Plaza Orange Concrete builds the whole run, the approach over the parkway, the apron at the gutter, the slab to the garage, each to the depth its load asks. Every estimate is measured and written on site.
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Two halves, two rulebooks
A driveway here is two pieces of concrete with a property line between them. From the garage door out to the front of the lot the slab is yours, and the Residential Code lets it be poured without a building permit. The last 15 to 20 feet, the approach over the parkway, the apron and the cut in the curb, lies in the public right-of-way and is built to a city drawing whatever shape you had in mind. Getting the two to meet flush, on one continuous fall, is most of the craft in the job.
The lot decides the rest. Around the Plaza the garages sit at the back off an alley, so concrete runs the full depth of the property and a mixer has to reach the far end of it. The post-war streets west and south of there give you a short frontage and an attached garage, 30 feet of drive and nothing more. Out in Orange Park Acres the runs are long, the lots are wide, and the thing standing on the concrete overnight is a horse trailer rather than a hatchback.
Everything inside the line goes down under a CSLB C-8 license with liability insurance on every job, and any submittal the city wants goes through its Civic Portal, the only route it takes them. The approach is separate: O.M.C. 12.64 puts it in the hands of the Director of Public Works, on an encroachment permit built to the published Residential Driveway Approach Policies. Both sides of the line leave you with a written workmanship guarantee against defects in how it was built.
Repair or start again
The apron takes every wheel that swings in off the street, and it is the only part of the run sitting over a cut in the curb. Once it has gone to pieces the material beneath washes out into the gutter, and patching the top leaves the hole under it.
Panels that rock as a car crosses them are bridging a void. Rounded creek stone rolls under load instead of locking together, the fines wash out from between it, and the slab ends up spanning air. Filling the gap leaves whatever made it.
A drive is meant to shed water away from the house from the day it is finished. A puddle sitting against the threshold after every storm says the run has settled backwards, and no grinder or sealer puts fall back into a slab that has lost it.
A parkway tree eighty years into its life has roots directly beneath four inches of concrete, and an inch of lip where the walk crosses the drive is a trip hazard. Grinding it buys a season. Lifting the panel and standing a barrier in there is what holds.
In every driveway
Eight things carry no separate line on the estimate, and most of them answer something particular to this city: an approach built to a city drawing, ground made of creek wash, and a garage that is as likely to be at the back of the lot as the front.
Every panel of the old drive, apron included, comes up to soil and goes to the crusher the day it is lifted.
Your block goes through the city's Pavement Moratorium Viewer before a date is held, because fresh resurfacing restricts the cut.
Width, flare and curb cut follow the Residential Driveway Approach Policies, and the encroachment application is filed by us.
Test holes at the gutter and at the garage, since a single lot can be creek wash at one end and old fill at the other.
Angular Class 2 base is laid in shallow layers and plate-compacted, so nothing beneath the slab can roll when a wheel loads it.
4 inches under cars, 5 to 6 wherever a truck or a horse trailer stands or turns. Both figures print on the sheet you sign.
Saw cuts go in within 12 hours, spaced two to three feet for each inch of thickness, in bays kept near square.
We go down the finished run with you against the estimate, depth, base, joints, fall, finish, and leave the written guarantee.
Four ways to build it
Four builds, set against the lot each one suits. What goes underneath is identical in all four, the same dig, the same angular base, the same permit at the street, so this table is only about the slab and the steel in it.
| Option | Built for | Steel | Life | On it again |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4 inches, broomed | A short post-war frontage, cars only | Fiber through the mix | 30 to 40 years | On foot at 48 hours, cars at 7 days |
| 5 inches to the alley | Old Towne lots with the garage at the back | Welded mesh at mid-depth | 30 to 40 years | 7 days for a car, 28 for a van |
| 6-inch pad or turnaround | Horse trailers and RVs in Orange Park Acres | Number 3 rebar tied in a mat | 35 years or more | 28 days before the trailer goes on |
| Two-strip ribbon run | Narrow pre-war lots with a long run | Rebar the length of each strip | 30 years or more | On foot at 48 hours, cars at 7 days |
A ribbon run puts down roughly half the concrete and asks you to keep a strip mown down the middle; the 6-inch pad is the one row here that cannot be added on later.
The street side of it
Two things about this city land on your driveway and neither of them is on your property: what the street was having done to it last summer, and whether your block is on the National Register.
Public Works keeps a Pavement Moratorium Viewer, and your block gets looked up on it first. A street resurfaced recently is protected from being opened, and cutting one has its own chapter of the municipal code, 12.20, alongside the 12.64 that governs everything else in the right-of-way. Where a block sits inside the moratorium the Director of Public Works either attaches conditions to the cut or it waits. Better to learn that in the first week than with the old drive already loaded out.
The second is design review. Old Towne runs to about a square mile around Plaza Park and is the largest district of its kind on the National Register anywhere in the state. Exterior work inside it is held to the Historic Preservation Design Standards for Old Towne. A front drive is exterior, which puts a driveway on a list most owners assume covers windows and paint. Fairhaven, Fairhills and Fairmeadow, the Eichler tracts, have been local districts on the same footing since 2018.
Call to cure
Five stages. Curtis Ballard measures the run and is on the lot when the truck backs in, and anything the city has to see is filed before a breaker is picked up.
Curtis Ballard shoots the fall from garage to gutter, digs test holes at each end and writes the figure at your house.
Your block goes through the moratorium viewer, the encroachment application for the approach is lodged, and a crew week is held.
