Fontana Concrete Pro saw-cuts the failed panels out, barriers the root that lifted them and pours back at a cross slope under 2 percent, permit filed. Every estimate is measured and written on site.
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The walk out front is city ground
A sidewalk carries no weight worth naming, so nothing about one fails from above. Four inches laid over Lytle Creek wash will span the loose stretches quite happily until something shifts beneath it: a root swells under a corner and tilts the panel, or winter water pulls the sand out at the low end and lets it drop. Both finish the same way, with a lip at the joint that a shoe catches and a wheel stops dead against.
Andre Whitfield founded Fontana Concrete Pro in 2019 after 18 years on Inland Empire crews, and he shoots the grade on every run himself. Fontana keeps two ages of sidewalk. The mill-worker blocks south of Valley Boulevard were walked on before 1955 and are seventy years into a thirty to forty year life, so they go a street at a time. The tracts north of the 210 took their walks from the developer after 1990, and their street trees have only lately grown big enough to reach one.
Walks go in under a CSLB C-8 concrete license with liability insurance on every job, to the city's own residential sidewalk detail. Everything from the back of curb to your property line is public right-of-way, so the job is lodged with the Department of Engineering on the Build Fontana portal and signed off by a public works inspector before the forms are stripped. The finished run carries a written workmanship guarantee against defects in how it was built.
Warning signs
Put a foot on the joint nearest the street tree. One panel standing proud of its neighbor means a root has run flat beneath the slab and jacked it, and the difference grows every season the tree does. Taking a grinder to that edge leaves the root exactly where it lies.
A panel should shed a quarter inch per foot toward the gutter, and no more than that. Where sprinkler water or a February storm runs along the walk rather than off it, the cross slope has gone, and the same tilt is what pushes a wheelchair off the concrete.
Where a drive crosses the walk, that stretch takes a work truck twice a day and the bin lorry once a week. Cracking that begins at the apron and works outward says the panel was laid at four inches, and nothing poured on top of it will carry the wheel.
The original walks on the mill blocks are shedding their top skin in grains that gather along the joints. Once the paste has worn back past the stone in the mix there is nothing left to seal, and what is underfoot reads as gravel rather than as concrete.
What is included
Standard on every run, and none of it held back to be priced later. Each line answers something the street in front of a Fontana house does to four inches of concrete: roots, loose wash beneath it, and a slope the city measures.
Every failed panel is saw-cut square at its joints, so the run is opened only where it has actually gone.
Roots over an inch are cut back to sound wood and a 24-inch barrier stood between the trunk and the new panel.
Rounded stone that will not key together is dug out and graded base goes back four inches deep, plate-compacted.
Poured four inches thick in a 3,500 psi mix from a San Bernardino County plant, broomed across the line you walk.
Control joints at five feet and every edge run with a tool, which is where a thin slab starts to break up.
A level goes across the finished panel and the fall toward the gutter is written on the sign-off at under 2 percent.
Where a drive crosses the walk that stretch goes in at six inches with steel, so the panel carries what turns over it.
We lodge the encroachment permit with Engineering on Build Fontana, stand for the inspection and hand over the guarantee.
Your options
Four ways to deal with a walk that has gone, set against whether each one takes away what caused it. A notice from the city is satisfied by all four. Only two of them are still satisfying anybody in ten years.
| Option | Removes the cause | Permit | Back in use | Holds for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Whole run replaced | Yes, roots taken and the base rebuilt | Encroachment, inspected at the forms | 24 hours to walk, 7 to drive | 30 to 40 years |
| One panel cut out | Yes, where a single tree did it | Encroachment, inspected at the forms | 24 hours to walk on it | As long as its neighbors last |
| Lip ground flat | No, the root goes on growing | None, nothing is taken out | The same afternoon | A year at a mature tree |
| Asphalt wedge ramp | No, it ramps over the step | None inside the property line | The next morning | 2 to 3 years before it frays |
Grinding is the shortest morning and the shortest answer. Cutting a single panel out is the smallest piece of work that removes the cause rather than the symptom.
Local knowledge
Two things set a walk here apart. The concrete in front of your house belongs to the city, and the ground beneath it was dropped by a creek rather than settled into clay.
Lytle Creek built this ground out of sand, gravel and rounded stone, and it laid it in channels, so what sits eighteen inches down changes across the width of a single lot. A slab with a car on it spreads that load about; four inches of walk cannot, so each panel is more or less its own footing and the one over a soft channel drops. That is why the trench is opened along the whole run and base compacted under all of it, rather than only under the piece that failed.
Age decides which of the two Fontanas we are standing in. On the mill blocks the walks are original, the whole frontage is the same age and it fails in runs, so replacing one slab there simply moves the step twelve feet along. In the northern tracts the concrete is sound and one tree has lifted one panel, which is a saw, a barrier and a morning. Which of the two you have is settled at the visit, because it sets the count of panels, and the count carries the figure.
Our process
Five stages, from the measurement at the curb to the day the tape comes off. The same crew throughout, and the encroachment permit lodged on Build Fontana before a saw touches a joint.
Andre Whitfield walks the run, counts the panels that have gone, notes every tree inside five feet and writes the figure there.
