Fontana Concrete Pro builds driveways, patios and walks across Upland, from the craftsman streets north of Foothill Boulevard to the mid-century tracts below it. Calls answered within 1 business day.
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Upland sits on the alluvial fan that San Antonio Canyon has been building for thousands of years, and that fan is cobble, rounded rock and gravel that gets coarser the further north you go.
Coarse ground drains well, which is the good half. The other half is that it does not hold a shape: fine material washes down between the cobble, the base under a slab loses support in patches, and the concrete above bridges the gap until the load finds it. You can read the profile for any address on the USDA Web Soil Survey. On site it means compaction in lifts and a thicker section as you climb toward the canyon mouth.
The second force here is above ground. George Chaffey laid Upland out as an irrigation and citrus colony in the 1880s and planted it to match, Euclid Avenue carries a double row of trees down its median for more than a mile, and the residential streets off it are shaded just as heavily. Those roots have had a century and more to grow, and they are why a walk laid flat in the 1950s is no longer flat. Replace the panel without dealing with the root and you replace the crack with it.
Eight jobs, ordered by what Upland calls about most: old flatwork lifted by street-tree roots, and new pours going down onto coarse foothill ground.
Upland driveways sit on cobble and gravel, and a base graded straight over it drifts as the fines wash out of it. We dig to material that compacts, build it back in lifts and set the joints to the apron, so the panels move together instead of one corner dropping at the curb.
Back yards on the mid-century tracts south of Foothill Boulevard are deep and flat, which is why patios here get poured wide rather than tucked in tight. We slope the slab a quarter inch to the foot so runoff off the foothills leaves by the side yard and not the back door.
North of Foothill the houses are 1910s to 1930s craftsman and Spanish revival, and a plain gray slab in front of one reads as a repair rather than a walk. Stamped work takes its pattern and color off the porch tile or the brick, so what we pour belongs to the house it serves.
Upland's mature street trees are what put most walks on our list: a root swells under a panel, lifts it an inch, and a trip edge follows. We lift the panel, shave the root back to the line the city agrees and re-pour on a deeper section, so the same root does not return the walk.
Detached garages behind the older Euclid Avenue houses were poured thin, often on tamped cobble alone, and they craze into a grid once a car has sat on them for a few decades. A replacement goes down four inches over compacted base with mesh, so the slab spans the soft spots.
Upland's citrus-era streets carry a color of their own, warm sand, red tile, weathered brick, and raw gray concrete beside it looks new for years. Integral color, a salt or broom finish and a saw-cut grid let a wide area read as paving instead of one large poured pad.
Ground north of Foothill climbs toward the San Gabriel foothills, so lots up there step, and the railroad-tie walls holding those steps are past their life. A poured wall on a footing set below the cobble, with drain rock and weeps behind it, carries the load and lets water out.
Shops, studios and converted garages in Upland go in behind houses that predate slab construction, so the floor is a new pour inside old walls. We lay a vapor barrier over compacted base, pour flat to a tolerance you can roll a chair across, and cure it before a finish goes down.
The parkway trees belong to the city, not to you, and that changes how a walk gets rebuilt. Cutting a root on one is Upland's call, so before a panel comes out we agree the pruning line with the city and shave the root rather than sever it. It costs a day at the front of the job, and it is the difference between a walk that stays flat and one that lifts again inside five years.
Foothill Boulevard splits the town for our purposes. North of it the houses are pre-war, the lots are shaded and the rock underneath is coarse. South of it the tracts sit on finer, deeper ground with straight driveways we can back a truck down. Up against the foothills the newer building is on the steepest part of the fan, where a stepped lot often wants a poured retaining wall before anything flat goes in. Which side you are on sets the base depth.
The Madonna of the Trail, standing in the Euclid Avenue median at Foothill Boulevard, is the landmark we give drivers, and from there nothing in town is more than ten minutes away. That matters for the small jobs: a single lifted panel is worth a trip for us, so an Upland homeowner does not have to bundle three repairs together to get someone to come and look at one.
Four stages, and the two that decide whether the slab is still flat in twenty years both happen before any concrete arrives on the street.
You call or send the form, we answer within 1 business day, and a measure at your Upland address is usually booked inside that week.
Every estimate is measured and written on site, with the base depth your part of the fan needs shown as a line of its own.
Permits filed, we break out the old slab, deal with any root under it and compact the base back in lifts until it takes the plate.
We pour, finish and saw-cut the joints, walk the work with you once it has cured, and hand over the written workmanship guarantee.
Send a photo of what you have now and leave the measuring to us. Someone comes out, takes the dimensions on the ground and puts a number in writing before anything is torn up.
Reviews
Reviews left by homeowners across every town we cover, Upland among them, on jobs from a single lifted walk panel to a whole front yard rebuilt.
“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 answers about cost, permits, the ground and the trees, from crews who work both sides of Foothill Boulevard most weeks of the year.
The ground does, more than anything else. On the coarse fan north of Foothill Boulevard we dig deeper to reach material that compacts, and that excavation and the base rock filling it is what separates two estimates for the same square footage. After that it is access, the thickness the slab needs for whatever will sit on it, and whether an old pour has to come out and be hauled to the recycler.
Yes, and often two. The city issues the building permit for the slab itself, and anything crossing the sidewalk or sitting in the parkway needs a separate encroachment permit, because that strip is public right of way rather than your lot. Both are handled at the counter listed on the City of Upland website. We file them under our CSLB C-8 license and meet the inspector ourselves.
Upland is 11.6 miles from the yard on Sierra Avenue, roughly twenty-five minutes across on the 210. We answer every inquiry within 1 business day, and because the drive is short a site visit is not a half-day for the crew, so measuring an Upland job rarely waits more than a week. A panel that has already become a trip hazard we come and look at sooner than that.
Regularly. The constraint is not the concrete, it is the access: narrow single-width driveways, deep setbacks, and a median no mixer can park against. We barrow from the street on those jobs rather than run a chute, and the estimate says so as an extra day. Finishes get matched to what is already on the property, since a 1920s house with a modern broom finish out front looks wrong from the street.
A single-width Upland driveway is three days of work, break-out, base, pour, and the truck itself is on the street for about two hours of that. Stay off the new slab on foot for a day and keep vehicles off for seven. On the shaded streets we hold to the full seven rather than less, because a slab that cures cool gains strength more slowly than one baking in the open.
Rancho Cucamonga to the east, Ontario and Montclair to the south, and the towns on either side of the county line to the west. Upland sits near the western edge of what we reach from Fontana, which is why we try to group work here: a crew already set up on one street for the week can measure a neighbor's driveway without charging a second trip to get there.
Listed nearest Upland first. If your town is on it, there is a good chance a crew is working your side of the valley this week already.
Open the Fontana Office in Google Maps Send the address and what you want poured, or call the yard. Whoever comes out to look at it has poured on this side of the fan before and knows what the ground does.