacted damp, in layers.
City walks along the older avenues were laid in the 1950s and 60s and have been lifted since by street trees planted at the same time. We saw the panel out square, cut the offending root cleanly rather than tearing it, and lay a root barrier before the new one goes in.
Garage floors from the 1950s here are often 3 inches or less over bare sand with no vapour barrier at all, which is why an epoxy laid on one lifts within a season. Replacement is the fix: break out, 10 mil barrier, 4 inches with mesh. A moisture test comes first.
Colour and exposed aggregate go a long way on a flat lot with no slope to give it interest, and this is a flat city. We use a light integral colour with a broom or salt finish rather than a dark trowelled one. It reads cooler underfoot and hides the fine dust.
Walls here are not holding a hillside back, because there is barely a hillside in the city. They divide a flat lot, raise a planter or hold a driveway edge that keeps washing out. The engineering is drainage rather than height, and the stem has to let water out.
Interior slabs go in for garage conversions and casitas on lots that were generous by postwar standards. We pour over a 10 mil barrier, trowel flat enough for tile or vinyl, and set the joints on a grid that suits the room. On sand the prep is short but done wet.
The city is the youngest thing on its own map. The Serrano had a village on the Arroyo de los Alisos, now San Antonio Creek, along what is now Mills Avenue, the western boundary. A tract of 1,000 acres was surveyed as Monte Vista in 1900, the land was citrus for the first half of the century, and postwar houses arrived so fast that it incorporated as the city of Monte Vista on 25 April 1956. It was renamed on 8 April 1958, after the Post Office refused a name already in use up north.
That timeline is the reason the concrete looks the way it does. Of about 10,970 homes here, 26 percent were built in the 1950s and another 20 percent in the 1960s, so more than half the city predates 1970 and its original flatwork is between 55 and 75 years old. On our coverage list this is the oldest residential concrete anywhere, which is why replacement rather than repair is the usual recommendation and why we quote for tear-out as a matter of course.
Building permits go to the Building Division at the Civic Center, 5111 Benito Street. Work touching the walk, the kerb or the street is an encroachment permit from the Engineering Division under Public Works, a separate file. The detail worth knowing is the calendar: the city runs Monday to Thursday and is closed Friday, and an inspection must be booked before 5pm the day before, so a request made on Thursday lands on Monday. We plan pours around that.
Four stages, one crew and one written figure. On a replacement job the demolition is priced as its own line, because on lots this age it is usually the bigger half of the first day.
Daniel Reyes measures, checks what is under the existing slab where an edge is broken, and works out where the spoil goes on a narrow lot.
The old slab comes up, soft sand is dug out, and base is laid damp in layers and vibrated - clean sand will not compact dry.
Building and encroachment files both go in early in the week, because the city closes Friday and a late request costs the weekend.
Joints are cut the same day. Walk after 24 hours, drive after 7 days, and the site is swept and the spoil taken away.
Send the form or call, and someone will be back to you within 1 business day with a time. We measure the area, look under a broken edge to see what the original was built on, and write the figure there.
Reviews
Reviews left with us by homeowners across the towns this yard covers, Montclair among them. Each one is for a job measured at the property and invoiced at the figure written there.
“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.”
The six that come up most: what moves a figure on a 1950s lot, which of the city's two counters your job goes to, why sand behaves the way it does, and how the four-day week affects your dates.
How much of the old one has to come out and go away. On a 1950s lot the existing slab is thin and unreinforced, which is quick to break but bulky to haul, and the spoil often has to be barrowed to the street because the lots are narrow. Area, thickness, steel and finish set the rest. Every estimate is measured and written on site, and the tear-out is written as its own line so you can see it.
Which of the two counters you need depends on where the concrete lands. The Building Division at 5111 Benito Street handles structural work - footings, slabs under rooms, walls past the exempt height. Anything at the public walk, the kerb or the street needs an encroachment permit from the Engineering Division under Public Works. Both are lodged by us under our CSLB C-8 licence, and you attend neither counter.
Because the ground here is sand and the edge is where it escapes. The soil is mapped at roughly 2 percent clay, so nothing binds it, and a sprinkler line or a downpipe running along a slab perimeter washes the fines out from under the outer foot or so. The slab is then bridging a void it was never designed for, and it breaks where it is thinnest. The fix is a thickened, keyed edge and water sent elsewhere.
It affects when your inspection happens rather than how long the work takes. Montclair runs a four-day week, Monday to Thursday, and an inspection has to be requested before 5pm on the previous day. A request going in on Thursday is therefore inspected on Monday. We file early in the week and book the base inspection for a day that leaves the pour on the same side of the weekend.
Usually not, and we will say so before you ask. A slab poured in the 1950s at 3 inches with no steel and no base has already outlived the 30 to 40 years the material is good for, and a patch bonded to it fails at the joint within a couple of winters. Where a single panel has lifted over a root, replacing that panel makes sense. Where the whole drive is map-cracked, it does not.
Chino is the closest at 11 miles, and Upland at 14 and Claremont at 16 sit either side of you. Montclair itself is 14 miles west of the yard and comfortably inside the 25 mile radius we work to. The city line matters more than the mileage here, because each of those towns runs its own counter with its own rules, and we file to whichever one your address falls under.
Montclair sits near the western edge of what one yard can cover properly. The full list is below, nearest first. Where a street runs along a boundary, choose the town your address is actually in - it decides whose counter the file goes to and the standards.
Open the Jurupa Valley Office in Google Maps Tell us what has failed and roughly how much of it there is. You will hear from us within 1 business day, the measure happens at your door, and the finished slab sits under a written workmanship guarantee against defects in how it was built.