Rio Hondo El Monte Concrete pours the drives, pool decks and patios of Arcadia, 4 miles north of our yard up Santa Anita Avenue, on lots twice the size of ours. Give us the address.
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Arcadia is the top of the fan. The San Gabriels drop their granite out of Santa Anita Canyon and the city sits on what washed down, coarse and fast draining, cobble in the Highlands, sand by Live Oak.
Decomposed granite is good ground for concrete when it is compacted and poor ground when it is not. It drains in hours, so a slab on it never sits in water the way one does in Alhambra or Rosemead, but it runs loose when it is dug, and a trench edge in it slumps before the day is out. The failures we see in Arcadia are at the edges of a slab poured onto a lawn cut a week earlier, where the loosened granite settled back under the corner and left the concrete bridging air.
So the subgrade is cut and compacted the same day, not left to loosen. The granite is watered and plate-compacted before 4 inches of Class 2 base goes down, the base is compacted again, and number 3 bar runs through the slab on an 18 inch grid. A footing is tied to its slab with the bar the drawing calls for, and where a new pour meets a rebuilt house we dowel into the foundation, so the patio and the house move as one piece in the shake the county designs for.
Arcadia lots are the widest we work on, and 6 in 10 are owned by the people living on them, so the work here is a whole property at once, drive, walk, deck and patio, not one slab in a hurry. Under all of it is the wash the mountains left.
An Arcadia driveway is a circular or a double-width drive on a frontage wide enough for two cars abreast, and where the house has been rebuilt the old drive no longer meets the new garage. We pour 4 inches on 4 inches of base compacted over the granite, and thicker at the apron.
A patio in Arcadia sits under a mature oak more often than not, and the city protects its native oaks by ordinance, so the slab is drawn around the root zone before anyone digs. We pour outside the protected zone and leave the grade alone under the canopy, since fill kills it.
Stamped concrete in Arcadia is asked for as a pool surround or a courtyard on a rebuilt house, in a pattern that matches the stone the builder used at the entry. We cast an ashlar slate or a random flagstone into a 4 inch slab, color it in the mix, and seal it in 2 coats.
The walk to an Arcadia front door crosses a lawn that is watered every night, so it is poured on base that drains rather than on the wet loam the sprinklers leave. We set it an inch above the lawn so mower and runoff clear it, and joint it every 5 feet so it stays square.
Arcadia garages hold 3 cars and often a lift, and a 1950s slab poured 3 inches thick was never meant for either. We break out the floor, pour 5 inches with number 4 bar on a 12 inch grid where a lift is going, and trowel it flat enough for epoxy once the moisture test is done.
Exposed aggregate is the finish Arcadia asks for on a drive that shows from the street, because it reads as stone against a stucco house and stays light in the sun. We seed a washed river pebble into the top of the slab, expose it the same afternoon and seal it.
In the Arcadia Highlands the lots step up toward the mountains, and a wall holds the drive or the pool pad level on granite that sheds water fast. We pour it on a keyed footing into undisturbed ground, drain it behind the stem to daylight, and engineer anything over 4 feet.
Interior floors in Arcadia are poured for a pool house, a converted garage or a detached ADU at the back of a large lot. We pour over a vapor barrier on compacted base, dowel into the footing where the room joins the house, and float it flat enough for tile.
Santa Anita Avenue runs north from our yard in El Monte into the middle of Arcadia, 4 miles, so a crew is at the address in about 15 minutes. Permits go to Building Services in the Development Services Department of the City of Arcadia at City Hall on West Huntington Drive, and a slab inside the protected zone of a native oak needs the city's oak tree permit as well, which is applied for first because it decides where the concrete can go.
The city was Elias Baldwin's Rancho Santa Anita, and the racetrack, the Arboretum and the widest lots all sit on what was his. The Upper and Lower Rancho streets west of Baldwin Avenue keep the largest frontages, the Highlands north of Foothill Boulevard climb onto the fan itself, and south of Duarte Road toward Live Oak Avenue the lots narrow to the size of El Monte's. That sets the job. A drive in the Rancho takes two trucks and a pump. A drive in south Arcadia takes one and a chute.
