Plaza Orange Concrete pours patios, pool decks and drives on the pads of Diamond Bar, up the 57 from our yard in Orange. Every estimate is measured and written on site, and the visit is free.
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Nothing under a Diamond Bar yard is where nature left it. The tract grader cut the pad and filled it, the pool contractor backfilled an overdig, and a landscaper built up the planters.
Those three fills were placed to three standards. The pad was compacted in lifts and tested, because the house sits on it and the county inspected it. The ring of backfill around a pool, usually about 2 feet wide, was shoveled back and hosed down, because the pool builder was paid for the pool. The soil behind a planter wall was never compacted at all. A slab that crosses from one to the next sits on ground settling at three rates, and the crack follows the boundary between them.
So we map the fill before we form. The old deck or patio comes out and the subgrade is probed with a rod along the pool edge and the planter line, soft material is dug out to what holds, and 4 inches of Class 2 base is placed and compacted across the whole run. Steel on an 18 inch grid goes through the slab, and where the slab has to span the pool backfill we thicken its edge to 6 inches so it bridges the soft ring rather than tipping into it.
Almost every job in Diamond Bar happens on the flat part of a hillside lot, and that flat part was made. Before we price a slab we work out which of three different fills is under it, because each settles in its own way.
A Diamond Bar driveway sits on the one piece of ground the grader compacted hardest, the pad in front of the garage, so it is the slab least likely to settle here. We pour it 4 inches on compacted base, cut the joints on the day, and dowel the new apron to the city's approach.
The patio is the job that crosses the fills, from the pad at the back door to the planter line or the pool ring. We rod the subgrade along that run, dig out what is soft, and pour 4 inches on base with steel through it, pitched the way the pad was graded when the house went up.
Stamped concrete in Diamond Bar goes on the pool surround and the patio, in a slate or a flagstone that suits a 1980s two story. We stamp a 4 inch slab, leave a plain broomed band beside the coping where wet feet land, and seal the color in once the concrete has cured.
The walk on a Diamond Bar lot crosses the planter fill along the front of the house, the loosest ground on the property, so it is the panel that tips first. We dig that strip to firm ground, lay base, pour 4 inches with steel in it, and joint it every 5 feet.
Garage floors on the 1980s tracts of Diamond Bar were poured straight on the pad with no barrier under them, which is why an epoxy laid on one peels in its second winter. We test the slab for moisture first, and pour a new floor 4 inches thick over a barrier, flat enough to coat.
Exposed aggregate in Diamond Bar goes on the pool deck and the drive, because a washed stone finish does not go slick with pool water, and it hides the dust the summer wind lifts off the slopes. We wash the stone proud the same afternoon and seal it once it has cured.
A wall in Diamond Bar is usually the planter wall that gave up, dry-stacked by a landscaper on fill and now leaning over the patio. We take it down, dig a footing into firm ground, pour a reinforced stem with gravel and pipe behind it, and permit it where it stands over 4 feet.
Interior slabs in Diamond Bar are the room built out onto the pad and the second unit behind the house. We set the floor to the level of the existing slab so the doorway carries no step, pour it over a vapor barrier and compacted base, and hold it flat enough for tile or plank.
The 57 leaves Orange at the Orange Crush and comes off the hill at Diamond Bar Boulevard, about 20 miles from our yard on North Tustin Street, so a crew that leaves at 6 is on the pad before 7 and the first load is booked for 8. The city has issued its own permits since it incorporated in 1989, through the Building and Safety Division at City Hall on Copley Drive, and a wall or a footing on a hillside lot is read against the slope before the drawing is stamped.
The first tracts went in along Golden Springs Drive and either side of Diamond Bar Boulevard from 1960, on pads cut into the cattle ranch that gave the city its name, and the streets off Grand Avenue and Pathfinder Road filled in through the 1980s. Most of those houses are two stories on a pad that leaves a strip of level yard at the back, and the pool went into that strip a few years after the house. That strip is the yard we are asked to pour, and the pool's backfill ring is in it.