The encroachment application goes to the Department of Engineering on the Build Fontana portal, and waiting on it is the longest part.
Panels are cut square at their joints and broken out to soil the same morning, and the old concrete goes for crushing.
Roots over an inch are cut back and a barrier stood, then graded base goes in four inches deep and is compacted.
Poured and broomed early, joints cut inside twelve hours, the inspector met at the forms and the guarantee handed over.
What moves the estimate
How many panels have gone sets the figure first, and after that two things standing beside them: the trees within five feet of the run, and whether the concrete is inside your line or out on city ground. Every estimate is measured and written on site.
One lifted slab is a morning. Eight of them down a single frontage is two days of cutting, hauling and base work.
Every mature tree inside five feet adds root cutting and a 24-inch barrier, and it decides where the new joints land.
A path across your own front garden takes no permit. A panel on city ground takes one, an inspection, and about two weeks.
Rebuilding where a drive crosses the walk means six inches, steel through the apron and a wing returned on either side.
Nothing is charged for the visit or for the written figure, and someone rings you back within 1 business day to put a date against the work. (909) 697-3243 or send us a message.
Call the Sierra Avenue office or send the form. Andre Whitfield counts the panels, reads the slope with a level and leaves a written figure at the house, and the trip to the permit counter is our errand rather than yours.
Reviews
Three sidewalk jobs on three streets, and what the owners wrote once the tape had come off. Each names the part of the work nobody can check after the panel is poured.
“A notice came to our door about the walk out front, which was up about an inch where the ash stands. They took three panels, cut the root back, set a barrier and had the inspector out at the forms. I never spoke to the city once, and the notice went away.”
“Ours is one of the old mill streets and the whole frontage was worn down to the stone, not one slab of it. They replaced twenty-two feet across two days, cut the joints the following morning and swept the gutter before leaving. A straight edge reads flat the length of it.”
“Where our drive meets the walk it had cracked clean through, which I blame on the bin lorry. Fontana Concrete Pro put that section back at six inches with steel in it and matched the broom to the panels either side. Eighteen months on and there is not a line in it.”
FAQ
Who owns the walk, who pays for it, what the permit takes and what becomes of the tree, answered for the street in front of a Fontana house rather than for concrete in general.
You are. The walk sits in the public right-of-way, but California puts the duty to keep the fronting sidewalk in repair on the owner of the property behind it, which is why a notice about it arrives addressed to you and not to the city. What the city keeps is the say over how it is rebuilt, so the work is permitted, inspected and poured to a published detail.
For anything between the back of curb and your property line, yes. That strip is city ground and the encroachment permit comes from the Department of Engineering rather than the building counter, lodged on the Build Fontana portal and inspected at the forms. A path inside your own front garden takes nothing at all. We do the lodging and we stand for the inspection.
Under 2 percent across the width, which is a quarter inch of fall per foot toward the gutter. The slope along the walk simply follows the street. Two percent is the figure that keeps a wheelchair tracking straight instead of pulling toward the curb, and it is why forms are set off a level rather than off the line of the old panel.
It stays, in nearly every case. Roots thicker than an inch are cut back to sound wood on the walk side only, and a 24-inch barrier is stood between the trunk and the new concrete so the next root turns down rather than sideways. A street tree here is city property, so where a cut would take a serious share of the root plate we ask before we make it.
One to two days, once the permit is in hand, and the permit is the part that takes the weeks. A single panel is a morning to cut and break out and a morning to pour. A whole frontage of eight or ten runs to two days. Stay off it for 24 hours, and keep anything with wheels off it for 7.
Yes, and it is the usual answer where one tree caused the lift. The slab is saw-cut square at both joints so its neighbors are left alone, and nothing is tied across: a walk is jointed in order to move. What argues against it is a frontage where the surface has already worn back past the stone, because there the next panel is only a year behind this one.
Because that is the one stretch of a sidewalk a vehicle crosses. The rest of the run carries feet. The approach carries a truck twice a day and the bin lorry weekly, on the same four inches everything else got. Rebuilt properly it goes back at six inches with steel through it and a wing returned each side, which is what keeps the crack from coming again.
You get a written workmanship guarantee against defects in how it was built, and its terms are printed on the estimate you sign: the depth dug, the base compacted, the joint spacing, the cross slope and the finish. It does not cover a slab a vehicle has been parked across, or a lift from a tree that went into the verge after the concrete did. Where the fault is ours we come back and put it right.
Service area
Towns inside the 25 miles this crew travels from the office, nearest to Fontana first. The counter that issues the permit changes at every city line and we deal with each of them. Each name opens that town's own page.
Four jobs that sit either side of a walk, measured while the panels are being counted and itemized on the one written estimate rather than quoted again later.
The saw work that lifts one panel out square without disturbing its neighbors.
The drive behind the approach, poured to meet the new panel on a single grade.
The step down from the porch onto the path, cast to an even 7-inch rise.
The slab a side path runs back to, jointed to match the walk where they meet.
Call the Sierra Avenue office or send the form and you hear back within 1 business day. Say roughly how many panels have gone and whether a tree stands on the run, and the visit can be booked inside the same week.