Arcadia has rebuilt itself over the last 20 years. A 1950s ranch house comes down and a 2 story house goes up on the same lot, and the concrete outside it, the old drive, the old pool deck, the old walk, no longer lines up with the new doors. That is most of our work here, and it is done last, after the framing and the stucco, so the finished slab is not the one the plasterers stood on. We schedule it against the builder's calendar and pour when the site is clear.
Four steps, and the first one is done under the trees. The oak permit and the measure happen on the same visit, so the drawing that goes to the city is the one the concrete is poured to and the figure holds.
Ismael Duarte walks the lot, tapes the drive, the walk and the deck, marks the protected zone of each oak and probes the granite for fill.
The oak tree permit goes in ahead of the building permit, because it decides the layout. Both are ours to file and chase, not yours.
The granite is cut and plate-compacted the same day, 4 inches of Class 2 base goes down, and number 3 bar is tied on an 18 inch grid.
The pour takes a day, joints are cut within 12 hours, you walk on it after 24 hours and drive on it after 7 days. We hose the street behind us.
Call or leave the form and someone rings you back within 1 business day to book the visit. Ismael Duarte tapes the whole property in one go, drive and deck and walk, and hands you the written figure at the gate.
Reviews
Left on Google and Facebook by owners across the towns this site pours in, Arcadia among them. Each one names the job, and the job is the one described on this page.
“Our drive had sunk where the water line went in years ago and you could feel it in the car. They dug the soft fill right out, rolled clean base into it and put 540 square feet down at four inches. Ismael was here at seven in the morning and the saw went over it before he went home.”
“A ficus outside our place on Ramona had lifted two panels and we were getting complaints about it. They sawed out on the joints, cut the roots back behind a barrier, laid seventy feet of new walk and took care of the encroachment permit themselves. Nobody catches a foot on it now.”
“We use the garage as a workshop and the old floor was cracked right across, with the edges crumbling away wherever you swept. It came out, a heavy sheet went down over the sand, and five inches of new floor went on top. A year of trolley jacks and there is not a mark on it.”
What Arcadia owners ask before booking, from what a whole-property job costs to the oak permit, the drive up from El Monte, why the ground here drains and how long a pool is fenced off.
By the square foot of each piece, added up and measured on site. A drive, a pool deck and a walk on one Arcadia lot are 3 separate slabs with 3 finishes, and each is taped and written on its own line so you can take one off. Access moves it next, since a pump on a Rancho lot adds a day. Every estimate is measured and written on site, and the sheet lists every slab.
Yes if any part of the slab falls inside the protected zone of a native oak, which the city measures out from the trunk. The permit comes from the City of Arcadia before the building permit, and it can move the patio a few feet. We measure the zone on the first visit and draw the slab outside it, because a permit refused costs a month.
The yard is 4 miles south, straight down Santa Anita Avenue, so a crew is at an Arcadia address in about 15 minutes and the mixer is close behind. We are in the city every week, and a call is returned within 1 business day with a date for the measure. On the day of the pour the truck is booked for the morning, before Huntington Drive fills.
Because decomposed granite loosens when it is dug and settles back over the following weeks, and an edge poured onto loosened ground ends up bridging a gap. The cure is to compact the cut subgrade the same day it is opened, then compact 4 inches of base over it, so there is nothing left to settle. A slab poured that way cracks only along its joints.
About 10 days from break-out to the first swim. The old deck comes out in a day, the base and the forms take another, and the pour a third. Then the concrete cures 24 hours before anyone walks on it and 7 days before the furniture goes back. The pool is netted while we work so nothing goes in it, and the gate stays shut.
Monrovia, Sierra Madre, Temple City and San Marino share Arcadia's boundaries and all four are on this site, poured from the same El Monte yard. Pasadena sits to the west and is not one of ours. A lot on Michillinda Avenue or on the Sierra Madre line changes which city issues the permit and nothing about how the slab goes in.
Arcadia borders Monrovia, Sierra Madre, Temple City and San Marino, and we cover each of them from the same yard, with the same crew and the same written figure. If your lot sits on one of those lines, the neighboring town's page says what changes there.
Open the El Monte Office in Google Maps Ring or send the form. The figure is taped and written at the address, and every slab carries a written workmanship guarantee against defects in how it was built.