A pad drains to the street or to the concrete ditch at the top of the slope behind it, and nothing we build may send water anywhere the grading plan did not. So a new patio is pitched the way the pad was, and its low edge is picked up by an area drain piped to the existing outlet rather than left to soak into the fill. Summer is the pouring season. Diamond Bar sits inland of the hills, so from July to September we pour at first light and keep the slab wet all afternoon.
Four stages, and the first is the one that matters on made ground. The subgrade is probed before a figure is written, so the price covers the fill we found and not the fill we hoped for.
Curtis Ballard measures the slab, rods the subgrade along the pool edge and the planters, and writes the figure on site.
The old deck comes out, soft backfill is dug to firm ground and replaced, and 4 inches of Class 2 base goes in, plate-compacted.
We file with the City of Diamond Bar Building and Safety Division and, inside The Country, with the association. You visit no counter.
The pour is pumped from the street, the joints are cut the same day, and the slab takes feet at 24 hours and a car after 7 days.
Call or send the form and we call back within 1 business day to fix a morning for the visit. The measure and the written figure cost nothing, and we are in Diamond Bar most weeks of the year.
Reviews
Reviews left on Google and Facebook by the homeowners we have worked for across central Orange County and the hills above it. Diamond Bar is among them, and the work is the work described above.
“Our drive goes right down the lot to a garage on the alley, and it had broken into about nine pieces. They took out 540 square feet, put five inches back and got the joints in before they left that evening. Curtis was here at seven for the pour.”
“Three of the pepper trees out front had lifted the walk into a trip hazard and the city had already been round. Seventy feet of panel came out, a barrier went in against each root plate, and the new walk has stayed flat through two winters.”
“The back of our lot falls away hard and the old patio had cracked right across the middle. They stepped the new one down in two levels, 380 square feet of it, and formed a drain along the low edge. Nothing has stood on it since, even in February.”
What people in Diamond Bar ask before they book, from what moves the figure on a hillside lot to who signs the permit, why a pool deck sinks and how far Orange is by the 57.
The fill under it. A patio on the compacted pad needs base and steel and nothing else, while one that crosses the backfill ring around a pool needs that ring dug out and replaced, and a thickened edge to span it. Access is next, because a boom pump from a tract street is a set cost and a barrow through a side gate is crew hours. Every estimate is measured and written on site, so nothing is guessed from the curb.
The City of Diamond Bar Building and Safety Division, at City Hall on Copley Drive. Flatwork at grade in your own yard needs no permit, a wall over 4 feet or a footing that carries a patio cover does, and on a hillside lot the city reads the slope before it stamps the drawing. Inside The Country the association reviews the plan first. We file with both and stand with the inspector.
About 20 miles, and one freeway. The 57 begins at the Orange Crush a few minutes from our yard on North Tustin Street and runs through Brea Canyon to the Diamond Bar Boulevard and Grand Avenue exits, so a crew that leaves at 6 is on the pad before 7. We book Diamond Bar as a full day and order the concrete from the plant nearest your street rather than from Orange.
Because it sits on the backfill of the pool's overdig. A pool is dug wider than its shell, and the gap was filled loosely once the shell was in, so the deck's inner 2 feet rest on the softest ground on the lot. Thirty years of splash and rain settle it, and the deck tips toward the water. The fix is to take that ring out, compact base in its place, and pour a deck whose edge is thick enough to span it.
Two to three days of work on site, then a week. The tear-out and base take a day, the pour takes a morning and the joints are cut the same afternoon. You can walk on the slab after 24 hours and set furniture on it after 3 days, but a full 7 days pass before anything with wheels goes over it, and a hot week in August means the slab is kept wet through those days.
Yes. Chino Hills is over the ridge to the east on Grand Avenue and Brea is back down the 57 through the canyon, and both are booked from the same yard in Orange with the same crew. Diamond Bar is the far end of what we cover, so a job here shares its week with one of those two rather than with a street in Orange, which is why we ask for a day's flexibility on the pour date.
Diamond Bar borders Chino Hills on the east and Brea across Tonner Canyon to the south, and we cover both from the same yard. If your street sits on a city line, or you are in The Country and unsure which page is yours, call and we will tell you.
Open the Orange Office in Google Maps Send the form and we call back within 1 business day to book the measure. The estimate is free, and the work carries a written workmanship guarantee against defects in how it was built.