Old run and apron leave the same day, then soft fill and rounded wash come out until the subgrade holds under a plate.
Angular rock in layers, forms set to a fall that reaches the gutter, then a pour begun before 8 AM and a broom drawn across it.
Joints cut within 12 hours, 7 days of damp curing, the parkway made good, and the inspection met on the day.
Behind the figure
Square footage starts the number and the ground finishes it. Two runs that measure the same to the foot can be a day apart in work by the time both test holes are open, so no figure is given before the visit. Every estimate is measured and written on site.
An alley run down the full depth of an Old Towne lot is three times the concrete of a post-war frontage the same width.
Creek wash needs screening and compacting; a run laid over old fill or a filled trench has to be dug out before base goes in.
A new curb cut, a wider flare or a condition off the moratorium is right-of-way work, permitted, inspected and costed on its own.
A horse trailer or a work truck takes that part of the slab to 6 inches on rebar, so the deep area is measured separately.
There is no charge for coming out or for the sheet you are left holding, and the call that arranges a time for it comes back within 1 business day. (657) 236-3410 or send us a message.
Fill the form in or call. The return call lands within 1 business day, and a time is set on it. Curtis Ballard measures the run, opens the ground at both ends and leaves the written figure with you to think about.
Three driveways, three lots
All three are on Google, Facebook or the BBB, and all three are drives rather than patios or floors, one off an alley, one with a trailer standing on it, one that had been running water at a garage door for years.
“Our street had been resurfaced the year before and we assumed the drive would have to wait. Curtis looked it up, put the approach in with Public Works and it came back with conditions we could live with. Ninety feet came out and went back at 5 inches, alley end first.”
“We keep a two-horse trailer at the top of the drive and the old slab had cracked in a fan where it turns. That corner went back at 6 inches on rebar and the straight run stayed at 4, which kept the job sensible. The trailer has been on it since March with no mark.”
“Every winter the water came back down to the garage door and stood there. They lifted the whole frontage, reset the fall so it runs out to the gutter and put a channel across the threshold. Two storms since and the floor inside the garage has stayed dry.”
Questions we get asked
The street permit, the design review, how many days a crew is here, what the figure takes in and what is still covered afterward, answered for a driveway on a lot in this city.
Usually, but it is checked before a date is agreed. Public Works publishes a Pavement Moratorium Viewer showing which streets are protected once resurfaced, and opening one runs under its own chapter of the municipal code, 12.20, on top of the 12.64 encroachment permit. Where your block is inside it, the Director of Public Works either attaches conditions or the cut waits. We look the street up at the measure.
Yes, because a front drive counts as exterior. A Minor Design Review Application is the route for a job of this size, and in practice it settles the surface rather than the build: a broom finish or light scoring goes through, while a bold stamped pattern in a strong color is where the questions start. Nothing is ordered until that has come back, which is why review sits ahead of the crew date, not beside it.
Sometimes, and it is neither your call nor ours. The Residential Driveway Approach Policies set the width, the flare and how near an approach may come to a corner or to the next drive, and the encroachment permit is issued against that document. A second curb cut on one frontage is the request that comes back refused most often. The drawing goes in first, and you hear the answer before anything is broken out.
It stays, and the work goes around it. A parkway tree belongs to the city, so roots under the approach are cut only as far as Public Works allows. What we can do is stand a barrier between the root plate and the new pour, carry the slab over the root rather than let it bear on it, and relay the front walk across it. On the older streets that is the difference between flat for 20 years and lifted again in three.
Three to four for a full run with an approach in it, against two for a short frontage: one day taking the old concrete out and away, one digging and compacting, one forming and pouring. The slab is then kept damp for 7 days before a car goes on it, and 28 before anything heavy. Where the drive is the only way in and out, it goes down in two halves and one side stays walkable throughout.
Yes. Lifting every panel, loading it and running it to the crusher is written into the figure, and so is digging out any soft ground that turns up beneath. Anything that could fall outside gets pointed out while we are standing there, never added on afterward, the permit fee, a gate post in the way, a water shut-off buried under the run. The sheet you sign is the bill that follows.
Three things are named on your estimate. The concrete is a ready-mix at 3,500 psi, placed the same morning it leaves the batch plant. Under it goes Caltrans Class 2 aggregate base. Then the steel: fiber through the mix on a 4-inch run, welded mesh at mid-depth in a 5-inch section, number 3 rebar tied into a mat under a 6-inch pad. Naming them lets you hold the delivery ticket against the sheet.
The workmanship, the dig, the compaction, the thickness, where the joints fell and the surface left on it, all of it written on the estimate before your name goes on it. It is a written workmanship guarantee against defects in how it was built. Outside it are stains, tire marks, and any movement in the ground larger than the joint layout was built to take. Where the fault is in our work, we come back.
Where else we go
The eight towns nearest the Tustin Street office, each shown with its distance in a straight line. Twenty towns inside a 25-mile radius make up the full list.
Four jobs usually done at the same time as a drive, or in the week after it. Same crew, same base detail underneath, and every one of them costed on a line of its own.
Where the run ends: a level slab poured to meet the new drive at one height.
The public walk crossing the approach, replaced in panels with a barrier at each root.
Porch steps rebuilt to the new levels, so the rise stays even at the top.
A pattern and a color taken through design review first where Old Towne standards apply.
Phone the office or fill the form in; someone rings you within 1 business day and a time gets agreed. Tell us roughly how long the run is and whether the garage faces the street or an alley, and the measure usually lands the same week.