The ground under Upland is gravel and cobble, not clay, and that changes what a slab needs beneath it. SkyVale Jurupa Valley Concrete pours drives, patios and garage floors here, 14 miles from the yard.
Upland is built on one enormous alluvial fan. San Antonio Creek has carried granite out of the canyon above the city for as long as the canyon has existed, and the town sits on what it dropped.
The soil survey maps the whole city as one unit, Tujunga gravelly loamy sand: very deep, excessively drained granitic alluvium with gravel and cobble through it. The stone coarsens toward the canyon, so a north lot turns up rounded rock where a south one turns up grit. Either way it is the reverse of a clay town. Water neither sits nor swells, so nothing beneath a slab is lifting it. But sand carrying that much stone has no cohesion, and a trench face slumps as soon as it is cut.
Preparation here is therefore about placing the base, not replacing the ground. The gravelly sand is dug back to a clean face, a 4 inch course of Class 2 base is placed and rolled to refusal, and any stone larger than the base course comes out instead of going back in. Slabs go 4 inches with number 3 steel at 18 inches, and the edge is thickened where a drive meets the street, because on ground that will not hold a shoulder the edge fails first.
Almost half of Upland was built between 1950 and 1979, so most of this list is replacement: taking out concrete that has done 50 or 60 years and putting back what the fan beneath it needs.
Half the drives here went in with the house between 1950 and 1979, three inches thick over graded sand and with no steel. They break along the wheel tracks, not at the joints. The replacement goes 5 inches with number 4 steel, and the approach at the curb is filed separately.
A patio here is poured over old citrus ground, where the topsoil is shallow and the gravel starts about a spade down. That is a good base and a bad one at once: it drains freely, but it carries no cohesion, so the slab wants a thickened edge rather than a deeper dig beneath it.
The older streets south of Foothill Boulevard are full of brick and stone porches, and a stamped ashlar or running-bond slab is how a back yard is made to match one without laying units that lift. The pattern is cast 4 inches deep into the pour and sealed twice before handover.
The public walk in front of a house here is the fronting owner to maintain under Streets and Highways Code section 5610, and the parkway tree that lifted it is usually older than the walk. We take the panel out whole, dowel into the slabs either side, and file the paperwork.
A garage floor is usually the oldest concrete on the property and the only slab inside the house line. Where it has broken across a wheel track we replace it; where it is sound we grind it flat and test for moisture, because ground this free-draining still wicks after a wet week.
A 1920s bungalow will not carry a modern slate stamp, so decorative work on the old colony streets is usually a saw-cut grid and a shade close to the sand of the fan itself. We cut the pattern into a 4 inch pour and seal it twice, and nothing stands proud to catch a shoe.
North of the city the lots climb toward the San Gabriels and start to step. A wall on this ground is footed into gravelly sand that will not stand up in a trench, so the dig is benched wide and shored before steel goes in. Over 4 feet, footing to top, it is drawn and permitted.
Interior slabs here are mostly additions and garage conversions on houses built before a vapor barrier was standard. We take the floor back to the fan, lay 4 inches of compacted base and a 10 mil barrier, and trowel a surface flat enough for tile or a floating floor.
Upland incorporated in 1906 out of the northern half of the irrigation colony the Chaffey brothers laid out, and the grid they laid for citrus is still the street plan. Euclid Avenue runs up the middle of it with its planted median, and the Madonna of the Trail has stood at the head of that median since February 1929. Groves turned into tracts between 1950 and 1979, which is where 48 of every 100 of the 28,280 housing units here, and most of the older concrete, came from.
Two counters, and the first is the building one: Building and Safety, part of Development Services at the City of Upland civic center on North Euclid Avenue. It runs a four-day week, Monday to Thursday, and is shut on Friday, which is worth knowing before you plan a Friday start. Work in the public right-of-way is a separate encroachment permit from Public Works, and the city code will not let a driveway approach cross a lot line extended without the city engineer agreeing to it.
The yard is 14 miles southeast, up the 15 and west on the 10, which puts a crew here inside half an hour and lets the work be booked as mornings rather than whole days. The fan falls south the length of the city, so every lot has natural fall and the only question is whether it goes where you want it. Heat is the other constraint: the nearest published normal, at the airport six miles south, is 93.8 degrees in July and 94.9 in August, so summer pours are formed at six.
Four stages. On a replacement the demolition is the part you notice, so it is scheduled to start and finish inside a day rather than leaving broken concrete stacked on the drive over a weekend.
Daniel Reyes measures the pour, opens the ground to see how far the topsoil runs before the gravel starts, and photographs the access.
The old slab comes out in one visit and leaves the same day, so nothing sits stacked on the driveway while you wait for a pour.
We file the building permit and, where the work reaches the right-of-way, the encroachment permit with Public Works. You attend neither counter.
Four inches of compacted base, number 3 steel at 18 inches, then the pour. Walk on it after 24 hours, drive after 7 days.
Send the address and a photograph of what is there now, and a visit gets booked to measure it. Nothing is charged for that visit or for the written figure that follows it.
Reviews
Reviews our customers left on Google, Facebook and the BBB. The jobs behind them are the ones above: replacement drives, garage floors ground flat, and foothill walls.
“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 settle before booking: what the gravel beneath the lot means for the base, which counter takes what, why an old drive breaks where it does, and how long you are off it.
Some of it, yes. On clay ground a good part of the day goes on digging out material that swells; here the fan already drains, so the dig is shallower and there is nothing to cart away. What it gives back it takes in stone: cobble has to be picked out of the trench rather than rolled under the base, and a face in gravelly sand slumps unless it is cut wide. Area and access still move the figure more.
Two, depending on where the concrete lands. Building and Safety, inside Development Services, takes the building permit; Public Works takes the encroachment permit for anything in the right-of-way, and the approach at the curb is in it. Flat concrete in your own back yard usually needs neither: the residential code lets a driveway or a walk go without one if it stands 30 inches or less over the grade beside it.
Because it was poured three inches thick with no steel in it, over sand that gives a little under a wheel. The crack follows the load rather than the joints, which is why it runs the length of a tire track instead of across the slab. Patching the top of that does not hold, because the break is in the support. The repair that lasts is a new driveway poured thicker, reinforced and jointed at 10 feet.
Almost never, and least of all on this ground. An overlay adds height at the door threshold and the garage lip, and on a drive it lifts the surface above the gutter line, which sends water back toward the house. There is a second reason here: the old slab is the only thing holding the gravel compacted 60 years ago, and lifting it lets that be rebuilt. The old concrete leaves the day it comes up.
Two days on site for a standard two-car drive, three where the approach at the curb is rebuilt with it. Breakout and haul fill the first day, base, steel and forms the second, and the pour goes down in the morning so it is finished before the afternoon heat. Then the slab wants a day before it is walked on and 7 days before a car is put back on it.
The mapped soil is one unit end to end, though the stone in it coarsens as the streets climb toward the canyon. What really changes is slope and age. North of Foothill Boulevard the lots rise toward the San Gabriels and step, so walls and stairs come into more of the work. South of it lies the older colony grid, flatter, carrying the 1950s and 1960s tracts, and there the job is nearly always a replacement.
Twenty towns fall inside the 25 mile radius this yard works, spread over four counties, and Upland is 14 miles of it. Montclair, Chino Hills and Claremont all sit a few minutes further on.
Open the Jurupa Valley Office in Google Maps Send the form with a photograph of what is on the ground now. The call back comes within 1 business day, and what we leave behind is covered by a written workmanship guarantee against defects in how it was built.