Fontana Concrete Pro sets every riser within 3/8 inch of the rest, digs the footing below the fan gravel and casts the handrail anchors in wet. Every estimate is measured and written on site.
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The one thing a step cannot get wrong
A person climbs a stair by memory rather than by looking. The first two risers tell the foot how far to lift, and every one after that is expected to match. Which is why the code writes the tolerance and not the height: no riser in a flight may differ from another by more than 3/8 inch. A step that has dropped an inch at one end has broken that rule whatever it measured on the day it was poured.
Andre Whitfield founded Fontana Concrete Pro in 2019 after 18 years on Inland Empire crews, and he sets the story pole on every flight himself. Fontana asks for two different stairs. The Kaiser mill blocks south of Valley Boulevard are slab-on-grade houses with one or two shallow risers at the door. The tracts north of the 210 went up this century with a deeper drop from the garage slab into the house, and Southridge sits on the hill, where a front garden takes a flight of six.
Steps go in under a CSLB C-8 concrete license with liability insurance on every job, to the stair geometry, landing and handrail rules of the California Building Code. Whether a given flight has to be filed depends on its rise and where it stands, so we put it to the Building & Safety Division before the estimate is written and lodge it on the Build Fontana portal where the answer is yes. The finished flight carries a written workmanship guarantee against defects in how it was built.
Warning signs
Walk down the flight in the dark and see which step you feel. A riser that has settled reads as a miss under the foot long before it shows in a photo, and it is measurable: put a straight edge across the nosings and anything over 3/8 inch has gone past what the code allows.
Entry steps on the mill blocks were poured against the slab with no footing beneath them. When the ground under the flight dries back and shrinks, the flight tips away from the wall and opens a line you can put a coin into, and it opens further each summer rather than closing again.
Four risers or more and the flight is required to carry a handrail. Bolting one onto a finished tread later means drilling into concrete that was never reinforced for the pull, and an anchor that works loose in a year is worse to grab at than the bare edge of the step was.
The front lip of a tread is the thinnest concrete in the flight and it is what every heel lands on. Once corners break off in pieces the size of a thumb, water is reaching steel set too close to the face, and patching the edge puts back nothing that will hold the next heel.
What is included
Standard on every stair we cast, and none of it itemized as an upgrade afterward. Each line answers something a Fontana house does to a set of steps: loose creek ground beneath them, a hill behind them, or an inspector reading them.
Total height from the walk to the threshold is measured and divided into equal risers before anything is dug.
The flight stands on its own footing dug below the loose fan gravel, not on the fill that was pushed up against the house.
Forms are set off a story pole so no riser in the flight differs from another by more than 3/8 inch.
Treads run 11 inches deep with a nosing over the riser below, so a whole shoe lands on the step going down.
Number 4 bar runs the width and turns down into the footing, which is what stops a stair cracking at the back of a tread.
Cast in a 3,500 psi mix from a San Bernardino County plant and broomed across the tread rather than along it.
Where the flight has four risers or more, the rail anchors go in wet, set to a height between 34 and 38 inches.
Any permit lodged by us, the inspector met at the forms, and a written workmanship guarantee against defects in how it was built at the end.
Your options
Four answers to a bad flight, set against the one thing a stair is judged on, which is whether every riser in it comes out the same height. Two of these can hold the geometry. Two of them inherit whatever the old steps had.
| Option | Risers set true | Sits on | Back in use | Holds for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cast in place | Yes, divided at the visit | Its own footing below grade | 24 hours to walk, 7 days to load | 40 years or more |
| Block core, concrete faced | Yes, courses set to the rise | A poured footing under the wall | 3 to 4 days, mortar and cap | 35 to 40 years |
| Precast units set down | Fixed at the factory, not the door | A bedded pad, no footing | The same afternoon | 20 years, less on made ground |
| Existing flight resurfaced | No, it repeats what is there | The old steps, whatever they sit on | 24 hours | 5 to 8 years |
Resurfacing is the quickest morning and keeps the risers you already have. Casting the flight fresh is the only one of the four that starts by dividing the rise again.
Local knowledge
The height a Fontana door sits above its path was decided by which decade the street was built in, and the ground the steps stand on was dropped by a creek rather than laid down as clay.
Lytle Creek spread sand, gravel and rounded stone across this valley floor and left it loose. A stair puts its whole weight onto a strip a foot wide, so it loads that ground far harder than a slab does, and rounded stone with nothing to key it simply rolls apart under the edge of a footing that stopped short. So the footing is dug past the loose material to something that reads firm on a probe, and the flight is cast as one piece with the footing rather than stood on top of it.
Then the street tells you what shape it is. On the mill blocks it is one or two risers at a slab-on-grade door, and the whole problem is that they were poured on dirt with no footing at all. In the newer tracts north of the 210 the drop from the garage slab into the house is deeper and wants two even risers and a landing rather than one tall one. On the Southridge hillside a flight runs to five or six, which brings in the handrail, and past 30 inches of drop at the side a guard as well.
Our process
Five stages, from the tape on the threshold to the morning the handrail is bolted up. One crew throughout, and any permit lodged on Build Fontana before anything is broken out.
Andre Whitfield measures from finished walk to threshold, divides it into equal risers, counts them and writes the figure at the door.
