SkyVale Jurupa Valley Concrete pours drives, patios and walls in Chino Hills, 15 miles west of our Limonite Avenue yard. Every building pad in this town was cut and filled before a house stood on it.
This town was planned before it was built. The 1979 Chino Hills Specific Plan covered 18,000 acres, and by 1982 only about 4,000 homes stood on them.
Everything after that was benched. Of the 24,121 homes counted here, 7,369 went up in the 1980s and two in three were finished between 1980 and 2009, each on a pad a grader cut out of one side of a slope and packed back onto the other. The soil survey maps the ridge tracts as Fontana clay loam on grades of 15 to 30 percent - firm where it was never disturbed, and only as good as the compaction where it was placed.
So a slab in Chino Hills usually spans both. Cut ground carries load the day it is exposed; engineered fill carries it only if it was laid in lifts and compacted, and 30 years of irrigation at the downhill edge of a pad is what softens the last few feet. We probe the subgrade across the whole footprint at the estimate, dig out anything that gives, lay 4 inches of Class 2 base, and run steel through the slab so a differential settlement cracks nothing.
Almost every lot in town is a bench cut into a slope and backfilled level, so the first question on any job here is which half of the yard was cut and which half was filled.
A drive here climbs from the gutter to a garage set above it, and the fall is what breaks it: water sheets down the slab and washes out the apron at the curb. We pour 5 inches with number 4 steel, joint the run every 10 feet, and cut a drain across the foot of the grade.
Back yards on a bench are narrow and the ground steps away at the fence, so a patio here is half slab and half low wall. We set the slab below the door threshold, fall it toward the side yard rather than the drop, and tie the two pours with dowels so they move as one piece.
Tract elevations in Chino Hills were sold with stone veneer and tile roofs, and owners want the flatwork to answer them. Stamped ashlar or seamless slate goes into the slab itself at 4 inches, so there is nothing to lift and reset when the pad underneath takes up winter water.
Front walks in Chino Hills sit in city right-of-way even where the lawn looks private, and the Engineering Division issues the permit to touch them. We take out the panel rather than grind the lip, dowel into the slabs either side, and leave the cross-fall the inspector measures.
Garages on these tracts are set into the cut side of the pad, and the slab is the coolest, dampest concrete on the property. We moisture-test before anything is coated, because a floor over a cut face pushes water up through an epoxy and lifts it in sheets within a season.
Color on a hill lot is read from the street below, not from the door, so a patchy topical stain shows from a hundred yards. We run an integral color through the mix and finish with a salt or broom texture, which keeps its grip on a slab that is never quite level.
Walls are the job Chino Hills asks for most, because a level yard here has to be made. The city exempts a wall under 4 feet only where it holds back under 3 feet of soil, the slope behind is flatter than 4 to 1, nothing surcharges it, and every part sits 5 feet off a line.
Casitas, converted garages and the workshop at the back of a bench lot all need a floor before they need walls. We lay a 10 mil barrier over compacted base, pour through it with steel, and grind flat enough for tile, since a pad cut into a slope rarely starts out level.
Three grounds, not one. The soil survey puts Fontana clay loam under the ridge tracts, Merrill silt loam under the older flat at Los Serranos - somewhat poorly drained, which is why water stands there after a storm - and Metz loamy sand down in Carbon Canyon, where the wash carried it. Each one wants a different base under the same 4 inch slab, and you can check your own parcel on the USDA Web Soil Survey before we arrive.
Two counters and usually a third party. The building permit comes from the Building and Safety Division at 14000 City Center Drive, where the counter runs from 7:30 until 5:30, Monday to Thursday, and shuts an hour earlier on Friday. Anything touching the curb, the walk or the drive approach is an encroachment permit from the Engineering Division on 909-364-2770. Most of the town also sits under an association, whose committee wants the color and finish before the city wants a drawing.
Age splits the town in two. Roughly one home in ten predates 1970, and nearly all of those sit around Los Serranos, whose golf club opened in 1925, or in Sleepy Hollow, which had about 90 weekend cabins by 1928. Those lots have thin unreinforced concrete and no base under it. The tracts above them are mostly 20 to 45 years old, which is where a well-poured slab starts reaching the end of the 30 to 40 years it is built for.
Four stages, one crew, and one figure agreed before anything is broken out. The pad is read first, because on a benched lot the ground decides the method and the method decides the day.
Daniel Reyes walks the slope, probes the subgrade at the downhill edge and photographs the gate, the grade and the turning space.
Soft fill is dug out to firm material, then 4 inches of Class 2 base goes over it and is rolled in two passes.
We file with Building and Safety, with Engineering for anything at the curb, and send the finish sample to your committee.
Joints are cut within 12 hours. Walk on it at 24 hours, park at 7 days, and the forms and rubble leave with us.
Send the form or call, and we will come out and put a tape across the job. Every estimate is measured and written on site, which on a made pad means measuring the ground rather than trusting a tract drawing.
Reviews
Our own reviews, left on Google and Facebook. The jobs behind them are the ones described above: drives on benched pads, and the patio and wall pairs a made yard needs.
“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 worth settling before a crew is booked, answered for a town of benched pads and architectural committees rather than for the county as a whole.
Getting concrete to the pour. A flat lot takes a chute off the truck; a bench lot behind a 4 foot side gate takes a pump or a barrow line, and that is crew hours on the same slab. After access comes how much fill has to come out before base goes in, then area, thickness and finish. Every estimate is measured and written on site.
Rarely, because the city stacks its conditions. A masonry or concrete wall under 4 feet escapes a permit only where it retains under 3 feet of soil, the slope behind it is flatter than 4 to 1, nothing surcharges it, it holds up no structure, and every part stands over 5 feet from a property line. A bench lot usually fails the last one, so the wall is drawn and submitted.
The uphill side is cut and the downhill side is fill, and the join runs somewhere across the middle. Cut ground is undisturbed and carries load straight away. Fill only carries what it was compacted to carry, and irrigation softens its outer edge over the years. We probe across the footprint rather than at one corner, because a slab that spans both is the one that cracks on the line.
On the wider tract streets yes, and the truck discharges straight into the forms. Above them the roads narrow, turn tight and fall away at the shoulder, and on those we set up on the flat and pump. It is booked as a longer day rather than charged as a surprise, and the run from Limonite Avenue is 15 miles, so a crew starts on site rather than arriving mid-morning.
Two to three days of work, then the cure. On a hill drive the breakout takes longer because the old slab comes out in pieces down a grade, and the base is rebuilt rather than reused. You walk on the finished slab after 24 hours and put a car on it after 7 days, and concrete reaches full strength at 28.
Yes, and it is a different job. Carbon Canyon Road runs along a wash, and the survey maps loamy sand rather than clay loam there, so the base drains freely and the risk is scour at the edge of a slab instead of heave under it. We form deeper edges and turn the fall away from the channel. The same crew covers Chino and Diamond Bar on the way.
The yard covers 20 towns across four counties, and Chino Hills sits toward the western side of that map with Chino nearest to it. A street on a city line is settled by the parcel, not by the postal town.
Open the Jurupa Valley Office in Google Maps Put the street and the job on the form, and a call comes back within 1 business day and a time is set for the measure. We hold a CSLB C-8 license and carry liability insurance on every job.