Fontana Concrete Pro works Colton from 8.3 miles up Sierra Avenue. The town sits where the Lytle Creek fan flattens into the Santa Ana plain, so the ground under a Colton slab is finer than ours.
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Colton sits at the bottom edge of the same alluvial fan Fontana sits on top of, and 8.3 miles is enough to change what the ground does under a slab.
Lytle Creek has been dropping rock out of the San Gabriels for thousands of years, coarse near the canyon mouth and finer the further it travels. Fontana gets cobble and gravel that drains almost too fast. By the time the fan reaches Colton and meets the Santa Ana River plain it is laying down sand and silt with far less stone in it, ground that holds water longer after a wet week and behaves differently under a plate compactor. The USDA Web Soil Survey names your own parcel.
The other half of it is age. Just over half of Colton's 17,856 homes predate 1980, 43 percent of them going up between 1940 and 1979, putting that flatwork at 50 to 80 years old, poured at 3 to 4 inches with no steel and often no base. It has not failed because it was built badly, it has run out of years. We hold a CSLB C-8 license, carry liability insurance on every job, and every Colton replacement leaves with a written workmanship guarantee against defects in how it was built.
The eight jobs that come up most on Colton's pre-1980 lots, which are just over half the town. Every one is measured on site before a number is written, and every one is built for ground that drains slower than the upper fan does.
Colton driveways from the 1940s to the 1970s went down at 3 to 4 inches on the fan's sand with no steel, so they crack into panels and drop at the apron. We break the old slab out, compact a graded base into ground that holds moisture, and cut joints to suit the lot.
Back gardens in Cooley Ranch and Sunny Slope still carry the original pad off the slider, undersized, unjointed and pitched back at the house. A poured patio is set out to the door threshold, given a fall that clears soils which hold water, and jointed properly.
Stamped work reads differently on Colton's low ranch elevations, because the pattern is seen almost flat from the street and scale matters more than texture depth. It goes over the base a plain slab gets, then it is sealed, a failed stamp still has to be broken out.
South Colton's sidewalk panels sit against street trees planted when the blocks were laid out, and roots have lifted enough of them to leave trip hazards. We saw the lifted panels out, cut roots back to what an arborist allows, and repour to the inspected cross-fall.
Garage slabs in Colton's 1950s and 1960s houses were poured with the house and never had a vapor barrier under them, so they sweat through spring and spall where a wet car parks. Replacing one means cutting the slab free of the footing and rebuilding what is beneath it.
Color, exposed aggregate and saw-cut layouts are decided before the truck arrives. On a Colton lot we start from the house: the 1960s ranch stock takes a warm integral color and wide joint spacing better than a small pattern. We pour a sample panel for you to approve.
Sunny Slope and the blocks climbing toward the hills sit above the valley floor, and the walls holding those yards up are often dry-stacked block with no footing and nothing draining behind them. A poured wall gets a footing below grade, steel, and a drain line at the back.
Interior slabs, a garage conversion, a workshop, an addition on an older Colton house, tie into a footing poured decades ago and to a floor level that already exists. We survey the level that is there, then pour to it over a vapor barrier so the two meet flat.
Permits for Colton flatwork go through the City of Colton Development Services counter at 659 North La Cadena Drive, and we file them rather than leaving it to you. Anything that changes a driveway approach or the way a lot drains gets a plan check; a rear patio replaced on its own footprint usually does not. Colton also runs its own electric and water utilities instead of buying them in, so a pour that needs a service line located waits on the city, not on Edison.
Our crews come down Sierra Avenue and pick up the 10 east, which puts most Colton addresses about twenty minutes from the yard. We work Cooley Ranch and the tracts north of the freeway, the older grid of South Colton around Rancho Avenue, Sunny Slope where the ground starts to climb, and the Hunts Lane blocks near the Loma Linda line. A Cooley Ranch driveway from 1978 and a South Colton driveway from 1948 are two different demolitions before they are two different pours.