Riser height, tread depth, landing and rail go on a sketch, and where Building & Safety wants it filed we lodge that on Build Fontana.
The old flight comes out to soil and footings are dug below the loose gravel, then probed before any steel is tied.
Forms set off a story pole, number 4 bar tied through, then the pour, the broom across each tread and the anchors set wet.
Forms come off, the inspector reads the risers, the handrail is bolted to the cast anchors and the guarantee is handed over.
What moves the estimate
How far the door stands above the path sets the figure first, because that number decides how many risers there are. After it comes what the flight has to stand on and what the code hangs off the side of it. Every estimate is measured and written on site.
Two risers off a mill-block slab is a morning. Six up a Southridge front garden is a footing, a landing and a rail.
Where the loose creek gravel runs deep the footing follows it down, and that is dug depth and concrete nobody sees.
Four risers brings in a handrail. More than 30 inches of drop off the side brings in a guard as well, at 42 inches in California.
A landing at the top runs 36 inches deep at least, and a flight wide enough for two changes the pour more than the rise does.
The visit and the written figure cost nothing, 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 takes the height from the threshold to the walk, counts the risers it divides into and leaves a written figure at the house, and the Build Fontana paperwork is our errand rather than yours.
Reviews
Three stairs on three Fontana streets, written up by the owners once the rail was on. Each one names the part of a step that only shows up under a foot.
“Our two front steps had tipped off the house and my father caught his toe on the top one every time. They dug proper footings, poured the pair fresh and now both feel identical going down. He has not stumbled since, and the gap at the wall is gone for good.”
“The drop from our garage into the laundry was one big awkward step and we were carrying shopping over it. Fontana Concrete Pro cut it into two even risers with a landing, matched the broom to the garage floor, and the inspector was in and out in ten minutes. It reads as though it was built that way.”
“Ours is on the hill and the old flight of six wandered, with one riser noticeably taller than the others. They set the forms off a pole, cast the rail anchors in as they poured and the rail went on straight the following week. Six steps that all feel the same is the whole point of it.”
FAQ
How tall a step is allowed to be, when a rail becomes compulsory, what has to go under a flight here and what the counter wants to see, answered for a Fontana door rather than for concrete in general.
A riser at a house may not exceed 7 3/4 inches, and the tread has to give at least 10 inches of run. The figure that actually decides whether a flight feels right is the tolerance: no riser may differ from another in the same flight by more than 3/8 inch. That is why the total height is measured and divided before a footing is dug rather than after.
Usually yes, and we ask the counter rather than assume it. The code fixes the riser, the tread, the landing and the rail either way, and where a permit is called for the application goes to the Building & Safety Division on the Build Fontana portal with those dimensions on it, and an inspector reads the forms before the pour. We lodge it and we meet the inspection.
At four risers. A flight of four or more takes a graspable handrail, mounted between 34 and 38 inches above the nosings and continuous over the run of the stair. Separately, where the walking surface sits more than 30 inches above the ground beside it, which happens on the Southridge slopes, a 42-inch guard is required along the open side too.
Because they were never carried on anything. Entry steps on the older Fontana blocks were commonly poured on the graded dirt beside a slab-on-grade house, so the slab sits on its own footing and the steps sit on ground that swells and shrinks with the seasons. The two move apart, and the gap at the wall is the measure of it. New footings are the only fix that holds.
Where the flight is sound and the risers already measure even, yes, and it is a morning of work. What resurfacing cannot do is change geometry: a quarter inch of overlay on the treads leaves a tall riser tall, and it adds a little to the top step. Where a stair has settled or a riser is out by more than 3/8 inch, the flight has to be recast.
One to two days on site once the permit is in hand, and the permit is the part that takes the weeks. Breaking out, digging the footings and tying steel is a day, and forming and pouring is the next. Keep off the treads for 24 hours and off with anything heavy for 7 days, which is when the mix reaches the strength it was ordered at.
A footing dug through the loose Lytle Creek gravel to material that reads firm on a probe, with number 4 bar tied into it and turned up through the risers so the flight and its footing are one piece. Solid concrete carries the treads; a hollow stair over fill is where a step later cracks at the back. The subgrade under the landing is compacted the same way.
You get a written workmanship guarantee against defects in how it was built, with its terms printed on the estimate you sign: the footing depth, the steel, the riser tolerance, the tread depth and the finish. It does not cover a flight that has been undermined by a leaking irrigation line, or a rail loosened by something driven into it. Where the fault is in how we built it, we come back and rebuild it.
Service area
Towns inside the 25 miles this crew travels from the Sierra Avenue office, nearest to Fontana first. Every one of them runs its own building counter, and we file at each. Each name opens that town's page.
Four jobs that meet a flight of steps at the top or the bottom of it, priced on the same written estimate while the rise is being taken rather than quoted again later.
The walk the bottom step lands on, poured to the level the new flight was divided from.
The wall that holds a Southridge slope back where a flight cuts through it.
The slab a back door steps down onto, cast to the same rise as the front.
The garage slab the step-down into the house is measured from.
Call the Sierra Avenue office or send the form and you hear back within 1 business day. Say roughly how many steps there are and whether there is a rail on them now, and the visit can usually be booked inside the same week.