Fontana Concrete Pro pours driveways, patios and walls on the hillside lots of Diamond Bar, west on the 60 from our Fontana yard. Every estimate is measured and written on site, free.
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Diamond Bar sits on the Puente Hills, and the hills are marine shale that weathers into a clay which swells when wet and shrinks when dry. A slab poured straight onto it moves with it.
Most of the city was graded in the 1960s and 1970s, when the old Diamond Bar Ranch was laid out as a planned community, and the pads were made by cutting the top of a slope and filling the bottom. The cut half of a lot is firm native ground and the fill half is looser, so a driveway or a patio that spans the line between them is on two different soils. Add a clay that changes volume with every wet winter and the joint between the halves opens, then the slab tilts toward the fill.
So the subgrade is dealt with before the concrete is. We probe the pad to find where the fill starts, take out anything soft, and lay 4 inches of Class 2 base plate-compacted across both halves so the slab bears on one material. Number 3 steel runs through it on an 18-inch grid, and where a slab meets a house or a garage we dowel the joint so the pieces move together instead of stepping. On the downhill side the edge is thickened to carry its load past the loose fill.
Diamond Bar was graded out of the Puente Hills one tract at a time from the 1960s on, so almost every lot is a cut pad with a slope above it or below it. The work here is a slab that holds its grade on a hill, and a wall that holds the hill.
A Diamond Bar driveway climbs from the curb to the garage on most lots, so it is poured 4 inches thick on compacted base with a thickened edge at the low side, and steel on an 18-inch grid holds it as one piece where the cut pad meets the fill.
Back yards in Diamond Bar step up or down from the house, so a patio is set into the slope on a compacted base rather than laid on the fill at the edge of the pad. We grade it to shed water to a drain and away from the bank below it, which is what keeps the fill under it.
Stamped concrete replaces the paver aprons and brick walks the 1970s builders laid across Diamond Bar, in one slab that does not shift on the clay. The pattern is cast into 4 inches of concrete and sealed in 2 coats, and there is nothing to resand or reset.
Front walks in Diamond Bar run down hill lots in steps and ramps, and the old ones have lifted where roots and clay pushed them. We check the right-of-way line, cut out the heaved panels and dowel the new ones into the old so there is no step to trip on.
Garage floors in Diamond Bar date from the 1960s and 1970s and were poured thin, so the ones we are called to have cracked along the fill line and dropped at the door. We break out what has moved and pour a new slab on compacted base, flat enough to coat.
Decorative finishes on a Diamond Bar lot go on the entry and the pool deck the view faces. A light integral color with a salt or broom finish reads cooler underfoot through the hot months than a dark slab does, and it hides the dust the hills blow onto it.
Retaining walls are the job Diamond Bar has that flat towns do not, because nearly every lot holds a slope. A wall here is footed into native ground below the fill, drained behind the stem, and permitted through the city once it passes 4 feet in height.
Interior slabs in Diamond Bar go under garage conversions and the room additions built on the uphill side of a house. We pour over a 10 mil vapor barrier, because the clay holds water well into summer, and trowel the slab flat enough to take tile.
Our yard is in Fontana, and the drive to Diamond Bar is the 60 west to where it meets the 57, a little over 20 miles, so a crew is on site before the first delivery is due. Plans go to the City of Diamond Bar Building and Safety Division. The city incorporated in 1989 and took its own permitting on, but the tract grading plans from the county years still exist, and on a hillside lot we ask for them, because they show where the pad was cut and where it was filled.
The streets off Diamond Bar Boulevard and Golden Springs Drive are the older tracts, single-story houses from the 1960s and 1970s on lots that run uphill from the curb, with a driveway that climbs to the garage. Those drives are the job we see most, because a slab on a grade takes water down its whole length and the original ones have cracked across. Up in The Country Estates and on the ridges off Grand Avenue the lots are larger and steeper, and the drive is often the only way in.
Access decides the method more than anything else. A pump is set up on the street for most hillside lots, because a mixer cannot back up a driveway that climbs at the grade these do, and a pump line reaches a back yard a barrow would take a day to feed. Drainage is designed into every slab, since a yard in Diamond Bar falls somewhere, and a patio graded to send water onto the slope below it is a patio that undercuts its own fill within a few winters.
Four stages and one crew, with the grade and the access settled on the first visit. Everything that shapes a hillside job is visible from the street, so it is measured there and the written figure does not change later in the week.
Andre Whitfield walks the lot, shoots the grade with a level, finds where the cut meets the fill and decides whether a pump is needed.
We file with the City of Diamond Bar Building and Safety Division where the work needs it, and with your association where it faces the street.
Soft fill comes out, 4 inches of Class 2 base goes in and is compacted, forms are set to the fall and the steel is tied on its grid.
The pour is pumped from the street and the joints are cut within 12 hours. Walk on it after 24 hours and drive on it after 7 days.
Call or send the form and we call you back within 1 business day to set the visit. The measure and the written figure are free, and the drive from Fontana is one we make most weeks.
Reviews
Reviews left on Google and Facebook by homeowners across the towns we cover from Fontana. Diamond Bar is one of them, and the hillside work behind them is the work described above.
“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.”
What homeowners in Diamond Bar ask before booking, from the hillside clay and the cut-and-fill pads to the city's permit counter, the time a slab is out of use and which streets a mixer can reach.
The slope, then the access. A driveway that climbs to the garage needs more base at the low side and a pump on the street, and both add hours to the same square footage. The clay adds a thicker base than a flat valley lot would get. Every estimate is measured and written on site, so the figure comes off the lot and not off a table.
The City of Diamond Bar Building and Safety Division, in Los Angeles County. Flatwork at grade in your own yard does not need one. A retaining wall over 4 feet, a footing that carries a patio cover and anything in the public right-of-way does, and on a hillside lot the city can ask for a grading review as well. We file it and meet the inspector.
Because the old slabs were poured thin on a pad that is half cut and half fill, and the fill settled. Water runs down the drive, gets under the low edge, and the clay there swells and shrinks with each season until the slab breaks across the line where the ground changes. A new drive here gets compacted base across both halves and steel on an 18-inch grid.
Usually not, and we plan for that. Most drives off Diamond Bar Boulevard and in The Country Estates are steeper than a loaded truck can climb safely, so the mixer stays on the street and the concrete is pumped up the drive or over the house into the back yard. The pump is one more piece of equipment, but it is faster than barrowing and it does not tear up the lawn.
Most jobs are 2 to 3 days on site, and a long hillside driveway is 4. After the pour the slab takes foot traffic at 24 hours and a car at 7 days, and the joints are cut within 12 hours so the cracks run straight. On a slope we keep the slab wet a day longer in July and August, when the afternoons in the hills run into the 90s.
Yes. Chino Hills shares the county line with Diamond Bar along the ridge, Chino sits below it on the 60, and San Dimas and La Verne are north across the 10, and each has its own page. The pages differ because the ground does, from the Puente Hills clay here to the gravel of the Chino basin. The same crew and the same yard in Fontana serve all of them.
Diamond Bar shares its east edge with Chino Hills across the county line, and Chino, San Dimas and La Verne are close by, all covered from Fontana. If your house sits on the line off Grand Avenue, read the Chino Hills page too. The ground changes there.
Open the Fontana Office in Google Maps Send the form and we call back within 1 business day. The estimate is free, written on the lot, and the work carries a written workmanship guarantee against defects in how it was built.