The railroad is a scheduling fact in Colton, not a piece of history. Union Pacific and BNSF meet at Colton Crossing and their mainlines cut the town in half, and although the junction itself was flown over in 2013, the surface-street crossings were not. A ready-mix truck has a limited window between batching and discharge, so we book Colton pours for early starts and route them clear of the tracks. The batch plants along the Santa Ana wash are closer to your driveway than our yard is.
Four steps. The parts that are particular to Colton are the plan check on La Cadena Drive and the early start we book so the trucks are off the surface streets before the freight builds up.
We reply within 1 business day and ask three things about the slab you have now, how old it is, where it cracks, and where the water goes.
We measure the area on site, probe the subgrade for the fine sand this end of the fan carries, and leave the written figure with you.
We file at Development Services, see the plan check through, and book a start time that keeps the ready-mix clear of the crossings.
The crew breaks out, compacts, pours and finishes. We walk the joints and the falls with you and close the permit before we leave.
Send the address and what you want poured. We come out to measure it, and what comes back is a figure on paper with the base depth and the joint layout named on it.
Reviews
These are from jobs across the twenty towns the Sierra Avenue yard covers rather than from Colton alone, and they are posted as they were written.
“Our house south of Valley is one of the old steel-town builds and the driveway had never been replaced. They broke out 520 square feet, screened the cobble out of the base and poured 5 inches. Andre cut the joints himself before he left.”
“We are in one of the newer tracts up north and the builder patio was cracked across the middle in three years. Fontana Concrete Pro dug it out, put a proper base under it and poured 320 square feet with joints on a 10-foot grid. No cracks after two summers.”
“The slope at the back of our lot in Jurupa Hills was moving every winter and taking the fence with it. They poured a 40-foot wall on footings to 24 inches with drainage behind it. Two wet seasons on and there is not a crack in it anywhere.”
Six things Colton homeowners ask before they book, the permit counter, the ground, the wait, and what a job at the far end of the fan actually involves.
Four things, in this order: the square footage, what has to come out first, how much base the ground underneath needs, and how the truck reaches the pour. Breaking out a 1950s South Colton driveway laid straight onto native soil is more work to haul than lifting a 1980s slab off a gravel bed, and the finer sand at this end of the fan asks for more compaction. We measure all four on site and write it down.
Usually, if the work touches the driveway approach or changes how the lot drains. Colton Development Services on La Cadena Drive runs the plan check, and we file the application, meet the inspector and close the permit out. A rear patio replaced like for like on its own footprint often needs nothing. A contractor who wants you to pull your own permit is moving the liability onto your name.
Colton is 8.3 miles from the Sierra Avenue office and the crews run it on the 10, so it is about twenty minutes each way and well inside the yard's normal working radius. We reply to every inquiry within 1 business day, and in most months the on-site measure lands the same week. Pours are set for early starts, partly for the heat and partly to keep the trucks off the surface streets before the freight builds.
Alluvium off Lytle Creek and the Santa Ana River: sand and silt, with far less cobble in it than the upper fan carries eight miles north at Fontana. It compacts well at the right moisture and badly when dry, and it holds water longer after a storm than gravelly ground does. That changes the base depth and the number of compaction passes, which is why we probe the subgrade at the estimate.
Demolition and base prep take a day on most Colton lots, the pour is a half day, and the finishing runs to the end of the second day. The waiting is elsewhere. The plan check adds days at the counter, and the Portland Cement Association is clear that concrete gains strength over weeks, so we keep cars off a new driveway for seven days in summer.
Twenty of them, inside 25 miles of the Fontana yard. The nearest to you are Grand Terrace and Loma Linda, both of which share a city line with Colton, then Highland and Redlands to the east. A crew already booked on Barton Road or Hunts Lane is often on your street the same week. The full list sits under this answer, ordered by distance from the office rather than by name.
Colton is one of twenty towns inside 25 miles of the yard. The list runs nearest first, so the towns near the top of it sit on the same fan and carry much the same housing stock.
Open the Fontana Office in Google Maps The yard is 8.3 miles up Sierra Avenue and the phone is answered by the people who do the work. Ask for a Colton measure and we will get it booked.